A Busy Year at the Old Squire's   By: C. A. (Charles Asbury) Stephens (1844-1931)

by

C. A. STEPHENS

Published by The Old Squire's Bookstore Norway, Maine Copyright, 1922 By C. A. Stephens All rights reserved

Electrotyped and Printed by The Colonial Press Clinton, Mass., U. S. A.

DEDICATED WITH CORDIAL BEST WISHES TO THE THOUSANDS OF READERS WHO HAVE REQUESTED THIS Memorial Edition OF THE C. A. STEPHENS BOOKS

Contents

CHAPTER

I. Master Pierson Comes Back

II. Cutting Ice at 14° Below Zero

III. A Bear's "Pipe" in Winter

IV. White Monkey Week

V. When Old Zack Went to School

VI. The Sad Abuse of Old Mehitable

VII. Bear Tone

VIII. When We Hunted the Striped Catamount

IX. The Lost Oxen

X. Bethesda

XI. When We Walked the Town Lines

XII. The Rose Quartz Spring

XIII. Fox Pills

XIV. The Unpardonable Sin

XV. The Cantaloupe Coaxer

XVI. The Strange Disappearance of Grandpa Edwards

XVII. Our Fourth of July at the Den

XVIII. Jim Doane's Bank Book

XIX. Grandmother Ruth's Last Load of Hay

XX. When Uncle Hannibal Spoke at the Chapel

XXI. That Mysterious Daguerreotype Saloon

XXII. "Rainbow in the Morning"

XIII. When I Went After the Eyestone

XXIV. Borrowed for a Bee Hunt

XXV. When the Lion Roared

XXVI. Uncle Solon Chase Comes Along

XVII. On the Dark of the Moon

XXVIII. Halstead's Gobbler

XXIX. Mitchella Jars

XXX. When Bears Were Denning Up

XXXI. Czar Brench

XXII. When Old Peg Led the Flock

XXXIII. Witches' Brooms

XXXIV. The Little Image Peddlers

XXXV. A January Thaw

XXXVI. Uncle Billy Murch's Hair Raiser

XXXVII. Addison's Pocketful of Auger Chips

A Busy Year at the Old Squire's

CHAPTER I

MASTER PIERSON COMES BACK

Master Joel Pierson arrived the following Sunday afternoon, as he had promised in his letter of Thanksgiving Day eve, and took up his abode with us at the old Squire's for the winter term of school.

Cousin Addison drove to the village with horse and pung to fetch him; and the pung, I remember, was filled with the master's belongings, including his school melodeon, books and seven large wall maps for teaching geography. For Master Pierson brought a complete outfit, even to the stack of school song books which later were piled on the top of the melodeon that stood in front of the teacher's desk at the schoolhouse. Every space between the windows was covered by those wall maps. No other teacher had ever made the old schoolhouse so attractive. No other teacher had ever entered on the task of giving us instruction with such zeal and such enthusiasm. It was a zeal, too, and an enthusiasm which embraced every pupil in the room and stopped at nothing short of enlisting that pupil's best efforts to learn.

Master Pierson put life and hard work into everything that went on at school even into the old schoolhouse itself. Every morning he would be off from the old Squire's at eight o'clock, to see that the schoolhouse was well warmed and ready to begin lessons at nine; and if there had been any neglect in sweeping or dusting, he would do it himself, and have every desk and bench clean and tidy before school time.

What was more, Master Pierson possessed the rare faculty of communicating his own zeal for learning to his pupils. We became so interested, as weeks passed, that of our own accord we brought our school books home with us at night, in order to study evenings; and we asked for longer lessons that we might progress faster.