had ever heard of; they expected it, and if they had not, they would not have thought of resisting me.

In that school I never struck another scholar. The larger boys were ready to do anything for me. They found that I wanted to go to Swanton every Saturday and to return on Monday morning. I had intended to skate two miles across the bay and then walk nearly two miles to Swanton. I was to return in the same manner. The boys arranged for one of them to take me home, and another to come for me Monday mornings. Every Monday morning the team was at my uncle's door at daylight, having already been driven five miles from Hog Island.

The reader may think that "boarding round" was a hardship. It was anything but that. The best bed and the best room were for the master. The nice things they used to have cooked for him-the doughnuts, the sausages, the spare ribs roasted, the mince pies! their memory is fragrant. I would rather have them now than a dinner at Delmonico's.

There is one article of the Hog Island menu which I must perpetuate in history. In the months of October and November there is a fish caught off the Island called by the Islanders the white fish or the frost fish. I think it is a land-locked shad with its form and flavor modified by its new conditions. The Islanders select those which are in the best condition, dress and corn them. In the winter they cut a hole through the ice and sink the fish in the pure cold water and leave it there until it is freshened so that only just the suspicion of a saltish flavor remains. Then properly broiled with butter and pepper, it is a breakfast fit for a gentleman or the school-master, and too good for any but very honest men.

There was not another disagreeable incident in the school. I took a personal interest in every scholar, and if they did not learn it was no fault of mine. Every one of them grew up to be my friend. Poor Martin Clark became a sturdy, honest farmer and lost his life in a heroic and partially successful effort to save the lives of a party whose boat had been swamped in a storm. Many years later I met on Broadway a gentleman whose face wore a familiar look. "Come into my store," he said, and took me into a large establishment over which the sign bore his own name. "I know you," he said, "if you do not know me. I was one of your scholars on Hog Island."

I received my thirty-six dollars in new and crisp bank-notes with great satisfaction. It was almost the first money I earned, and I loaned it to my uncle at ten per cent interest. The first money I ever earned was my salary as clerk of a militia company. It was paid in an order on the treasury of the State for five dollars, which I promptly exchanged for Leverett's "Latin Lexicon," which now, after hard usage by two generations, stands upon a shelf in my library. Nor was this all the profit of my Island experience. In the following October the committee of the school district at Swanton Falls, hearing of the satisfaction I had given on the Island, offered me the position of teacher for four months, with board at the hotel and the munificent compensation of fifty dollars per month.

I accepted the offer, and I taught, or tried to teach, the school. At its close, in an exhibition to which the public was admitted, I received a vote of thanks and a beautifully engrossed certificate from the com

mittee attesting my success as a teacher and the satisfaction I had given to the district.

The reader will be able to estimate the measure of my actual success when I inform him or her that the average attendance of scholars was above one hundred and that I was supposed to be the only teacher. I am happy to say that the introduction of graded schools and a better system has since made education more practical. I appointed under me a number of subordinate teachers, who taught themselves by teaching others, and I thus secured enough time to be of some service to the rest of the school.

This winter's experience again was of great service to me, while it had no incidents of so striking a character as that with the ruler on Hog Island. It taught me self-control and economy of time, and it was the source afterward of many pleasant and some very sad thoughts. I heard from time to time of my Swanton scholars. There were two affectionate, excellent little white-headed boys. Their names were Elisha and Valentine Barney. The last time I saw them was when they received their prizes at my hands at the ages of about eight and ten years. When I next heard of them they were officers, bravely fighting for their country. One of them led his regiment of four hundred and forty-one men into the bloody Wilderness in the battle summer of 1864. The regiment never retreated, and when it again advanced one hundred and ninety-six of their number remained dead or wounded on the field. Among those wounded to death was their brave, loyal colonel, my scholar. His brother was another soldier with an excellent record who survived the war. Two ministers, a lawyer, two physicians, and two wholesale

merchants were also in my school. I remember two sons of a Canadian Frenchman, on account of their intelligence. I believe their father bore the noted name of Richelieu. He was very poor, but he must have had a good wife, for the boys were known by their cleanly appearance and courteous manners. Within two years I met the agent in charge of the old and justly celebrated line of steamers on Lake Champlain. I had heard him spoken of by many as a business man of known integrity who had been a popular captain of one of the steamboats he now controlled. "I have long wished to see you," he said. "I was one of your scholars at Swanton Falls. My name is Rushlow." It was my bright little Canadian boy grown to be a business man of great ability and respected by all who knew him. His brother is a successful farmer in the West. Those who think I was not glad to meet the captain, and did not feel. that I had done something toward directing him into the paths of integrity and success, I am sure have never taught a district school. I have, and I am proud of it. I should have been a better man if I had had more experience as a teacher,

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE BOOK CHASE-NON-EXISTENCE OF UNIQUE COPIES A HUNT FOR "SANDERS' INDIAN WARS" AND "THE CONTRAST," THE FIRST AMERICAN PLAY-STOLEN ENGRAVINGS AND DRAWINGS.

THE pleasures of the chase are almost coeval with the sinfulness of man. A great-grandson of Noah enjoyed them, for "he was a mighty hunter before the Lord." They are common to man without "reference to race, color, or previous condition of servitude." They may vary with climate and race, but from Eskimo to Tasmanian all men at some period of their lives are hunters. The game varies with time, place, and opportunity, but all living and some fossil animals of the air, the forest, and the ocean have been objects of the chase. Some men seem to have experienced a keen delight in hunting their own race. In the border to the rare map in the "Novus Orbis" of Grynæus, of 1555, engraved by Holbein, there is a picture of a party of these man-hunters. One leads a horse with two youths, their limbs trussed together, and thrown across the horse's back, in the manner of the Highland gillie with his pony carrying the stags which have fallen before the rifle of the deer-stalker; another is hanging the human limbs which he has carved, upon the projections of his hut. From latest advices something of this kind may be still going on in the heart of the "dark continent."