SCHOOL REVISITED
The old school was 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 plowed 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 fireplace, and the same whip and greatcoat 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 cabinet-makers.
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.