audible voice to his listening family
Grave books of History, or elaborate Theology,
Taxing thought and memory, but not setting fancy on tiptoe
Teaching reverence for wise men, and for God, the Giver of Wisdom.
Not then had the era arrived, when of making books there is no end.
Painfully the laboring press, brought forth like the kingly whale
One cub at a time, guiding it carefully over the billows,
Watching with pride and pleasure, its own wonderful offspring.
A large, fair volume, was in those days, as molten gold,
Touched only with clean hands, and by testators willed to their heirs.

* * * * *

Winter also, brought the school for the boys,--released from
farm-labor.
Early was the substantial breakfast, in those short, frosty mornings,
That equipped in season, might be the caravan for its enterprise,
Punctuality in those simple times being enrolled among the virtues.
There they go! a rosy group, bearing in small baskets their dinner;
Plunging thro' all snow-drifts, the boys,--on all ices sliding the
girls,
Yet leaving not the straight path, lest tardy should be their arrival.
Lone on the bleak hill-side, stood the unpainted village school-house,
Winds taking aim at it like a target, smoke belching from its chimney,
Bare to the fiery suns of summer, like the treeless Nantucket.
Desks were ranged under the windows where on high benches without backs
Sate the little ones, their feet vainly reaching toward the distant
floor,
Commanded everlastingly to keep still and to be still,
As if immobility were the climax of all excellence;
Hard lesson for quick nerves, and eyes searching for something new.
Nature endowed them with curiosity, but man wiser than she
Calling himself a teacher, would fain stiffen them into statues.
No bright visions of the school-palaces of future days
With seats of ease, and carpets, and pianos, and pictured walls,
And green lawns, pleasantly shaded, stretching wide for play,
And knowledge fondling her pets, and unveiling her royal road,
Gleam'd before them as Eden, kindling smiles on their thoughtful
faces.

Favor'd were the elder scholars with more congenial tasks:
Loudly read they in their classes, glorying in the noise they made,
Busily over the slates moved the hard pencils, with a grating sound,
Diligently on coarse paper wrote they, with quill pens, bushy topp'd,
Blessed in having lived, ere the metallic stylus was invented.
Rang'd early aro