School life was pleasant and I suppose fairly profitable.  Until I entered high school I attended the ungraded district school.  It was on the edge of a wood, and a source of recess pleasure was making umbrageous homes of pine boughs.  On the last day of school the school committee, the leading minister, the ablest lawyer, and the best-loved doctor were present to review and address us.  We took much pride in the decoration.  Wreaths of plaited leaves were twisted around the stovepipe; the top of the stove was banked with pond-lilies gathered from a pond in our woods.  Medals were primitive.  For a week I wore a pierced ninepence in evidence of my proficiency in mental arithmetic; then it passed to stronger hands.

According to present standards we indulged in precious little amusement.  Entertainments were few.  Once in a while a circus came to town, and there were organizations of musical attractions like The Hutchinson Family and The Swiss Bell Ringers.  Ossian E. Dodge was a name with which to conjure, and a panorama was sometimes unrolled alternating with dissolving views.  Seen in retrospect, they all seem tame and unalluring.  The Lyceum was, the feature of strongest interest to the grownups.  Lectures gave them a chance to see men of note like Wendell Phillips, Emerson, or William Lloyd Garrison.  Even boys could enjoy poets of the size of John G. Saxe.

Well do I remember the distrust felt for abolitionists.  I had an uncle who entertained Fred Douglass and was ready at any time to help a fugitive slave to Canada.  He was considered dangerous.  He was a shoemaker, and I remember how he would drop his work when no one was by and get up to pace the floor and rehearse a speech he probably never would make.

Occasionally our singing-school would give a concert, and once in a farmers’ chorus I was costumed in a smock cut down from one of grandfather’s.  I carried a sickle and joined in “Through lanes with hedgerows, pearly.”  I kept up in the singing but let my attention wander as the farmers made their exit and did not notice that I was left till the other boys were almost off the stage.  I then skipped after them, swinging my scythe in chagrin.

In the high school we gave an exhibition in which we enacted some Scotch scene.  I think it had to do with Roderick Dhu.  We were to be costumed, and I was bothered about kilts and things.  Mr. Phillips, the principal, suggested that the stage be set with small evergreen trees.  The picture of them in my mind’s eye brought relief, and I impulsively exclaimed, “That will be good, because we will not have to wear pants,” meaning, of course, the kilts.  He had a sense of humor and was a tease.  He pretended to take me literally, and raised a laugh as he said, “Why, Murdock!”

One bitterly cold night we went to Fitchburg, five miles away, to describe the various pictures given at a magic-lantern exhibition.  My share was a few lines on a poor view of Scarborough Castle.  At this distance it seems like a poor investment of energy.