The Gentleman from Everywhere | Page 8

everything in sight with impunity relying upon
the impregnable defense of their coats-of-mail.
On one of these occasions we were aroused from our Arcadian dream
by a frightful roar, and the destruction of all things seemed at hand. A
young cyclone had struck the fire over which we had cooked our fish,
fanning it into a furious conflagration. We climbed a tall oak, and soon,
as far as the eye could reach, all the hills and woodlands seemed
wrapped in flames. Frantic farmers were seen flagellating the excited
oxen and horses, who, with tails in air, were dragging the ploughs,
making furrows around the houses and barns, which were nearly all
located in pastures rendered dry as tinder by that extraordinary
summer's heat.
The cause of this disturbance was traced to us, and we barely escaped

coats of tar and feathers at the hands of the infuriated neighbors, by the
pleadings of our ever-loving mothers who promised we should go
every day to the academy and sin no more.
We were thoroughly sobered by our dangers, and commenced our
careers at this ancient institution founded by the first
Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts. Here reigned supreme a fiery
autocrat, a fervent admirer of Greek and Latin, a cordial hater of
mathematics--my weakest point--a D.D., LL.D., who was determined
to drive everybody into college. He had heard of my escapades, and
was fully prepared to lay upon my devoted head all the pranks of a
restless fun-loving crowd of students.
On the first day of my initiation, while the professor was invoking the
Divine blessing, the sight of a big dinner pail belonging to the fat boy
in front of me, proved too much of a temptation, and I hurled it down
the aisle, scattering pork, pickles, doughnuts, and so forth in its wake,
and ending with a loud bang against the platform. Of course I was the
suspect, and cutting off prayer abruptly, down he rushed, and banged
my head till I saw more stars than ever shone in heaven.
My academy "_alma mater_" has graduated but few who have--
"Climbed fame's ladder so high From the round at the top they have
stepped to the sky,"
and it is sad to recall that many of the most gifted, acquired in college
secret societies the alcohol habit, and now sleep in drunkards' graves.
Brilliant Charlie, my chum, who mastered languages and sciences as
easy as "rolling off a log." I saw him last summer, a wreck--wine and
bad women did it. The idolized son of pious parents, whose youth was
surrounded at home with the halo of Bible and prayer; but like Esau, he
"sold his birthright for a mess of pottage" and afterwards "found no
space for repentance, though he sought it earnestly and with many
tears."
It seems but yesterday that he and I were enjoying a game of

"pickknife," lacerating the top of a new desk, when in rushed the
"D.D." with his feet encased in the thinnest of slippers and with which
he gave me a kick which broke his toe, then clasping it in his hand,
danced on one leg, whooping unconsciously cuss word ejaculations till
we shrieked with laughter; then he bumped our heads together until my
big brother shook the dominie-pedagogue as a dog would a rat, and
threatened that if he ever struck my head again he would drown him in
the horsepond.
Dear, good brother, he always was, and is now my guardian angel,
although now he comes from heaven to shield me, for I am the last on
earth of my father's family.
Alas, how many of those academy classmates, each of whom was then
the soul of honor and the heart of truth, drowned their intellects in the
flowing bowl. _Eheu, Eheu, fugaces anni labuntur!_ But surely it was
only this morning oh, beautiful, star-eyed Harry, that you and I,
wearied with the frantic vain attempts of the unmathematical professor
to elucidate by appalling triangles and hieroglyphics on the blackboard
the perplexities of cube root, ousted each other from the seat, sprawling
upon the floor, and were chased by the LL.D. out of doors, never to
return until we apologized and promised "to do so no more."
Although I had been as "prone to mischief" as the sparks to fly
upward--ringing the academy bell at midnight by means of a string tied
to the tongue, bringing the professor in his night shirt from his bed to
chase me, covering his chimney with a board till he was well-nigh
suffocated with smoke, hitching his horse to a boat in Mill River,
pillaging his coop and scattering his hens to the four winds of heaven,
crawling under his bed at night and nearly frightening him to death
with unearthly groans, catching him by the legs