AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
277 
shake and shiver at the beginning of the school 
for very cold; and to sweat and stew for the 
rest of the time, before the fervid glances of 
great box iron stove, red-hot. There was one 
great event of horror and two of pleasure ; the 
first was the act of going to school , comprehend 
ing the leaving off play, the face-washing- and 
clothes-inspecting, the temporary play-spell be 
fore the master came, the out-cry “ there he is 
the master is coming,” the hurly-burly rush 
and the noisy clattering to our seats. The other 
two events of pleasure, were the play-spell and 
the dismission. Oh dear, can there be any thing 
worse for a lively, muscular, mirthful, active 
little boy, than going to a winter district school ? 
Yes. Going to a summer district school! There 
is no comparison. The one is the Miltonic depth, 
below the deepest depth. 
A woman kept the school, sharp, precise, 
unsympathetic, keen and untiring. Of all in¬ 
genious ways of fretting little boys, doubtless, 
her ways were the most expert. Not a tree to 
shelter the house, the sun beat down on the 
shingles and the clapboards till the pine knots 
shed pitchy tears; and the air was redolent of 
hot pine wood smell. The benches were slabs 
with legs in them. The desks were slabs at an 
angle, cut, hacked, scrached; each year’s addi¬ 
tion of jack-knife literature overlaying its pre¬ 
decessor, until in it there were cuttings and carv¬ 
ings two or three inches deep. But if we cut a 
morsel, or stuck in pins or pinched off splinters, 
the little sharp-eyed mistress was on hand, and 
one look of her eye was worse than a sliver in 
our foot, and one nip of her fingers was equal 
to a jab of a pin; for we had tried both. 
We envied the flies—merry fellows; bouncing 
about, tasting that apple skin, patting away at 
that crumb of bread ; now out the window, then 
in again; on your nose, on neighbor’s cheek, off 
to the very school-ma’am’s lips; dodging her 
slap, and then letting off a real round and round 
buz, up, down, this way, that way, and evory 
way. Oh, we envied the flies more than any 
thing except the birds. The windows were so 
high that we could not see the grassy mead¬ 
ows; but we could see the tops of distant 
trees, and the far, deep, boundless blue sky. 
There flew the robins; there went the blue¬ 
birds; and there went we. We followed that 
old Polyglott, and skunk-blackbird, and heard 
him describe the way they talked at the wind¬ 
ing up of the Tower of Babel. We thanked 
every meadow-lark that sung on, rejoicing as it 
flew. Now and then a chipping-bird would flut¬ 
ter on the very window-sill, turn its little head 
side-wise and peer in on the medley of boys and 
girls. Long before we knew it was in Scripture, 
we sighed: “ Oh that we had the wings of a 
bird”—we would fly away, and be out of this 
hateful school. As for learning, the sum of all 
that we ever got at a district school, would not 
cover the first ten letters of the alphabet. One 
good, kind, story-telling, Bible-rehearsing aunt 
at home, with apples and ginger-bread premi¬ 
ums, is worth all the school-ma’ams that ever 
stood by to see poor little fellows roast in those 
boy-traps called district schools. 
But this was thirty-five years ago. Doubt¬ 
less it is all changed long since then. We mean 
inside; for certainly there are but few school 
houses that we have seen in New-England, 
whose outside was much changed. There is a 
beautiful house in Salisbury, Conn., just on the 
edge of the woods. It is worih going miles to 
see how a school-house ought to look. But gen¬ 
erally the barrenest spot is chosen, the most 
utterly homely building is erected, without a 
tree or shrub; and then those that can’t do 
better, pass their pilgrimage of childhood educa¬ 
tion there. 
We are prejudiced of course. Our views and 
feelings are not to be trusted. They are good 
for nothing except to show what an effect our 
school-days left upon us. We abhor the thought 
of a school. We do not go into them if we can 
avoid it. Our boyhood experience has pervaded 
our memory with such images, as breed a re¬ 
pugnance to district schools, which we fear we 
shall not lay aside, until we lay aside every thing 
in the grave. We are sincerely glad that it is 
not so with every body. There are thousands 
who revert with pleasure to those days. We 
are glad of it. But we look on such with aston¬ 
ishment. 
OUT-DOORS AT IDLEWHD; 
OR, COUNTRY-LIFE WITHIN CITY REACH. 
Tns Home Journal, published in this city, by 
Messrs. Morris & Willis, is one of the most 
agreeable and best conducted weekly papers 
which our country affords. Under the head of 
Out-Doors at Idleicild, Mr. Willis has been 
giving, the past year, and still continues, a series 
of rural sketches, gossiping and descriptive, 
which we have weekly glanced over with no little 
pleasure. 
The following is an extract from his descrip¬ 
tion of a winter day’s ride among the Hudson 
River Highlands, between Newburg and West 
Point, in company with the village blacksmith 
of Idlewild—or rather the town of Caldwell, just 
below Newburg—the said blacksmith being, like 
many a hard worker in iron, a shrewd, sensible, 
and instructive companion. 
The inhabitants of these Many-Lake Alps are 
principally woodsmen. They farm but little, 
even where they have strips of meadow on the 
water-courses which traverse their land. With 
the state of their mountain roads, they prefer 
crops to which customers help themselves, or 
which can both grow and find legs to walk to 
market—cattle to graze, sheep to browse, and 
colts to board (at pasture) for a dollar a month. 
It is not uncommon to let horses run wild 
through the winter, and they thrive very well 
upon the mosses of the rocks and the bark of 
the sapling elms. The sapling hickories, from 
being so saleable as hoop-poles, are jocularly 
called “ the mountain-wheat.” Perhaps the 
stranger is most astonished at the tracks over 
which these people drive their teams, with 
cord of wood at a load. A rock of the size of 
a nail-keg or flour barrel is no obstruction to a 
wheel. The wagons are so put together as to 
work pliably like timber baskets—though, how 
their horses’ legs and shoulders stand the jerk¬ 
ing and the violent and perpetual twisting, I 
could less easily understand. At five dollars 
an acre, the average freehold price of the land 
in this region, and, with the four dollars which 
they promptly get for the cord of wood which 
it is an easy day’s work to draw to West Point 
or Fort Montgomery, (their two nearest villages,) 
a mountain farm is soon paid for, even without 
stock-grazing. The larger wood renews itself 
every twenty years, and it is very much bet¬ 
tered, meantime, by the constant thinnings of 
the prolific and profitable hoop-saplings. There 
are various incidentals by which the children 
can turn a penny; such as cranberries, hickory- 
nuts, chesnuts, black-walnuts,and wild-cherries; 
and, as we seemed to start up partridges every 
where in riding along, and wild rabbits are “ as 
plenty as blackberries,” there can be no lack of 
good feeding hereabouts—to say nothing of the 
lakes full of perch and pickerel within sound of 
every man's dinner-horn. 
And now, (to digress a moment,) will the 
reader please take the above statistically true 
picture of a land of easy livelihood and romantic 
beauty, and place it alongside of the harrowing- 
descriptions of hunger and lack of employment 
among the emigrants and laborers, given us daily 
by the newspapers of a city distant but three 
hours by steamboat or railroad ? The difficulty 
is not in an impassable gulf of “no money to 
make a beginning.” All through this region, 
throughout the year, it is next to impossible to 
get “ hands” enough, (for the iron mines, clear¬ 
ing, and other labors,) at a dollar a day—an easy 
opening for an industrious man to lay up money; 
while, once known enough to be trusted, he 
could readily get credit for the necessary land 
and implements to make a beginning. But no— 
there are two other difficulties. It is too lonely 
for the Irishman. And neither the Irishman 
nor the German can be his own wheelwright, 
carpenter, blacksmith, doctor, cobbler, tailor and 
schoolmaster—as the Yankee can, and is. The 
Inch of society in the mountains, and the lack 
of American omni- cute-ness in the settler, are 
the two difficulties. With the welcome given 
to my companion, (at whose forge, of course, 
every man for twenty miles around had looked 
in,) I saw something of the home of one of the 
Yankee mountain farmers, on our route. Just 
inside the barn-yard through which tc entered, 
stood the ox-frame where he shoes his own oxen. 
A new wood-wagon stood near by, just finished 
by his boys—one specimen of the many kinds 
of “jobs” that they can do. The entry was or¬ 
namented with a set of narrow shelves, upon 
which were arranged specimens of all the min¬ 
erals of the mountains round about. A most 
plentiful dinner, to which we were cordially in¬ 
vited, smoked on the table. In conversation, 
dress, kind and intelligent politeness, and per¬ 
sonal dress and bearing, this farmer’s grown-up 
family—products of this spot of his own earn¬ 
ing—were fine specimens of the human race. I 
asked the hale and vigorous father whether he 
ever found it lonely. “ Oh,” he said, “ we don’t 
care to be any more crowded with neighbors.” 
Apples in Western New-York. —The Orle¬ 
ans American states that the firm of Howard 
& Thurston of that county have shipped this 
season over 4000 bbls. of apples, and about 2000 
bushels of dried fruit. About 8000 bbls. of ap¬ 
ples have been shipped from that village this 
season, and about 4000 bushels dried fruit. 
Not far from 25,000 barrels of apples have been 
shipped from the county, and between 12,000 
and 13,000 bushels of dried fruit. 
Prairie Plow. —Gardner A. Bruce, of Me- 
chanicsburg, 111., has invented an improved 
Prairie Plow, on which he has applied for a pa¬ 
tent. His improvements consist in connecting 
the axles of the wheels upon the beams, loosely 
with it and the adjusting lever, by means of a 
jointed revolving rod, over which the beam can 
be adjusted freely, and upon which the adjust¬ 
ing lever is sustained. This rod passes loosely 
up through the beam, being connected to the 
adjusting lever by a loose joint, which allows 
the axle to have the necessary movements in 
the path of a horizontal circle, independent of 
the beam and lever, while changing the line of 
draught or turning curves.— Scientific Ameri¬ 
can. 
-- 
Bee Hive.— Dewalt Fouse, of Williamsburg, 
Penn., has invented an improvement in Bee 
Hives, consisting in placing three sections on 
top of each other and holding them together by 
ledges serving to render the joints between them 
water-tight. The bottom boards of the lower 
section are inclined so as to allow the dirt and 
refuse of the hive to be more readily discharged. 
The sections are separated by slats from each 
other, the top section consisting of four small 
boxes having no bottoms. Either section can 
thus be removed independently of the other. 
The inventor has taken steps to obtain a pa¬ 
tent.— Ibid. 
A Relic of a Past Age.— There is now re¬ 
siding on the place of J. Dudley Davis, Esq., 
in Scott county, Ky., a free woman of color, 
whose age, from reliable sources, is 120 years. 
She was grown at the time of Braddock’s defeat, 
in 1755, which she well remembers. She fre¬ 
quently washed the clothes of the “ Father of 
his country” prior to her emigrating from the 
“ Old Dominion” to this State. 
It may gratify the curiosity of the curious to 
see this relic of the 18th century, and one whose 
age equals that of the great law-giver of Israel, 
though unlike him, her eyesight is dim, and hei 
natural force abated . — Frankfort Common¬ 
wealth. 
