Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

152
ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
on Friday afternoons. The stammerer was indeed ambitious
to have attempted "He is fallen! We may now pause before
that splendid prodigy, which towered among us like some
ancient ruin, whose power terrified the glance its magnificence
attracted."
Dr. McGuffey was a man who did much to give to the youth
of our day the choicest and best literary productions of the
nineteenth century. From his books we committed to memory
some noble specimens of English. Friday afternoons were
spent in spelling matches, declaiming, or reading compositions
we had written. Crude efforts were these latter, and supposed
to be original. As a duty they were much resented and held
in prime disfavor by the majority of us. We were not budding
geniuses as we wrestled with " Spring " and other of the seasons,
besides abstract qualities some of which to this day are not
fathomed by us. I remember having once written upon
"Spring." Brother William always distinguished himself as
a speller; when we were "spelling down," he was certain to be
chosen first. The leaders tossed up the broomhandle, and the
first to catch hold had first choice for his side. William was
always that choice.
Our first school, as I have mentioned, was held in the basement
of the church built by a man who wished to be a bene-
factor to the community and who, in his last will and testament,
left quite a sum of money to build a large brick church
with a basement suitable for a schoolroom. This church was
built on the side of a hill, which brought the schoolroom on a
level with the east front, while the church in the second story
and facing west was on the level in that direction. There was
a fine plot in front where we had our playground, and on Sundays
the farmers' horses were hitched there. The peculiar
position of our schoolroom, with its back right against the
hill, made some of the window sills even with the ground
outside, and "thereby hangs a tale."
In the times of which I write the people who lived about
the Finneytown Corners used to let their pigs run at large.
One of the old mother hogs was always on the alert to gather
up scraps left from our dinner baskets. The pigs wallowed