Reminiscent and Personal 25 



from the camps around Boston, or came 

 back, without a throng of boys at its heels. 

 Through the school-house windows we 

 looked off on the tents dotting a hill a 

 mile away, and the call of bugles was heard 

 in the streets. The excitement of recruit- 

 ing and the movement of battalions were 

 incentives to activity, and the habit of walk- 

 ing was confirmed in many of us. Then 

 there were the Wednesday and Saturday 

 afternoons, sacred to theatrical matinees 

 and tramps, for in Eastern Massachusetts 

 the weekly holiday in schools had not been 

 introduced, and uneasy urchins got a doubt- 

 ful equivalent in the two half days named. 

 Those were times of exploration ; of haunt- 

 ing railroad stations to sniff at the smoke 

 of wood-fed locomotives and dream of 

 green places that they ran to ; of playing 

 hide-and-seek among casks and bales and 

 wrathful citizens on the wharves, sometimes 

 scampering up to a ship's round-top to look 

 off at the harbor, with its appeal to imag- 

 ination and adventure ; of playing battle 

 in the Revolutionary rampart overlooking 

 Charles River ; of studying pickled snakes 



