第8章 SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE(1)

THERE were only two or three houses between ours and the main street,and then our lane came out directly opposite the finest house in town,a three-story edifice of brick,painted white,the "Colonel's"residence.There was a spacious garden behind it,from which we caught glimpses and perfumes of unknown flowers.

Over its high walls hung boughs of splendid great yellow sweet apples,which,when they fell on the outside,we children considered as our perquisites.When I first read about the apples of the Hesperides,my idea of them was that they were like the Colonel's "pumpkin-sweetings."Beyond the garden were wide green fields which reached eastward down to the beach.It was one of those large old estates which used to give to the very heart of our New England coast towns a delightful breeziness and roominess.

A coach-and-pair was one of the appurtenances of this estate,with a coachman on the box;and when he took the family out for an airing we small children thought it was a sort of Cinderella spectacle,prepared expressly for us.

It was not,however,quite so interesting as the Boston stage -coach,that rolled regularly every day past the head of our lane into and out of its headquarters,a big,unpainted stable close at hand.This stage-coach,in our minds,meant the city,--twenty miles off;an immeasurable distance to us then.Even our elders did not go there very often.

In those early days,towns used to give each other nicknames,like schoolboys.Ours was called "Bean-town"not because it was especially devoted to the cultivation of this leguminous edible,but probably because it adhered a long time to the Puritanic custom of saving Sunday-work by baking beans on Saturday evening,leaving them in the oven over night.After a while,as families left off heating their ovens,the bean-pots were taken by the village baker on Saturday afternoon,who returned them to each house early on Sunday morning with the pan of brown bread that went with them.The jingling of the baker's bells made the matter a public one.

The towns through which our stage-coach passed sometimes called it the "bean-pot."The Jehn who drove it was something of a wag.

Once,coming through Charlestown,while waiting in the street for a resident passenger,he was hailed by another resident who thought him obstructing the passage,with the shout,--"Halloo there!Get your old bean-pot out of the way!""I will,when I have got my pork in,"was the ready reply.What the sobriquet of Charlestown was,need not be explained.

We had a good opportunity to watch both coaches,as my father's shop was just at the head of the lane,and we went to school up-stairs in the same building.After he left off going to sea,--before my birth,--my father took a store for the sale of what used to be called "West India goods,"and various other domestic commodities.

The school was kept by a neighbor whom everybody called "Aunt Hannah."It took in all the little ones about us,no matter how young they were,provided they could walk and talk,and were considered capable of learning their letters.

A ladder-like flight of stairs on the outside of the house led up to the schoolroom,and another flight,also outside,took us down into a bit of a garden,where grew tansy and spearmint and southernwood and wormwood,and,among other old-fashioned flowers,an abundance of many-tinted four o'clocks,whose regular afternoon-opening just at the close of school,was a daily wonder to us babies.From the schoolroom window we could watch the slow hands of the town clock and get a peep at what was going on in the street,although there was seldom anybody in sight except the Colonel's gardener or coachman,going into or out of the driveway directly opposite.It was a very still street;the front windows of the houses were generally closed,and a few military-looking Lombardy poplars stood like sentinels on guard before them.

Another shop--a very small one--joined my father's,where three shoemakers,all of the same name--the name our lane went by--sat at their benches and plied their "waxed ends."One of them,an elderly man,tall and erect,used to come out regularly every day,and stand for a long time at the corner,motionless as a post,with his nose and chin pointing skyward,usually to the northeast.I watched his face with wonder,for it was said that "Uncle John"was "weatherwise,"and knew all the secrets of the heavens.

Aunt Hannah's schoolroom and "our shop"are a blended memory to me.As I was only a baby when I began to go to school,I was often sent down-stairs for a half hour's recreation not permitted to the older ones.I think I looked upon both school and shop entirely as places of entertainment for little children.