8 ENVIRONMENT AND EDUCATION-I 



even if there were one at that time, which I doubt As 

 to physical recreation, there was plenty during the sum 

 mer in the fields and woods, and during the winter in 

 coasting, building huts in the deep snow, and in storm 

 ing or defending the snow forts on the village green. One 

 of these childish sports had a historical connection with 

 a period which now seems very far away. If any old 

 settler happened to pass during our snow-balling or 

 our shooting with bows and arrows, he was sure to look 

 on with interest, and, at some good shot, to cry out, 

 &quot;Shoot Burgoyne!&quot; thus recalling his remembrances 

 of the sharpshooters who brought about the great sur 

 render at Saratoga. 



In my seventh year my father was called to take charge 

 of the new bank established at Syracuse, thirty miles dis 

 tant, and there the family soon joined him. I remember 

 that coming through the Indian Reservation, on the road 

 between the two villages, I was greatly impressed by the 

 bowers and other decorations which had been used 

 shortly before at the installation of a new Indian chief. 

 It was the headquarters of the Onondagas, formerly the 

 great central tribe of the Iroquois, the warlike confed 

 eracy of the Six Nations; and as, in a general way, the 

 story was told me on that beautiful day in September a 

 new world of romance was opened to me, so that Indian 

 stories, and especially Cooper s novels, when I was al 

 lowed to read them, took on a new reality. 



Syracuse, which is now a city of one hundred and 

 twenty thousand inhabitants, was then a straggling vil 

 lage of about five thousand. After much time lost in 

 sundry poor &quot;select schools&quot; I was sent to one of the 

 public schools which was very good, and thence, when 

 about twelve years old, to the preparatory department 

 of the Syracuse Academy. 



There, by good luck, was Joseph A. Allen, the best 

 teacher of English branches I have ever known. He had 

 no rules and no system; or, rather, his rule was to have 

 no rules, and his system was to have no system. To 

 most teachers this would have been fatal; but he had 



