BY FRANK H. TAYLOR.
Every country boy in New England knows that the village school-house is generally located upon the top of the bleakest hill in the neighborhood, and is the sport of every eddying gust of wind that drives down from the great pine wilderness of Maine, heaping the great drifts across the road and about the door for the children to break through, and then shake themselves free of the clinging snow like so many young Newfoundlands.
And where, by any chance, was there ever a school-house containing a stove that didn't roast the scholars seated near it, and leave the others to freeze?
All wide-awake boys who know the pleasures of skating will agree with me that however cold and stormy it is upon the hill-tops, the mill-pond (and what does a village amount to without a mill-pond, indeed?) is always down in the coziest nook between the hills, where the winds can't come with more force than is needed to blow the falling flakes across its smooth surface, piling them in great heaps among the bordering willows, and leaving the ice in tempting order for "shinny."
In fact, upon this the coldest morning of the winter, the school-house on the hill-top is not to be mentioned or thought of in comparison with mill-ponds for comfort or attractiveness, and it is hardly surprising that Mr. Chalker, the school-master, walked to and fro in solitary state, surveying with vexed air an array of vacant desks.
He was not altogether alone, however, for three boys had fought bravely through the drifts, and now sat huddled by the red-hot stove, trying hard to look as though they, at least, didn't think the weather a good excuse for staying at home to hunt hens' nests in the depths of the haymow.
Now School-master Chalker was a shrewd observer, and loved a good joke as well as any one. He had adopted many original plans of instruction. He could see one end of the mill-pond, half a mile away from his window, and as he gazed out upon the bleak waste of snow-clad fields he saw a couple of small black figures gliding over its surface, and a trace of a smile shone among his wrinkles as an idea seemed to strike him.
Perhaps he had recalled the time, ever so many years ago, when he too was a lad and the "wildest cub in the town," as his father often declared. Turning to one of the boys, he said, "Ben, it seems to me that the pond's a much nicer place for us than the school-house to-day. Let's go fishing. I can't skate, but perhaps I can show you how we used to catch pickerel down there fifty years ago."
Ben and his two companions looked at Mr. Chalker with eyes widely opened, but they soon found that he was in earnest, and they agreed to the proposition joyfully.