210 
MOOBE’S BUBAL NEW- TOBKEBi AN AGBICULTUBAL AND FAMILY NEWSPAPEB. 
lit 
[ For the Rural New-Yorker,] 
RECOLLECTION 3. 
Wiikn I turn aside from labor 
In a meditative mood, 
Bid dull care, that vexing neighbor, 
Not molest my solitude : 
Memory bringeth forth her treasures 
Culled in days long past and gone, 
When I shared an urchin's pleasures, 
Ere to riper age had grown: 
Of the glassy, sliding places 
On the silent frozen pool, 
And the ruddy, gleeful faces 
I was wont to meet at school. 
Then I think of the old benches 
Made of slabs from oaken log; 
And the boxes, jerks, and wrenches, 
From the master Pedagogue; 
Of the shouts of laughter pealing, 
Driving ball, and hoop, and top ; 
Of the kite so proudly sailing, 
Of our games of skip and hop; 
Of the famous quarter dollar, 
Strung by bit of cotton braid, 
Worn home nightly by that scholar 
Who in spelling was the head. 
’Tis to me sad contemplation 
That those gleeful days have flown, 
And against my inclination 
To maturer years have grown. 
Let them tell of proud ambition, 
Or of youth’s gay flowery path, 
Or of honor’s high position, 
Or the joy which riches hath. 
Give me life when unannoyed 
By the blighting hand of care ; 
Joys are ne’er so unalloyed, 
As in childhood's morning fair. 
WlLMK WATSON. 
DOES SCHOOL-TEACHING SOUR THE TEMPER? 
PREMISES AND CONCLUSIONS, 
When I see parents confide the moral and 
mental training of their children entirely to 
the school-teacher, unobserved, I conclude 
they themselves need guardians, and deserve 
the strait-jacket. 
When I see parents or school-teachers use 
the rod, sharp words, or angry reproof, to re¬ 
claim from error and correct faults, I conclude 
they are deplorably ignorant of mental philos¬ 
ophy, or unable to deduce consequences from 
causes. 
•When I see a person highly entertained with 
folly, mistaken for fun, I conclude the mental 
capacity approaches the lower order of intelli¬ 
gence. 
When I see young people engaged in jejune 
employment, for recreation and amusement, I 
conclude that true principles of instruction 
were contravened in their education, and 
knowledge was taught, instead of wisdom. 
When I see people pretending to respecta¬ 
bility, engaged at cards, and similar games, in 
the back parlor, with the curtains down, who 
hide their hands, and even heads, at every ap¬ 
proaching sound,—“ who know the right, and 
yet the wrong pursue,”—I conclude they are 
morally dishonest enough to desire to play a 
double game of hypocrisy, and lack moral 
courage sufficient to openly pursue a course of 
conscious rectitude. 
When I see a conductor of a railroad train 
more ready with excuses for neglect, than will 
to perform his requisite duty, I conclude he is 
out of his proper sphere of usefulness, and 
would be far better employed as brakeman. 
Experience and Observation. 
Marcellus, June 20, 1S54 
Cfit feainst. 
THE OSTRICH. 
Tire Ostrich is one of the largest, as well as 
one of the most remarkable specimens of or¬ 
nithology. It measures seven or eight feet in 
height, and weighs seventy-five or eighty 
pounds. As might be expected, so ponderous 
a bird is incompetent to fly, but as a compen¬ 
sation for inability of wing, it is endowed with 
the most powerful muscular action of the body 
and legs, enabling it to outstrip in the chase, 
Most people interested in the subject of 
popular education, and most boys—especially 
mischievous ones—cannot fail to have observ¬ 
ed, that the man who has labored long and ar¬ 
duously as a common-school teacher, and the 
woman who has exhaled the dew of her youth 
amid the trying duties of a school-room, are 
quite apt both to have lost much of their 
original placidity of temper, and to have be¬ 
come restless, excitable, easily ruffled, and fret¬ 
ful in disposition. This is not always the case, 
but the tendency seems to be that way; and 
the question naturally suggests itself, whether 
common-school teaching in the abstract, and 
divested of external and concomitant influences, 
inevitably leads to such unhappy results. 
School-teaching is regarded through the 
community as a severe and trying occupation, 
and it is resorted to, generally, only as a step¬ 
ping-stone to some easier, if not nobler, em¬ 
ployment. The pay is usually too small to be 
considered an inducement to long continuance 
in that line of duty; and the teacher looks for¬ 
ward to the time when he shall shuffle off the 
robe pedagogical, and assume one more con¬ 
genial to his tastes and aspirations. In the 
meantime his cares and burdens increase; a 
family, perchance, comes up dependent upon 
SCHOOL-TEACHERS OF THE CITY. 
The number of teachers employed in the 
several school districts of this city, are as fol¬ 
lows:—No. 1, three teachers; No. 2, six; No. 
3, six; No. 4, three; No. 5, six; No. 6, eight; 
No. 7, three; No. 8, two; No. 9, six; No. 10, 
five; No. 11, three; No. 12, five; No. 13,five; 
' No. 14, eight; No. 15, three; No. 16, five; 
No. 17, three; Colored, 1; Music Teacher, 1. 
Total, 82. 
CONNEC TICUT SCHOOLS. 
Norwich. —In this enterprising city, through 
the persevering efforts of Rev. Mr. Gulliver 
and others, the liberal, or rather, we should 
say the magnificent sum of $>75,000, has been 
subscribed for the endowment of a free high 
school, which shall be second to none in the 
country. When its plans are matured, we hope 
to lay them before our readers. 
Nor is this all. The citizens of Norwich 
have taken another important step in the im¬ 
provement of their schools. They have con¬ 
solidated their districts, and made liberal ap¬ 
propriations for the erection' of suitable build¬ 
ings for the accommodation of their grammar 
and primary schools. 
Stonington. —Mr. W. S. Baker, the well- 
known educational lecturer, was employed in 
this town for several weeks during the past 
him for support; he just manages to make winter, and we are happy to learn that his la¬ 
the year come round, or perhaps not that; and bors have been well received, i lie distiiets 
as he glides down into the vale of years, his 
day-dreams of greatness vanish away. After 
years of toil and anxiety, he finds himself a 
teacher still, without an inch of advancement 
in worldly wealth or worldly prosperity.— 
Younger, more active, and more ambitious 
members of the fraternity rise up,—men who 
have had the advantage of him in point of ed¬ 
ucation, for the world is progressive, and edu¬ 
cation, as well as other things, improves. He 
is regarded as an old fogy, and behind the age; 
and is either pushed entirely to the wall, or 
shoved back to some of the inferior and ruder 
schools, where birch and ferrule are more in 
demand than literature and science. His pay 
is cut down, or is not advanced with that of 
his cotemporaries; and a feeling of disappoint¬ 
ment, and a sense of ill-requited labor, comes 
over him, that makes the whole head sick, and 
the whole heart faint 
These outside influences tend much more to 
sour the temper of the teacher, than all intrin¬ 
sic causes combined. In our colleges, and en¬ 
dowed literary institutions of a higher grade, 
where the professors are not subjected to ex¬ 
hausting, ceaseless, and ill-requited toils, where 
only two or three recitations, at the outside, 
each day are required, and even those in a 
special department, and where the pay, if not 
extremely liberal, is at least above a respecta¬ 
ble living limit, and guaranteed to the incum¬ 
bent se bene gesserit, the temper of the in¬ 
structor does not undergo the ascetic fermen¬ 
tation in time, but grows calmer and serener 
as years go by. Grey-headed and venerable 
old men, who have taught in many of our best 
colleges for years, are as calm and unruffled 
as an undimmed sun, and enjoy a dignified 
joke, or an amusing incident, with the freshest 
student in the institution. In our common 
schools, the nearer an approach is made to lib¬ 
eral compensation, long tenure of office, an in¬ 
dependent position, and an amount of labor 
that permits of ample time for recreation and 
self-improvement, the less and less will the un¬ 
happy propensities of teachers appear, until 
those propensities die out for want of the 
poisoning nourishment they feed upon. 
of the borough have been consolidated, and a 
vote passed to build a union school-house of 
the first class. That is glory enough for one 
year. _ 
Old Saybrook. —The cradle of Yale Col¬ 
lege, “ the wealthy town,” the piscatory para¬ 
dise, whose “ banks ” discount annually, during 
the mouths of April and May, an abundance 
of the finest shad—even Old Saybrook is 
touched by a spirit of progress. The estab¬ 
lishment of a union school is agitated; the old 
school-houses have been condemned. The cit¬ 
izens are beginning to feel the need of a better 
provision for the education of the rising gene¬ 
ration. 
New Haven. —We have the pleasure of re¬ 
cording another step of progress in this enter¬ 
prising city. At a full meeting of t he citizens, 
the sum of $29,000 was voted for the erection 
of another first-class school-house, large enou 
to accommodate six hundred pupils. 
New Canaan. — The three districts into 
which this village was divided have been unit¬ 
ed, and a tasteful and commodious school- 
house has been erected for the accommodation 
of the union school about to be organized. 
/£l 
the fleetest horse. It is a native only of the 
torrid regions of Africa and Arabia, and has 
never been bred out of those countries, which 
first produced it. 
This bird, so disqualified for society with 
man, inhabits, from preference, the most solita¬ 
ry and horrid deserts, where there are few veg¬ 
etables to clothe the surface of the earth, and 
where the rain never comes to refresh it.— 
The Arabians assert that the ostrich never 
drinks; and the place ot its habitation seems to 
confirm the assertion. In these formidable re¬ 
gions they are seen in large flocks, which to 
the distant spectator appear like a regiment 
of cavalry, and have olten alarmed a whole 
caravan. There is no desert, how barren so¬ 
ever, but is capable of supplying them with 
provision; they eat almost everything; and 
these barren tracts are thus doubly grateful, as 
they afford both food and security. In South¬ 
ern Africa they are exceedingly injurious to 
the farmers, as they will destroy a field ol 
wheat so effectually as not to leave a single 
ear behind; and this operation they perform 
without danger to themselves, as they are so 
,’igilant and swift, that it is almost impossible 
to get a shot at them. 
The plumage of the Ostrich is in great re¬ 
quest for ornaments throughout the world, 
and is worn in profusion by all classes, from»a 
Field Marshall to a Fourth Corporal, and 
from a princess to the-belle of the remotest 
ural village. It is surpassingly beautiful, and 
capable of producing a greater variety and 
combination of ornaments, than any other ani¬ 
mal production. Tastefully arranged and ap¬ 
propriately used, the plumage has a very 
pleasing effect as an ornament; but inappro¬ 
priately or distastefully called into requisition 
it degenerates into mere “ fuss and feathers. ’ 
opportunity for exercise. The intellect is 
dwarfed or perverted, and we fall back forever 
from what we might have been with the earnest 
cultivation of our mental powers, carried up 
and on to the extent of our duty and true 
ability. 
We fail socially when we allow ourselves no 
leisure for society—when we give all our 
thoughts to our employment—and hold only a 
business intercourse with our kind. Various 
causes may hinder men from companionship, 
and give good excuses for an isolated life, but 
they suffer therefrom nevertheless. How often 
the weight, not only of cares, but of don't cares, 
presses heavily, and they feel as if they cared 
for no one, and no one had an interest in their 
pursuits or happiness, and that the heart, like 
a house shut up, became more and more un¬ 
tenantable the longer it was closed and empty. 
A life like this makes one selfish, and hard and 
cold; it is no life for happiness or usefulness 
among men. And much greater our social 
failure, when, with a home and domestic ties, 
we fail to find the joys that they should be¬ 
stow, because so absorbed in business pursuits 
that we have no time or thought for them. 
Man cannot live an isolated life without suffer¬ 
ing a penalt'y therefor — he cannot neglect the 
claims of society without injury to his own 
social nature. 
We fail spiritually when, though we keep 
up and cling to the form of religion, we do not 
enjoy its peace, or wield the moral power it 
bestows. Religion —that religion which puri¬ 
fies and saves the soul—is an ever-present and 
paramount influence which vivifies and enno¬ 
bles every thought and action. This should 
ever be remembered, but we often forget it for 
thoughts of self and now —and that we do so, 
should at once humble and alarm us. How 
much more if thoughts of God and the future 
never stir the depths of the heart. A las ! how 
utter the failure of him whose success ends 
with this brief and uncertain life. Better fail 
for all worldly ends—better never to have 
lived—than to fail before God, when called to 
render account of our stewardship on earth. 
-And now, is the seeming always and 
necessarily opposed to real success? We do 
not believe that it is—but have firm faith that 
one may be a successful business man, and fail 
not in due intellectual, social, and spiritual 
energy and advancement. One may very pos¬ 
sibly, but still not easily, be a true man among 
men, and a whole man before God, as far as 
our nature is capable of such perfection, and 
thus gladden and bless the world with an ex¬ 
ample of TRUE SUCCESS.-B. 
leaking. 
THE DEAD. 
The dead alone are great! 
While heavenly plant? abide on earth, 
The soil is one of dewlcss dearth ; 
But when they die, a morning shower 
Comes down, and makes their memories flower 
With odors sweet, though late. 
The dead alone are fair 1 
While they are with us, strange lines play 
Before our eyes, and chase away 
God's light; but let them pale and die, 
And swell the stores of memory— 
There is no envy there. 
The dead alone are dear! 
While they are here, long shadows fall 
From our own forms, and darken all; 
But when they leave us, all the shade 
Is round our own sad footsteps made, 
And they are bright and clear. 
The dead alone are blest I 
While they are here, clouds mar the day, 
And bitter snow-falls nip their Maj ; 
But when the tempest time is done, 
The light and heat of Heaven’s own sun 
Broods on their land of rest. 
Waterbury. —This is probably the smart¬ 
est city in all New England. Old fogyism 
cannot breathe there. The spirit of Young 
America seems to animate the very gravel in 
her streets. They have abolished the odious 
system of rate bills, and voted a tax on proper¬ 
ty for the support of schools. 
Middletown. —This city is so compact that 
nearly all the children might easily assemble 
at one point. She ought to have such 
school-house as the people of New Haven are 
about to erect, and organize in it a grand union 
school. Her high school is preparing the way 
for improvements in the lower schools. Her 
conservatism is evidently beginning to yield to 
the spirit of improvement.— Conn. Common 
School Journal. 
School Salaries in Buffalo. —The princi¬ 
pal of the school receives $900, and the assist¬ 
ants in the second department, $350. The 
principal of the high school has $1,000. and 
his assistants $350. The itinerant writing 
master has $1,000, the singing mast r, $900, 
and the superintendent, $1,500. 
To despise our own species is the price wc 
must too often pay for a knowledge of it. 
SEEMING ys. REAL SUCCESS. 
That success is often only failure in another 
form, may be observed in abundant instances 
by the thoughtful mind. That it need be so— 
that to perform one round of duties we must 
neglect another—is far from evident. But this 
opens a wide field of discussion, which we will 
not enter now. We will rather suggest one 
case, in the hope that the reader will be in¬ 
duced to examine his own heart, and search 
out his own real and seeming successes. It is 
never in vain for any soul, lrom the wisest to 
the weakest, to look within. 
The feeling that we can do what our situa¬ 
tion requires of us, and are doing it., is a pleas¬ 
ant lightener of our toil, while the sense of 
failure and umvorthiness gives constant uneasi¬ 
ness of spirit. But many a one who works 
well and faithfully, and satisfies his associates 
or employers and the world, fails to satisfy 
himself. We have an inner, personal life, as 
well as a public and business one. In this we 
may fail—largely or wholly fail—and no seem 
ing success in outward file can give content¬ 
ment to the soul that is conscious of failure in 
working out its noblest aspirations. 
Three forms of failure, we will instance, as 
those which may mar our peace, even when 
succeeding well in the eyes of the business 
world. We fail intellectually unless we an 
making constant improvement. We may kavi 
but little time for meditative study, and the 
intellectual exercise which business requires, 
often deals only with the surface of numberless 
things, so as to dissipate and distract, instead 
of disciplining, informing, and expanding the 
mind. Thus, though we may still aspire for 
higher wisdom, larger powers, and nobler at¬ 
tainments, the ability to mount up to them 
fails us for the want of encouragement and 
OLD LETTERS. 
AYTiat a melancholy thing it is to look upon 
such records of joys forever gone! How much 
happiness we have lived out that can never be 
evived! How one and another has dropped 
from our side—friends, whom we remember 
enjoying life so freshly, going and coming, 
laughing, talking; doing all that we do now; 
seeming as if all that life and motion could not 
cease, but must go on so ever; and yet, how 
they are wiped out from the face of the earth! 
how men’s tongues have forgotten to speak of 
them or their hearts to yearn for them; and 
how their places are not empty; but—with the 
exception of the few who have done some 
good work in the world—everything is, or at 
least seems, as if they had never been; for 
good or bad, much or little, every man, as he 
passed across the stage, has done his poor 
part, and helped to make up the world’s his¬ 
tory. And to think how we are hurrying off 
to the same blank! Blank for all we see, 
though not for all we hope and believe; blank 
to us that are here, though, wc trust, not to 
those that are gone; literally hurrying our¬ 
selves, so out of breath with our haste that we 
cannot stop to think of where we are going, 
nor of what kind of existence awaits us there 
beyond; nor whether any awaits us; for I con¬ 
fess that the belief in a future fife appears to 
me to sit very loosely on civilized mankind in 
general. A vast proportion of them, 1 hope, 
do believe in it, after a manner; but with how 
little real interest—how vaguely, coldly and 
incuriously! How few people one meets who 
are disposed to speculate gravely or seriously, 
discuss this subject of deepest importance, 
compared to which all the concerns of this life 
are mere childish joys!— Mrs. Crowe. 
EXPECTED DECAY OF BOSTON. 
THE PURITAN SABBATH. 
This commenced, in the old New England 
colonies, at sunset on Saturday; after which it 
was against the ecclesiastical and civil law of 
that time to perform any kind of labor until 
the Sabbath was over. Early on Sunday 
morning, it was the custom in some villages to 
blow a horn, by way of announcing the ap¬ 
proach of the hour for public worship. In 
other places, a flag was hung out of the rude 
building devoted to that use. In Cambridge, 
Mass., a drum was beat, in military style. In 
Salem, a bell indicated to the populace of the 
settlement. The religious services usually 
commenced at 9 o’clock in the morning, and 
occupied from six to eight hours, divided by 
an intermission of one Hour for dinner. The 
people collected quite punctually, as the law 
compelled their attendance, and there was a 
heavy fine for any one that rode too fast to 
meeting. The sexton called upon the minis¬ 
ter and escorted him to church, in the same 
fashion that the sheriff now conducts the judge 
into the State courts of Massachusetts and 
some other States. 
The minister was clothed with mysterious 
awe and great sanctity by the people, and so 
intense was this sentiment, that even the minis¬ 
ter’s family were regarded as something more 
than ordinary mortals. The Puritan meeting¬ 
house was an old structure. The first one 
erected by the colonists was built of logs, and 
had a cannon on the top. Those standing two 
centuries ago were built of bricks, with clay 
plastered over the coarse sand, covered with 
clay boards, now called clap-boards. The roof 
was thatched, as buildings are now seen in 
Canada East. Near the church edifice stood 
those ancient institutions — the stocks, the 
whipping post, and a large wooden cage to 
confine offenders against the laws. Upon the 
outside of the church, and fastened to the 
wall, were the heads of all the wolves killed 
during the season. In front of the church in 
many towns, an armed sentry stood, dressed in 
the habiliments of war. There were no pews 
in the church. The congregation had places 
assigned them upon the rude bench at the an¬ 
nual town meeting, according to their age and 
social position. “Sealing the meeting-house,” 
as it was called, was a delicate and difficult 
business, as pride, envy and jealousy were ac¬ 
tive passions in those days. A person was 
fined if he occupied a seat assigned to another. 
The elders occupied seats beneath the pulpit. 
The boys were ordered to sit upon the gallery 
stairs, and as “ boys always will be boys,” three 
constables were employed to keep them in or¬ 
der. Prominent before the assembly some 
wretched male or female offender sat, with a 
scarlet letter “A’’ or “ II ” on the breast, to de¬ 
note some crime against the stern code. 
The Boston Transcript, from which we have 
condensed this true account of the habits of 
the stern old Puritans, gives the following ex¬ 
tracts from the laws at the time alluded to, 
regulating the observance of the Sabbath.— 
These are specimens of what are so often cited 
as the “old blue laws:” 
The Sabbath day shall begin at sunset on 
Saturday. 
No woman shall kiss her children on the 
Sabbath or lasting day. 
No one shall run on the Sabbath day, or 
walk in his garden or elsewhere, except rever¬ 
ently to and from meeting. 
No one to cross the river but with an author¬ 
ized ferryman. 
In the Ladies’ Magazine, published in Lon¬ 
don, March, 1784, under the head of “Home 
News” is the following: 
“Two ships are arriving in the river from 
Boston, in New England, both in ballast, not 
having been able to procure cargoes of any 
kind, though they had (what was most desira¬ 
ble in that country) specie to pay for all they 
should have brought away: it appears from 
hence that the northern parts of the American 
States are in a much worse situation than 
provinces to the southward. Boston was once 
the most flourishing place in America, and em¬ 
ployed near 500 sail of shipping, besides coast 
iug and fishing vessels, which were numerous 
to a degree. Besides the trade, which sub¬ 
sisted within themselves, they were to America 
what Holland has been to Europe, the carrier 
for all the other colonies. At present their 
distillery is entirely at a stand; their peltry and 
fur trade, once so considerable, is entirely over 
their fishing is exceedingly trifling; instead of 
their vast exports of hemp, flax, tar, pitch, tur¬ 
pentine, staves, lumber and provisions, the only 
thing that was offered at Boston, when the 
above ships sailed, was train oil, which they 
got at high price.” 
Things that are Coming. —Manhood will 
come, old age will come, and the dying bed 
will come, and the very last look you shall cast 
upon your acquaintances will come, and the 
time when you are stretched a lifeless corpse 
before the eyes of weeping relatives will come, 
and that hour when the company will assem¬ 
ble to carry you to the churchyard will come; 
and that moment when you are put in the 
grave will come, and the throw ing in of the 
loose earth into the narrow house where you 
are laid, and the spreading of the green sod 
over it—all will come to every living creature 
who hears me, and in a few years the minister 
who now speaks, and the people who listen, 
will be carried to their long homes, and make 
room for another generation. Now all this 
you know, must and will happen—your com¬ 
mon sense and common experience serve to 
convince you of it. Perhaps it may have been 
little thought of in the days of careless and 
thoughtless and thankless unconcern which 
you have spent hitherto; but I call on you to 
think of it now, lay it seriously to heart, and 
not longer to trifle and delay, when the high 
matters of death and judgment and eternity arc 
thus set so evidently before you. 
Time past is contracted into a point, and 
that the infancy of being. Time to come is 
seen expanding into eternal existence. 
