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.
The bald-pated shoemaker, who never kept his word, and who worked in the
brick shop, and who had a son called Theodore—which we all thought a
very pretty name for a shoemaker’s son—I could not find. I feared he
might be dead. I hoped, if he was, that his broken promises about
patching boots would not come up against him.
The old factor of tamarinds and sugar crackers who used to drive his
covered wagon every Saturday evening into the play-ground, I observed,
still holding his place in the village choir, and singing—though with a
tooth or two gone—as serenely and obstreperously as ever.
I looked around the church to find the black-eyed girl who always sat
behind the choir—the one I loved to look at so much. I knew she must be
grown up; but I could fix upon no face positively; once, as a stout
woman with a pair of boys, and who wore a big red shawl, turned half
around, I thought I recognized her nose. If it was she, it had grown red
though, and I felt cured of my old fondness. As for the other, who wore
the hat trimmed with fur—she was nowhere to be seen, among either maids
or matrons; and when I asked the tavern-keeper, and described her, and
her father, as they were in my school days, he told me that she had
married, too, and lived some five miles from the village; and, said
he—“I guess she leads her husband a devil of a life!”