Every one has happy memories of childhood. He loves to conjure up the old familiar scenes, the kindly people, and the days that were days of wonder.
The two sketches by Mr. Shelton are extracts from a long essay called Our Village, in which he recalls delightfully all his early surroundings and all his old companionships.
In these extracts, as in the entire essay, Mr. Shelton avoids formal autobiography. He merely recalls the things that impressed him most. As far as possible he lifts himself back into the spirit of the past, and sees once again, but with added love, the things that have gone forever.
My First School
One day in the summer when I was four years old I was taken to the village school at the foot of the hill below the tavern. I have no recollection of how I got there, but my return to my grandmother's was so dramatic that it has impressed itself indelibly on my memory. Perhaps I was taken to school by the sentimental schoolmistress herself, who was a girl of sixteen and an intimate friend of my aunt, to whom, in after years, when she became a famous novelist, she used to send her books. Her maiden name was Mary Jane Hawes, but there was a red-haired, freckle-faced boy in one of the pretty houses facing the side of the church, who went to Yale College and gave her another name.
The school-house consisted of one room, with an entry without any floor where the wood was cut and stored. The school-room was square, with a box-stove in the center. A form against the wall extended around three sides of the room, affording seats for the larger pupils, and in front of these a row of oak desks for slates and books was fantastically carved by generations of jack-knives, and made against the backs of a second row of desks was a low front form for the A-B-C children. On the fourth side, flanking the door, were a blackboard on one hand and on the other the schoolma'am's desk, usually decorated with a bunch of wild flowers or a red apple, either the gifts of a sincere admirer or the would-be bribe of some trembling delinquent.
On the occasion of my first visit to the school I wore a blue-and-white dress of muslin-de-laine that was afterward made into a cushion for a rocking-chair in my mother's parlor. I was evidently dressed in my very best in honor of the occasion, and all went well until recess came. There was a rumble of thunder, and the sky had been growing dark with portent of storm, and the leaves and dust were flying on the wind when the children were released for play. I wanted to do everything that the other boys did, and so, when they scampered out with a rush, I followed without fear. Just as we came into the open the thunder-storm burst upon us. The wind blew off one boy's hat and whirled it in the direction of the village, and all the other boys joined in the chase. As I started to follow them a gust of wind and rain beat me to the ground, and drenched my dress with mud and water.
I was promptly rescued by the schoolma'am and taken into the entry, where she undressed me on the wood-pile and wrapped me in her own woolen shawl, which was a black-and-red pattern of very large squares. Thus bundled up and rendered quite helpless except as to my lungs, I was laid on the floor near the stove, where I remained for the amusement of the children until the shower was over, when a bushel-basket was sent for to the nearest house, which was the house of shoemaker Talmadge. Into this basket, commonly used for potatoes and corn, I was put, wrapped in the black-and-red shawl and packed around with my soiled clothes, and two of the big boys, John Pierpont and John Talmadge, carried me up the hill and through the village to my grandmother's house.
In the summer following I went to school again, and again to the sentimental schoolma'am, who loved to teach, but abhorred to punish. Her gentle punishments rarely frightened the youngest children.
She would say, “Henry, you have disobeyed me, and I shall have to cut off your ear,” and with these ominous words she would draw the back of her penknife across the threatened ear. I must have been very small, for on one occasion she threatened to shut me up in one of the school desks.