I never knew a boy farmer who was not eager to go to the district school in the winter.  There is such a chance for learning, that he must be a dull boy who does not come out in the spring a fair skater, an accurate snow-baller, and an accomplished slider-down-hill, with or without a board, on his seat, on his stomach, or on his feet.  Take a moderate hill, with a foot-slide down it worn to icy smoothness, and a “go-round” of boys on it, and there is nothing like it for whittling away boot-leather.  The boy is the shoemaker’s friend.  An active lad can wear down a pair of cowhide soles in a week so that the ice will scrape his toes.  Sledding or coasting is also slow fun compared to the “bareback” sliding down a steep hill over a hard, glistening crust.  It is not only dangerous, but it is destructive to jacket and pantaloons to a degree to make a tailor laugh.  If any other animal wore out his skin as fast as a schoolboy wears out his clothes in winter, it would need a new one once a month.  In a country district-school patches were not by any means a sign of poverty, but of the boy’s courage and adventurous disposition.  Our elders used to threaten to dress us in leather and put sheet-iron seats in our trousers.  The boy said that he wore out his trousers on the hard seats in the schoolhouse ciphering hard sums.  For that extraordinary statement he received two castigations,—­one at home, that was mild, and one from the schoolmaster, who was careful to lay the rod upon the boy’s sliding-place, punishing him, as he jocosely called it, on a sliding scale, according to the thinness of his pantaloons.

What I liked best at school, however, was the study of history, —­early history,—­the Indian wars.  We studied it mostly at noontime, and we had it illustrated as the children nowadays have “object-lessons,” though our object was not so much to have lessons as it was to revive real history.

Back of the schoolhouse rose a round hill, upon which, tradition said, had stood in colonial times a block-house, built by the settlers for defense against the Indians.  For the Indians had the idea that the whites were not settled enough, and used to come nights to settle—­them with a tomahawk.  It was called Fort Hill.  It was very steep on each side, and the river ran close by.  It was a charming place in summer, where one could find laurel, and checkerberries, and sassafras roots, and sit in the cool breeze, looking at the mountains across the river, and listening to the murmur of the Deerfield.  The Methodists built a meeting-house there afterwards, but the hill was so slippery in winter that the aged could not climb it and the wind raged so fiercely that it blew nearly all the young Methodists away (many of whom were afterwards heard of in the West), and finally the meeting-house itself came down into the valley, and grew a steeple, and enjoyed itself ever afterwards.  It used to be a notion in New England that a meeting-house ought to stand as near heaven as possible.