To be frank, my idea of the North was about as accurate as that entertained by the well-educated Englishmen of the present day concerning America.  I supposed the inhabitants were divided into two classes—­Indians and white people; that the Indians occasionally dashed down on New York, and scalped any woman or child (giving the preference to children) whom they caught lingering in the outskirts after nightfall; that the white men were either hunters or schoolmasters, and that it was winter pretty much all the year round.  The prevailing style of architecture I took to be log-cabins.

With this delightful picture of Northern civilization in my eye, the reader will easily understand my terror at the bare thought of being transported to Rivermouth to school, and possibly will forgive me for kicking over little black Sam, and otherwise misconducting myself, when my father announced his determination to me.  As for kicking little Sam—­I always did that, more or less gently, when anything went wrong with me.

My father was greatly perplexed and troubled by this unusually violent outbreak, and especially by the real consternation which he saw written in every line of my countenance.  As little black Sam picked himself up, my father took my hand in his and led me thoughtfully to the library.

I can see him now as he leaned back in the bamboo chair and questioned me.  He appeared strangely agitated on learning the nature of my objections to going North, and proceeded at once to knock down all my pine log houses, and scatter all the Indian tribes with which I had populated the greater portion of the Eastern and Middle States.

“Who on earth, Tom, has filled your brain with such silly stories?” asked my father, wiping the tears from his eyes.

“Aunt Chloe, sir; she told me.”

“And you really thought your grandfather wore a blanket embroidered with beads, and ornamented his leggins with the scalps of his enemies?”

“Well, sir, I didn’t think that exactly.”

“Didn’t think that exactly?  Tom, you will be the death of me.”

He hid his face in his handkerchief, and, when he looked up, he seemed to have been suffering acutely.  I was deeply moved myself, though I did not clearly understand what I had said or done to cause him to feel so badly.  Perhaps I had hurt his feelings by thinking it even possible that Grandfather Nutter was an Indian warrior.

My father devoted that evening and several subsequent evenings to giving me a clear and succinct account of New England; its early struggles, its progress, and its present condition—­faint and confused glimmerings of all which I had obtained at school, where history had never been a favorite pursuit of mine.

I was no longer unwilling to go North; on the contrary, the proposed journey to a new world full of wonders kept me awake nights.  I promised myself all sorts of fun and adventures, though I was not entirely at rest in my mind touching the savages, and secretly resolved to go on board the ship—­the journey was to be made by sea—­with a certain little brass pistol in my trousers-pocket, in case of any difficulty with the tribes when we landed at Boston.