things--and sat in the shade of the trees at noon and ate them. It is
the part of my education which I look back upon with the most
satisfaction. My first visit to the school was when I was seven. A
strapping girl of fifteen, in the customary sunbonnet and calico dress,
asked me if I "used tobacco"--meaning did I chew it. I said, no. It
roused her scorn. She reported me to all the crowd, and said--

"Here is a boy seven years old who can't chaw tobacco."

By the looks and comments which this produced, I realized that I was a
degraded object; I was cruelly ashamed of myself. I determined to
reform. But I only made myself sick; I was not able to learn to chew
tobacco. I learned to smoke fairly well, but that did not conciliate
anybody, and I remained a poor thing, and characterless. I longed to be
respected, but I never was able to rise. Children have but little
charity for each other's defects.

As I have said, I spent some part of every year at the farm until I was
twelve or thirteen years old. The life which I led there with my cousins
was full of charm, and so is the memory of it yet. I can call back the
solemn twilight and mystery of the deep woods, the earthy smells, the
faint odors of the wild flowers, the sheen of rain-washed foliage, the
rattling clatter of drops when the wind shook the trees, the far-off
hammering of woodpeckers and the muffled drumming of wood-pheasants in
the remoteness of the forest, the snap-shot glimpses of disturbed wild
creatures skurrying through the grass,--I can call it all back and make
it as real as it ever was, and as blessed. I can call back the prairie,
and its loneliness and peace, and a vast hawk hanging motionless in the
sky, with his wings spread wide and the blue of the vault showing
through the fringe of their end-feathers. I can see the woods in their
autumn dress, the oaks purple, the hickories washed with gold, the
maples and the sumacs luminous with crimson fires, and I can hear the
rustle made by the fallen leaves as we ploughed through them. I can see
the blue clusters of wild grapes hanging amongst the foliage of the
saplings, and I remember the taste of them and the smell. I know how the
wild blackberries looked, and how they tasted; and the same with the
pawpaws, the hazelnuts and the persimmons; and I can feel the thumping
rain, upon my head, of hickory-nuts and walnuts when we were out in the
frosty dawn to scramble for them with the pigs, and the gusts of wind