leasures and doing all
the miscellaneous jobs of the kind which fall to the lot of a boy brought
up in an agricultural community.

The story of this particular period of his life was given by Warner in a
work which was published about forty years later. It is the volume
entitled "Being a Boy." Nowhere has there been drawn a truer or more
vivid picture of rural New England. Nowhere else can there be found such
a portrayal of the sights and sounds, the pains and pleasures of life on
a farm as seen from the point of view of a boy. Here we have them all
graphically represented: the daily "chores" that must be looked after;
the driving of cows to and from the pasture; the clearing up of fields
where vegetation struggled with difficulty against the prevailing stones;
the climbing of lofty trees and the swaying back and forth in the wind on
their topmost boughs; the hunting of woodchucks; the nutting excursions
of November days, culminating in the glories of Thanksgiving; the romance
of school life, over which vacations, far from being welcomed with
delight, cast a gloom as involving extra work; the cold days of winter
with its deep or drifting snows, the mercury of the thermometer clinging
with fondness to zero, even when the sun was shining brilliantly; the
long chilling nights in which the frost carved fantastic structures on
the window-panes; the eager watching for the time when the sap would
begin to run in the sugar-maples; the evenings given up to reading, with
the inevitable inward discontent at being sent to bed too early; the
longing for the mild days of spring to come, when the heavy cowhide boots
could be discarded, and the boy could rejoice at last in the covering for
his feet which the Lord had provided. These and scores of similar
descriptions fill up the picture of the life furnished here. It was
nature's own school wherein was to be gained the fullest intimacy with
her spirit. While there was much which she could not teach, there was
also much which she alone could teach. From his communion with her the
boy learned lessons which the streets of crowded cities could never have
imparted.

At the age of twelve this portion of his education came to an end. The
family then moved to Cazenovia in Madison county in Central New York,
from which place Warner's mother had come, and where her immediate
relatives then resided. Until he went to college this was his home. There
he attended a preparatory school under the dire