careful examination.

Although the country-boy feels a little joy when school breaks up (as
he does when anything breaks up, or any change takes place), since he
is released from the discipline and restraint of it, yet the school
is his opening into the world,--his romance. Its opportunities for
enjoyment are numberless. He does not exactly know what he is set at
books for; he takes spelling rather as an exercise for his lungs,
standing up and shouting out the words with entire recklessness of
consequences; he grapples doggedly with arithmetic and geography as
something that must be cleared out of his way before recess, but not
at all with the zest he would dig a woodchuck out of his hole. But
recess! Was ever any enjoyment so keen as that with which a boy
rushes out of the schoolhouse door for the ten minutes of recess?
He is like to burst with animal spirits; he runs like a deer;
he can nearly fly; and he throws himself into play with entire
self-forgetfulness, and an energy that would overturn the world if
his strength were proportioned to it. For ten minutes the world is
absolutely his; the weights are taken off, restraints are loosed, and
he is his own master for that brief time,--as he never again will be
if he lives to be as old as the king of Thule,--and nobody knows how
old he was. And there is the nooning, a solid hour, in which vast
projects can be carried out which have been slyly matured during the
school-hours: expeditions are undertaken; wars are begun between the
Indians on one side and the settlers on the other; the military
company is drilled (without uniforms or arms), or games are carried
on which involve miles of running, and an expenditure of wind
sufficient to spell the spelling-book through at the highest pitch.

Friendships are formed, too, which are fervent, if not enduring, and