on the
outside of the hall gate.

These solemn pageantries were not played off so often as to spoil
the general mirth of the community. We had plenty of exercise and
recreation _after_ school hours; and, for myself, I must confess,
that I was never happier, than _in_ them. The Upper and the Lower
Grammar Schools were held in the same room; and an imaginary line only
divided their bounds. Their character was as different as that of the
inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyrennees. The Rev. James Boyer
was the Upper Master; but the Rev. Matthew Field presided over that
portion of the apartment, of which I had the good fortune to be a
member. We lived a life as careless as birds. We talked and did just
what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried an accidence, or
a grammar, for form; but, for any trouble it gave us, we might take
two years in getting through the verbs deponent, and another two in
forgetting all that we had learned about them. There was now and then
the formality of saying a lesson, but if you had not learned it, a
brush across the shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was the sole
remonstrance. Field never used the rod; and in truth he wielded the
cane with no great good will--holding it "like a dancer." It looked
in his hands rather like an emblem than an instrument of authority;
and an emblem, too, he was ashamed of. He was a good easy man, that
did not care to ruffle his own peace, nor perhaps set any great
consideration upon the value of juvenile time. He came among us, now
and then, but often staid away whole days from us; and when he came,
it made no difference to us--he had his private room to retire to, the
short time he staid, to be out of the sound of our noise. Our mirth
and uproar went on. We had classics of our own, without being beholden
to "insolent Greece or haughty Rome," that passed current among
us--Peter Wilkins--the Adventures of the Hon. Capt. Robert Boyle--the
Fortunate Blue Coat Boy--and the like. Or we cultivated a turn for
mechanic or scientific operations; making little sun-dials of paper;
or weaving those ingenious parentheses, called _cat-cradles_; or
making dry peas to dance upon the end of a tin pipe; or studying the
art military over that laudable game "French and English," and a
hundred other such devices to pass away the time--mixing the useful
with the agreeable--as would have made the souls of Rousseau and John
Locke chuckle to have seen us.

Matthew Field