University of Virginia Library

School Revisited.

The old school is there still,—with the high cupola
upon it, and the long galleries, with the sleeping

rooms opening out on either side, and the corner one,
where I slept. But the boys are not there, nor the
old teachers. They have ploughed up the play-ground
to plant corn, and the apple tree with the low limb,
that made our gymnasium, is cut down.

I was there only a little time ago. It was on a
Sunday. One of the old houses of the village had
been fashioned into a tavern, and it was there I
stopped. But I strolled by the old one, and looked
into the bar-room, where I used to gaze with wonder
upon the enormous pictures of wild animals, which
heralded some coming menagerie. There was just
such a picture hanging still, and two or three advertisements
of sheriffs, and a little bill of a `horse stolen,'
and—as I thought—the same brown pitcher on the
edge of the bar. I was sure it was the same great
wood box that stood by the fire place, and the same
whip, and great coat hung in the corner.

I was not in so gay costume, as I once thought I
would be wearing, when a man; I had nothing better
than a rusty shooting jacket; but even with this, I
was determined to have a look about the church, and
see if I could trace any of the faces of the old times.
They had sadly altered the building; they had
cut out its long galleries, and its old fashioned square
pews, and filled it with narrow boxes, as they do in
the city. The pulpit was not so high, or grand; and

it was covered over with the work of the cabinetmakers.

I missed too the old preacher, whom we all feared
so much; and in place of him, was a jaunty looking
man, whom I thought I would not be at all afraid to
speak to, or if need be, to slap on the shoulder.
And when I did meet him after church, I looked him
in the eye as boldly as a lion—what a change was
that, from the school days!

Here and there, I could detect about the church,
some old farmer, by the stoop in his shoulders, or by
a particular twist in his nose; and one or two young
fellows, who used to storm into the gallery in my
school days, in very gay jackets, dressed off with ribbons,—which
we thought was astonishing heroism, and
admired accordingly,—were now settled away into
fathers of families; and looked as demure, and peaceable,
at the head of their pews, with a white-headed
boy or two between them, and their wives, as if they
had been married all their days.

There was a stout man too, with a slight limp
in his gait, who used to work on harnesses, and strap
our skates, and who I always thought would have
made a capital Vulcan,—he stalked up the aisle past
me, as if I had my skates strapped at his shop, only
yesterday.

The bald-pated shoemaker, who never kept his

word, and who worked in the brick shop, and who
had a son called Theodore,—which we all thought a
very pretty name for a shoemaker's son—I could not
find. I feared he might be dead. I hoped, if he
was, that his broken promises about patching boots,
would not come up against him.

The old factor of tamarinds and sugar crackers,
who used to drive his covered waggon every Saturday
evening into the play-ground, I observed, still holding
his place in the village choir; and singing—though
with a tooth or two gone,—as serenely, and obstreporously
as ever.

I looked around the church, to find the black-eyed
girl who always sat behind the choir,—the one I
loved to look at so much. I knew she must be
grown up; but I could fix upon no face positively;
once, as a stout woman with a pair of boys, and who
wore a big red shawl, turned half around, I thought I
recognized her nose. If it was she, it had grown red
though; and I felt cured of my old fondness. As for
the other, who wore the hat trimmed with fur—she
was nowhere to be seen, among either maids, or matrons;
and when I asked the tavern-keeper, and described
her, and her father, as they were in my
school-days, he told me that she had married too, and
lived some five miles from the village; and said he,—
“I guess she leads her husband a devil of a life!”

I felt cured of her too; but I pitied the husband.

One of my old teachers was in the church; I could
have sworn to his face; he was a precise man; and
now I thought he looked rather roughly at my old
shooting jacket. But I let him look, and scowled at
him a little; for I remembered that he had feruled
me once. I thought it was not probable that he
would ever do it again.

There was a bustling little lawyer in the village,
who lived in a large house, and who was the great
man of that town and country,—he had scarce
changed at all; and he stepped into the church as
briskly, and promptly, as he did ten years ago. But
what struck me most, was the change in a couple of
pretty, little, white-haired girls, that at the time I
left, were of that uncertain age, when the mother
lifts them on a Sunday, and pounces them down one
after the other upon the seat of the pew;—these were
now grown into blooming young ladies. And they
swept by me in the vestibule of the church, with a
flutter of robes, and a grace of motion, that fairly
made my heart twitter in my bosom. I know nothing
that brings home upon a man so quick, the consciousness
of increasing years, as to find the little prattling
girls, that were almost babies in his boyhood—become
dashing ladies;—and to find those whom he used to
look on patronizingly, and compassionately—thinking

they were pretty little girls—grown to such maturity,
that the mere rustle of their silk dress will give him
a twinge; and their eyes, if he looks at them—make
him unaccountably shy.

After service I strolled up by the school buildings;
I traced the names that we had cut upon
the fence; but the fence had grown brown with
age, and was nearly rotted away. Upon the beech
tree in the hollow behind the school, the carvings
were all overgrown. It must have been vacation,
if indeed there was any school at all; for I
could see only one old woman about the premises,
and she was hanging out a dishcloth, to dry in the
sun. I passed on up the hill, beyond the buildings,
where in the boy-days, we built stone forts with
bastions and turrets; but the farmers had put
bastions, and turrets, into their cobble-stone walls.
At the orchard fence, I stopped, and looked—from
force, I believe, of old habit,—to see if any one were
watching;—and then leaped over, and found my way
to the early apple tree; but the fruit had gone by.
It seemed very daring in me, even then, to walk so
boldly in the forbidden ground.

But the old head-master who forbade it, was dead;
and Russel and Burgess, and I know not how many
others, who in other times, were culprits with me,
were dead too. When I passed back by the school,

I lingered to look up at the windows of that corner
room, where I had slept the sound, healthful sleep of
boyhood,—and where too I had passed many—many
wakeful hours, thinking of the absent Bella, and of
my home.

—How small, seem now, the great griefs of
boyhood! Light floating clouds will obscure the sun
that is but half risen; but let him be up—mid
heaven, and the cloud that then darkens the land,
must be thick, and heavy indeed.

—The tears started from my eyes:—was not
such a cloud over me now?