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It was a zeal, too, and anenthusiasm which embraced every pupil inthe room and stopped at nothing short ofenlisting that pupil's best efforts to learn.Master Pierson put life and hard wo

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***START OF THE PROJECTGUTENBERG EBOOK A BUSY YEAR

AT THE OLD SQUIRE'S***

E-text prepared by

the Project Gutenberg

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

CHAPTER I Master Pierson Comes BackCHAPTER II Cutting Ice at 14° BelowZero

CHAPTER III A Bear's "Pipe" in WinterCHAPTER IV White Monkey Week

CHAPTER V When Old Zack Went toSchool

CHAPTER VI The Sad Abuse of OldMehitable

CHAPTER VII Bear-Tone

CHAPTER VIII When We Hunted theStriped Catamount

CHAPTER IX The Lost Oxen

CHAPTER X Bethesda

CHAPTER XI When We Walked the

CHAPTER XVII Our Fourth of July at theDen

CHAPTER XVIII Jim Doane's BankBook

CHAPTER XIX Grandmother Ruth's LastLoad of Hay

CHAPTER XX When Uncle HannibalSpoke at the Chapel

CHAPTER XXI That MysteriousDaguerreotype Saloon

CHAPTER XXII "Rainbow in theMorning"

CHAPTER XXIII When I Went After theEyestone

CHAPTER XXIV Borrowed for a BeeHunt

CHAPTER XXV When the Lion RoaredCHAPTER XXVI Uncle Solon ChaseComes Along

CHAPTER XXVII On the Dark of theMoon

CHAPTER XXVIII Halstead's GobblerCHAPTER XXIX Mitchella Jars

CHAPTER XXX When Bears WereDenning Up

CHAPTER XXXI Czar Brench

CHAPTER XXXII When Old Peg Led theFlock

CHAPTER XXXIII Witches' BroomsCHAPTER XXXIV The Little ImagePeddlers

CHAPTER XXXV A January Thaw

CHAPTER XXXVI Uncle Billy Murch'sHair-Raiser

CHAPTER XXXVII Addison's Pocketful

of Auger Chips

A Busy Year at the Old

Squire's

I remember, was filled with the master'sbelongings, including his schoolmelodeon, books and seven large wall

maps for teaching geography For MasterPierson brought a complete outfit, even tothe stack of school song-books which laterwere piled on the top of the melodeon thatstood in front of the teacher's desk at theschoolhouse Every space between thewindows was covered by those wallmaps No other teacher had ever made theold schoolhouse so attractive No otherteacher had ever entered on the task ofgiving us instruction with such zeal andsuch enthusiasm It was a zeal, too, and anenthusiasm which embraced every pupil inthe room and stopped at nothing short ofenlisting that pupil's best efforts to learn.Master Pierson put life and hard work intoeverything that went on at school—eveninto the old schoolhouse itself Every

morning he would be off from the oldSquire's at eight o'clock, to see that theschoolhouse was well warmed and ready

to begin lessons at nine; and if there hadbeen any neglect in sweeping or dusting,

he would do it himself, and have everydesk and bench clean and tidy beforeschool time

What was more, Master Piersonpossessed the rare faculty ofcommunicating his own zeal for learning

to his pupils We became so interested, asweeks passed, that of our own accord webrought our school books home with us atnight, in order to study evenings; and weasked for longer lessons that we mightprogress faster

My cousin Halstead was one of those boys

(and their name is Legion) who dislikestudy and complain of their lessons thatthey are too long and too hard But strange

to say, Master Joel Pierson somehow ledHalse to really like geography that winter.Those large wall maps in color were ofgreat assistance to us all In class we tookturns going to them with a long pointer, torecite the lesson of the day I rememberjust how the different countries looked andhow they were bounded—though many ofthese boundaries are now, of course,considerably changed

When lessons dragged and dullness settled

on the room, Master Joel was wont to cry,

"Halt!" then sit down at the melodeon andplay some school song as lively as theinstrument admitted of, and set us all

singing for five or ten minutes, chantingthe multiplication tables, the names of thestates, the largest cities of the country, oreven the Books of the Bible At othertimes he would throw open the windowsand set us shouting Patrick Henry'sspeech, or Byron's Apostrophe to theOcean In short, "old Joel" was what nowwould be called a "live wire." He wastwenty-two then and a student working hisown way through Bates College Aftergraduating he migrated to a far westernstate where he taught for a year or two,became supervisor of schools, then StateSuperintendent, and afterwards aRepresentative to Congress He is an agedman now and no word of mine can addmuch to the honors which have worthilycrowned his life None the less I want to

pay this tribute to him—even if he did rub

my ears at times and cry, "Wake up,Round-head! Wake up and find out whatyou are in this world for." (More rubs!)

"You don't seem to know yet Wake upand find out about it We have all comeinto the world to do something Wake upand find out what you are here for!"—andthen more rubs!

It wasn't his fault if I never fairly waked

up to my vocation—if I really had one.For the life of me I could never feel surewhat I was for! Cousin Addison seemed toknow just what he was going to do, fromearliest boyhood, and went straight to it.Much the same way, cousin Theodora'swarm, generous heart led her directly tothat labor of love which she has so

faithfully performed As for Halstead, hewas perfectly sure, cock-sure, more thantwenty times, what he was going to do inlife; but always in the course of a fewweeks or months, he discovered he was

on the wrong trail What can be said of uswho either have no vocation at all, or toomany? What are we here for?

In addition to our daily studies at theschoolhouse, we resumed Latin, in the oldsitting-room, evenings, Thomas andCatherine Edwards coming over acrossthe field to join us To save her carpet,grandmother Ruth put down burlap to bearthe brunt of our many restless feet—forthere was a great deal of trampling andsometimes outbreaks of scuffling there.Thomas and I, who had forgotten much we

had learned the previous winter, were still

delving in Æsop's Fables But Addison,

Theodora and Catherine were going on

with the first book of Cæsar's Gallic War

Ellen, two years younger, was stilloccupied wholly by her English studies.Study hours were from seven till ten, withinterludes for apples and pop-corn

Halstead, who had now definitelyabandoned Latin as something whichwould never do him any good, took up

Comstock's Natural Philosophy, or made

a feint of doing so, in order to havesomething of his own that was differentfrom the rest of us Natural philosophy, hedeclared, was far and away moreimportant than Latin

Memory goes back very fondly to those

evenings in the old sitting-room, they were

so illumined by great hopes ahead.Thomas and I, at a light-stand apart fromthe others, were usually puzzling out a

Fable—The Lion, The Oxen, The Kid and the Wolf, The Fox and the Lion , or some

one of a dozen others—holding noisyarguments over it till Master Pierson fromthe large center table, called out, "Lessnoise over there among those Latininfants! Cæsar is building his bridge overthe Rhine You are disturbing him."

Addison, always very quiet whenengrossed in study, scarcely noticed orlooked up, unless perhaps to aid Catherineand Theodora for a moment, with somehard passage It was Tom and I who madeLatin noisy, aggravated at times by pranks

from Halstead, whose studies in naturalphilosophy were by no means diligent Atintervals of assisting us with ourtranslations of Cæsar and the Fables,Master Pierson himself was translating theGreek of Demosthenes' Orations, and alsoreviewing his Livy—to keep up with hisClass at College But, night or day, he wasalways ready to help or advise us, andpush us on "Go ahead!" was "old Joel's"motto, and "That's what we're here for."

He appeared to be possessed by aprofound conviction that the human racehas a great destiny before it, and that weought all to work hard to hurry it up andrealize it

It is quite wonderful what an influence forgood a wide-awake teacher, like Master

Pierson, can exert in a school of forty orfifty boys and girls like ours in the oldSquire's district, particularly where many

of them "don't know what they are in theworld for," and have difficulty in deciding

on a vocation in life

At that time there was much being saidabout a Universal Language As there arefifty or more diverse languages, spoken bymankind, to say nothing of hundreds ofdifferent dialects, and as people nowtravel freely to all parts of the earth, theadvantages of one common language forall nations are apparent to all who reflect

on the subject At present, months andyears of our short lives are spent learningforeign languages A complete educationdemands that the American whose mother

tongue is the English, must learn French,German, Spanish and Italian, to saynothing of the more difficult languages ofeastern Europe and the Orient Otherwisethe traveler, without an interpreter, cannotmake himself understood, and do businessoutside his own country.

The want of a common means ofcommunication therefore has long beenrecognized; and about that time some onehad invented a somewhat imperfectmethod of universal speech, with the idea

of having everybody learn it, and so beable to converse with the inhabitants of alllands without the well-nigh impossibletask of learning five, or ten, or fiftydifferent languages

The idea impressed everybody as a good

one, and enjoyed a considerablepopularity for a time But practically thiswas soon found to be a clumsy andinadequate form of speech, also that manyother drawbacks attended its adoption.But the main idea held good; and sincethat time Volapuk, Bolak, Esperanto andIdo have appeared, but without meetingwith great success The samedisadvantages attend them, each and all.

In thinking the matter over and talking of

it, one night at the old Squire's, thatwinter, Master Pierson hit on the best,most practical plan for a universallanguage which I have ever heard putforward "Latin is the foundation of all themodern languages of Christendom," hesaid "Or if not the foundation, it enters

largely into all of them Law, theology,medicine and philosophy are dependent onLatin for their descriptive terms WithoutLatin words, modern science would be ajargon which couldn't be taught at all.Without Latin, the English language, itself,would relapse to the crude, primitiveSaxon speech of our ancestors No onecan claim to be well educated till he hasstudied Latin.

"Now as we have need to learn Latinanyway, why not kill two birds with onestone, and make Latin our universallanguage? Why not have a colloquial,every-day Latin, such as the Romans used

to speak in Italy? In point of fact, Latinwas the universal language with travelersand educated people all through the

Middle Ages We need to learn it anyhow,

so why not make it our needed form ofcommon speech?"

I remember just how earnest old Joelbecame as he set forth his new idea of his

He jumped up and tore round the oldsitting-room He rubbed my ears again,rumpled Tom's hair, caught Catherine byboth her hands and went ring-round-the-rosy with her, nearly knocking down thetable, lamp and all! "The greatest ideayet!" he shouted "Just what's wanted for aUniversal Language!" He went and drew

in the old Squire to hear about it; and theold Squire admitted that it soundedreasonable "For I can see," he said, "that

it would keep Latin, and the derivation ofwords from it, fresh in our minds It would

prove a constant review of the words fromwhich our language has been formed.

"But Latin always looked to me ratherheavy and perhaps too clumsy for every-day talk," the old gentleman remarked

"Think you could talk it?"

"Sure!" Master Pierson cried "The oldRomans spoke it So can we And that'sjust what I will do I will get up a book ofconversational Latin—enough to make aCommon Language for every-day use."And in point of fact that was what old Joelwas doing, for four or five weeksafterwards He had Theodora andCatherine copy out page after page of it—

as many as twenty pages He wanted useach to have a copy of it; and for a time atleast, he intended to have it printed

A few days ago I came upon some of thosefaded, yellow pages, folded up in an oldtext book of Æsop's Latin Fables—the oneTom and I were then using; and I will setdown a few of the sentences here, toillustrate what Master Pierson thoughtmight be done with Latin as a universallanguage.

Master Pierson's UniversalLanguage in Latin, which he named

Dic from dico, meaning to speak.

1 It is time to get

up

= Surgendi tempusest

2 The sun is up

already

= Sol jamdudumortus

3 Put on your

shoes = Indue tibi ocreas.

4 Comb your head = Pecte caput tuum.

5 Light a candle

and build a fire

= Accende lucernum,

et fac ut luceatfaculus

6 Carry the

lantern We must

water the horses

= Vulcanum in cornugeras Equi aquatumagenda sunt

barn = Jam imus horreum.

9 Grind the axes = Acuste ascias

10 It is near

twelve o'clock

= Instat horaduodecima

11 It is time for

dinner

= Prandenti tempusadest

12 Please take = Quesso nobiscum

hodie sumas

dinner with us prandiolum.

13 Make a good

fire

= Instruas optimumfocum

wood = Affer fomitem.

17 Lay the table

cloth = Sterne mappam.

20 Sit down = Accumbe

21 This is my = Hic mihi locus.

22 Let him sit next

me = Assideat mihi.

23 Say grace, or

ask a blessing

= Recitaconsecrationem

24 Give me brown

bread

= Da mihi panematrum

25 I am going to

school = Eo ad scholam.

26 What time is it? = Quota est hora?

27 It is past seven = Præteriit hora

septima

28 The bell has

rung

= Sonuittintinnabulum

29 Go with me = Vade mecum

30 The master

will soon be here

= Brevi præceptoraderit

31 I am very cold = Valde frigeo.

32 My hands are

numb = Obtorpent manus.

33 Mend the fire = Apta ignem

I have copied out only a few of the shortersentences There were, as I have said,fully twenty pages of it, enough for quite arespectable "Universal Language," or atleast the beginnings of one Perhaps someambitious linguist will yet take it up inearnest

CHAPTER II

CUTTING ICE AT 14° BELOW ZERO

Generally speaking, young folks are gladwhen school is done But it wasn't so with

us that winter in the old Squire's district,when Master Pierson was teacher Wewere really sad, in fact quite melancholy,and some of the girls shed tears, when thelast day of school came and "old Joel"tied up the melodeon, took down the wallmaps, packed up his books and went back

to his Class in College He was sadhimself—he had taken such interest in our

"Now don't forget what you havelearned!" he exclaimed "Hang on to it.Knowledge is your best friend You must

go on with your Latin, evenings."

"You will surely come back next winter!"

we shouted after him as he drove away

"Maybe," he said, and would not trusthimself to look back

The old sitting-room seemed whollydeserted that Friday night after he wentaway "We are like sheep without ashepherd," Theodora said Catherine andTom came over We opened our Latinbooks and tried to study awhile; but 'twasdreary without "old Joel."

Other things, however, other duties andother work at the farm immediatelyoccupied our attention It was now mid-January and there was ice to be cut on thelake for our new creamery.

For three years the old Squire had beenbreeding a herd of Jerseys There weresixteen of them: Jersey First, Canary,Jersey Second, Little Queen, Beauty,Buttercup, and all the rest Each one hadher own little book that hung from its nail

on a beam of the tie-up behind her stall In

it were recorded her pedigree, dates, andthe number of pounds of milk she gave ateach milking The scales for weighing themilk hung from the same beam Weweighed each milking, and jotted downthe weight with the pencil tied to each

little book All this was to show which ofthe herd was most profitable, and whichcalves had better be kept for increase.This was a new departure in Mainefarming Cream-separators were as yetundreamed of A water-creamery withlong cans and ice was then used forraising the cream; and that meant an ice-house and the cutting and hauling home of

a year's stock of ice from the lake, nearlytwo miles distant

We built a new ice-house near the eastbarn in November; and in December theold Squire drove to Portland and broughthome a complete kit of tools—three ice-saws, an ice-plow or groover, ice-tongs,hooks, chisels, tackle and block

Everything had to be bought new, but theold Squire had visions of great profitsahead from his growing herd of Jerseys.Grandmother, however, was lesssanguine.

It was unusually cold in December thatyear, frequently ten degrees below zero,and there were many high winds.Consequently, the ice on the lakethickened early to twelve inches, and badefair to go to two feet For use in a water-creamery, ice is most conveniently cut andhandled when not more than fifteen orsixteen inches thick That thickness, too,when the cakes are cut twenty-six inchessquare, as usual, makes them quite heavyenough for hoisting and packing in an ice-house

Half a mile from the head of the lake, overdeep, clear water, we had been scrapingand sweeping a large surface after everysnow, in order to have clear ice Two orthree times a week Addison ran down andtested the thickness; and when it reachedfifteen inches, we bestirred ourselves atour new work.

None of us knew much about cutting ice;but we laid off a straight base-line of ahundred feet, hitched old Sol to the newgroover, and marked off five hundredcakes Addison and I then set to work withtwo of our new ice-saws, and hauled outthe cakes with the ice-tongs, whileHalstead and the old Squire loaded them

on the long horse-sled,—sixteen cakes tothe load,—drew the ice home, and packed