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.

Let me not forget to recall the interesting visit to Haverhill with my room-mate, and how he led me to the mighty bridge over the Merrimack which defied the ice-rafts of the river; and to the old meetinghouse, where, in its porch, I saw the door of the ancient parsonage, with the bullet-hole in it through which Benjamin Rolfe, the minister, was shot by the Indians on the 29th of August, 1708.  What a vision it was when I awoke in the morning to see the fog on the river seeming as if it wrapped the towers and spires of a great city!—­for such was my fancy, and whether it was a mirage of youth or a fantastic natural effect I hate to inquire too nicely.

My literary performances at Andover, if any reader who may have survived so far cares to know, included a translation from Virgil, out of which I remember this couplet, which had the inevitable cockney rhyme of beginners: