ans from the settlements in
Maine. He was killed there in a fight near the town of York.

He was my grandfather's eldest son, just arrived at manhood. I was a
small boy when grandfather died; but I can remember how he straightened
up, and a fierce fire came in his eyes, when the talk was of Indians. He
was a strict member of the church, and never swore, but on these
occasions he made use of some Old Testament phrases and expressions
which, I thought, answered the purpose very well.

You may pride yourself on your Latin and your Greek. I never got so far
in my schooling. But turn this book upside down and read it. You cannot
and I can.

I might have become quite a scholar, if I had been properly brought up,
for I learned to do this at Millicent Mason's dame's school before I
was six years old.

She sat in a chair and held a book in her lap. We stood in front of her.
She would point out the letters with her knitting-needle and ask, "What
is that letter? And that? And that?" Then she would ask us what the word
was. In this way, we learned our A B C's. Then one-syllable, and
two-syllable words, and finally to read a book held upside down. I can
do it now; and occasionally, if I find a friend reading, I surprise him
by glancing over the top of the page and repeating a few lines of the
text.

As I grew older, I went to the man's school and learned to read in the
ordinary way. It was kept in a little old schoolhouse about twenty feet
square, which stood on a knoll on the common. There was a great
fireplace at one end of it; and the teacher sat in a great chair on a
platform, with a table in front of him. We paid twopence a week for
being taught reading, and threepence a week for "righting and
siphering," as the town clerk entered it on his books.

[Sidenote: LEXINGTON COMMON]

Our teachers were young men just out of college, and the one who would
serve for the smallest pay was the one always chosen. We had a new
teacher every year.

At the lower end of the common was the old ramshackle meeting-house,
facing down the road.

In front of the meeting-house were a couple of horse-blocks, on which
the women dismounted as they rode to meeting on their pillions, behind
their husbands or brothers.

On either side of the door were tacked up notices of vendues, lotteries,
public proclamations, and the appointment of administrators. Between the
school and the meeting-house were two pairs of stocks, in which we
occasionally f