pupils from the ages of six to twelve or thirteen. I can distinctly
recall the faces of many of those boys and girls to this day--Jane
North, a slender, clean-cut girl of ten or eleven; Elizabeth
McClelland, a fat, freckled girl of twelve; Alice Twilliger, a
thin, talkative girl with a bulging forehead. Two or three of
the boys became soldiers in the Civil War, and fell in the battle
of Gettysburg.

[In April, 1912, Mr. Burroughs received the following: "Hearty
congratulations upon your seventy-fifth birthday, from your old
Tongore pupil of many years ago.
R--B--."]

I "boarded round," going home with the children as they invited
me. I was always put in the spare room, and usually treated to
warm biscuit and pie for supper. A few families were very poor,
and there I was lucky to get bread and potatoes. In one house I
remember the bedstead was very shaky, and in the middle of the
night, as I turned over, it began to sway and lurch, and presently
all went down in a heap. But I clung to the wreck till morning,
and said nothing about it then.

I remember that a notable eclipse of the sun occurred that spring
on the 26th of May, when the farmers were planting their corn.

What books I read that summer I cannot recall. Yes, I recall
one--"The Complete Letter-Writer," which I bought of a peddler,
and upon which I modeled many of my letters to various persons,
among others to a Roxbury girl for whom I had a mild fancy. My
first letter to a girl I wrote to her, and a ridiculously stiff,