Of the succeeding years, six, seven and eight, I recall little of note beyond my studies, excepting a propensity I indulged for writing verses, many of which were preserved to amuse, others to tease me for many years. Colonel Stone had closed his series of common schools, and opened a special institution on “Oxford Plain,” known as the “Oxford High School.” Its fame had spread for miles around, and it was regarded as the Ultima Thule for teachers, and in a manner a stepping stone or opening door to Harvard and Yale.
My brother Stephen had succeeded Col. Stone in the winter terms of the home school, and my sisters mainly had charge of them in summer. Thus six months of each year offered little change, the others were long vacations in which the out-of-doors played by far the most prominent part. There were garden and flower beds to be made, choice pet animals to look after, a few needy families with little children to be thought of, and some sewing to be attempted. These latter were in accordance with my mother’s recommendations. I recall no season of dolls, and believe they were never included in my curriculum.
Meantime, I fell heir to my mother’s side saddle, a beautiful piece of workmanship, and with some difficulty learned to adjust myself to it, a rather useless adjustment it seemed to me at the time, which opinion I still entertain.
These were years of change in the family. My brothers had become of age and were young men of strength, character and enterprise. They had “bought out” as the term went, the two large farms of my father, and commenced business in earnest for themselves. My father had purchased another farm of some three hundred acres, a few miles nearer the center of the town.
This was a place of note, having been one of the points used for security against the Indians by the old Huguenot Settlers of Oxford, and which has made the town historic. Their main defense was on “Fort Hill,” several miles to the east. I was naturally greatly interested in the changes, and doubtless gave them all the time I could spare from my increasing studies. I can recollect even now that my life seemed very full for a little girl of eight years.
During the preceding winter I began to hear talk of my going away to school, and it was decided that I be sent to Col. Stone’s High school, to board in his family and go home occasionally. This arrangement, I learned in later years, had a double object. I was what is known as a bashful child, timid in the presence of other persons, a condition of things found impossible to correct at home. In the hope of overcoming this undesirable mauvais honte, it was decided to throw me among strangers.
How well I remember my advent. My father took me in his carriage with a little dressing case which I dignified with the appellation of “trunk”—something I had never owned. It was April—cold and bare. The house and school rooms adjoined, and seemed enormously large. The household was also large. The long family table with the dignified preceptor, my loved and feared teacher at three years, at its head, seemed to me something formidable. There were probably one hundred and fifty pupils daily in the ample school rooms, of which I was perhaps the youngest, except the colonel’s own children.
My studies were chosen with great care. I remember among them, ancient history with charts. The lessons were learned to repeat by rote. I found difficulty both in learning the proper names and in pronouncing them, as I had not quite outgrown my lisp. One day I had studied very hard on the Ancient Kings of Egypt, and thought I had everything perfect, and when the pupil above me failed to give the name of a reigning king, I answered very promptly that it was “Potlomy.” The colonel checked with a glance the rising laugh of the older members of the class, and told me, very gently, that the P was silent in that word. I had, however, seen it all, and was so overcome by mortification for my mistake, and gratitude for the kindness of my teacher, that I burst into tears and was permitted to leave the room.
COLONEL RICHARD C. STONE, MY TEACHER AT THREE YEARS OF AGE.