launched upon society, we debated.  Time cut the knot in his rude fashion by taking one away early, and padding the other with prosperity so that his course was comparatively noiseless and ineffective.  We had our societies, too; one in particular, “The Social Fraternity,” the dread secrets of which I am under a lifelong obligation never to reveal.  The fate of William Morgan, which the community learned not long after this time, reminds me of the danger of the ground upon which I am treading.

There were various distractions to make the time not passed in study a season of relief.  One good lady, I was told, was in the habit of asking students to her house on Saturday afternoons and praying with and for them.  Bodily exercise was not, however, entirely superseded by spiritual exercises, and a rudimentary form of base-ball and the heroic sport of football were followed with some spirit.

A slight immature boy finds his materials of though and enjoyment in very shallow and simple sources.  Yet a kind of romance gilds for me the sober tableland of that cold New England hill where I came in contact with a world so strange to me, and destined to leave such mingled and lasting impressions.  I looked across the valley to the hillside where Methuen hung suspended, and dreamed of its wooded seclusion as a village paradise.  I tripped lightly down the long northern slope with facilis descensus on my lips, and toiled up again, repeating sed revocare gradum.  I wandered’ in the autumnal woods that crown the “Indian Ridge,” much wondering at that vast embankment, which we young philosophers believed with the vulgar to be of aboriginal workmanship, not less curious, perhaps, since we call it an escar, and refer it to alluvial agencies.  The little Shawshine was our swimming-school, and the great Merrimack, the right arm of four toiling cities, was within reach of a morning stroll.  At home we had the small imp to make us laugh at his enormities, for he spared nothing in his talk, and was the drollest little living protest against the prevailing solemnities of the locality.  It did not take much to please us, I suspect, and it is a blessing that this is apt to be so with young people.  What else could have made us think it great sport to leave our warm beds in the middle of winter and “camp out,”—­on the floor of our room,—­with blankets disposed tent-wise, except the fact that to a boy a new discomfort in place of an old comfort is often a luxury.

More exciting occupation than any of these was to watch one of the preceptors to see if he would not drop dead while he was praying.  He had a dream one night that he should, and looked upon it as a warning, and told it round very seriously, and asked the boys to come and visit him in turn, as one whom they were soon to lose.  More than one boy kept his eye on him during his public devotions, possessed by the same feeling the man had who followed Van Amburgh about with the expectation, let us not say the hope, of seeing the lion bite his head off sooner or later.