A Busy Year at the Old Squires

A Busy Year at the Old Squire's, by Charles

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Title: A Busy Year at the Old Squire's
Author: Charles Asbury Stephens

Release Date: November 29, 2006 [eBook #19968]
Language: English
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A BUSY YEAR AT THE OLD SQUIRE'S
by
C. A. STEPHENS

Published by The Old Squire's Bookstore Norway, Maine Copyright, 1922 By C. A. Stephens All rights reserved
Electrotyped and Printed by The Colonial Press Clinton, Mass., U. S. A.

DEDICATED WITH CORDIAL BEST WISHES TO THE THOUSANDS OF READERS WHO HAVE REQUESTED THIS Memorial Edition OF THE C. A. STEPHENS BOOKS

Contents
CHAPTER
I.
Master Pierson Comes Back
II. Cutting Ice at 14�� Below Zero
III. A Bear's "Pipe" in Winter
IV. White Monkey Week
V. When Old Zack Went to School
VI. The Sad Abuse of Old Mehitable
VII. Bear-Tone
VIII. When We Hunted the Striped Catamount
IX. The Lost Oxen
X. Bethesda
XI. When We Walked the Town Lines
XII. The Rose-Quartz Spring
XIII. Fox Pills
XIV. The Unpardonable Sin
XV. The Cantaloupe Coaxer
XVI. The Strange Disappearance of Grandpa Edwards
XVII. Our Fourth of July at the Den
XVIII. Jim Doane's Bank Book
XIX. Grandmother Ruth's Last Load of Hay
XX. When Uncle Hannibal Spoke at the Chapel
XXI. That Mysterious Daguerreotype Saloon
XXII. "Rainbow in the Morning"
XIII. When I Went After the Eyestone
XXIV. Borrowed for a Bee Hunt
XXV. When the Lion Roared
XXVI. Uncle Solon Chase Comes Along
XVII. On the Dark of the Moon
XXVIII. Halstead's Gobbler
XXIX. Mitchella Jars
XXX. When Bears Were Denning Up
XXXI. Czar Brench
XXII. When Old Peg Led the Flock
XXXIII. Witches' Brooms
XXXIV. The Little Image Peddlers
XXXV. A January Thaw
XXXVI. Uncle Billy Murch's Hair-Raiser
XXXVII. Addison's Pocketful of Auger Chips

A Busy Year at the Old Squire's
CHAPTER I
MASTER PIERSON COMES BACK
Master Joel Pierson arrived the following Sunday afternoon, as he had promised in his letter of Thanksgiving Day eve, and took up his abode with us at the old Squire's for the winter term of school.
Cousin Addison drove to the village with horse and pung to fetch him; and the pung, I remember, was filled with the master's belongings, including his school melodeon, books and seven large wall maps for teaching geography. For Master Pierson brought a complete outfit, even to the stack of school song-books which later were piled on the top of the melodeon that stood in front of the teacher's desk at the schoolhouse. Every space between the windows was covered by those wall maps. No other teacher had ever made the old schoolhouse so attractive. No other teacher had ever entered on the task of giving us instruction with such zeal and such enthusiasm. It was a zeal, too, and an enthusiasm which embraced every pupil in the room and stopped at nothing short of enlisting that pupil's best efforts to learn.
Master Pierson put life and hard work into everything that went on at school--even into the old schoolhouse itself. Every morning he would be off from the old Squire's at eight o'clock, to see that the schoolhouse was well warmed and ready to begin lessons at nine; and if there had been any neglect in sweeping or dusting, he would do it himself, and have every desk and bench clean and tidy before school time.
What was more, Master Pierson possessed the rare faculty of communicating his own zeal for learning to his pupils. We became so interested, as weeks passed, that of our own accord we brought our school books home with us at night, in order to study evenings; and we asked for longer lessons that we might progress faster.
My cousin Halstead was one of those boys (and their name is Legion) who dislike study and complain of their lessons that they are too long and too hard. But strange to say, Master Joel Pierson somehow led Halse to really like geography that winter. Those large wall maps in color were of great assistance to us all. In class we took turns going to them with a long pointer, to recite the lesson of the day. I remember just how the different countries looked and how they were bounded--though many of these boundaries are now, of course, considerably changed.
When lessons dragged and dullness settled on the room, Master Joel was wont to cry, "Halt!" then sit down at the melodeon and play some school song as lively as the instrument admitted of, and set us all singing for five or ten minutes, chanting