A VISION OF THE OLD FIELD SCHOOL.

Did you never hear a fiddler fiddle? I have. I heard a fiddler fiddle,
and the hey-dey-diddle of his frolicking fiddle called back the happy
days of my boyhood. The old field schoolhouse with its batten doors
creaking on wooden hinges, its windows innocent of glass, and its great,
yawning fireplace, cracking and roaring and flaming like the infernal
regions, rose from the dust of memory and stood once more among the
trees. The limpid spring bubbled and laughed at the foot of the hill.
Flocks of nimble, noisy boys turned somersaults and skinned the cat and
ran and jumped half hammon on the old play ground. The grim old teacher
stood in the door; he had no brazen-mouthed bell to ring then as we have
now, but he shouted at the top of his voice: "Come to books!!!" And they
came. Not to come meant "war and rumors of war." The backless benches,
high above the floor, groaned under the weight of irrepressible young
America; the multitude of mischievous, shining faces, the bare legs and
feet, swinging to and fro, and the mingled hum of happy voices, spelling
aloud life's first lessons, prophesied the future glory of the State.
The curriculum of the old field school was the same everywhere--one
Webster's blue backed, elementary spelling book, one thumb-paper, one
stone-bruise, one sore toe, and Peter Parley's Travels.

The grim old teacher, enthroned on his split bottomed chair, looked
terrible as an army with banners; and he presided with a dignity and
solemnity which would have excited the envy of the United States Supreme
Court: I saw the school commissioners visit him, and heard them question
him as to his system of teaching. They asked him whether, in geography,
he taught that the world was round, or that the world was flat. With
great dignity he replied: "That depends upon whar I'm teachin'. If my
patrons desire me to teach the round system, I teach it; if they desire
me to teach the flat system, I teach that."

At the old field school I saw the freshman class, barefooted and with
pantaloons rolled up to the knees, stand in line under the ever uplifted
rod, and I heard them sing the never-to-be-forgotten b-a ba's. They sang
them in the _olden_ times, and this is the way they sang: "b-a ba, b-e
be, b-i bi-ba be bi, b-o bo, b-u bu-ba be bi bo bu."

I saw a sophomore dance a jig to the music of a dogwood sprout for
throwing paper wads. I saw a junior compelled to stand on the du