Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. | Page 5

were returning, a parishioner of
mine, who expressed great surprise, and even a kind of horror, when I
told him what I had been to see. He could not conceal that he thought it
very bad that I should have been there; and I suppose it was. But that
was not the worst of it. Some person had then recently heard me preach
a sermon in which I said, that, in thesis, I had rather undertake to
defend Infidelity than Calvinism. In extreme anger thereat, he wrote a
letter to some newspaper, in which, after stating what I had said, he
added, "And this clergyman was lately seen at the races!" It went far
and wide, you may be sure. I saw it in newspapers from all parts of the
country; yet some of my friends, while laughing at me, held it to be
only a proof of my simplicity.
There were worse things than sports in our public gatherings; even
street fights,--pugilistic fights, hand to hand. I have seen men thus
engage, and that in bloody encounter, knocking one another down, and
the fallen man stamped upon by his adversary. The people gathered
round, not to interfere, but to see them fight it out. [21] Such a
spectacle has not been witnessed in Sheffield, I think, for half a century.
But as to sports and entertainments in general, there were more of them
in those days than now. We had more holidays, more games in the
street, of ball-playing, of quoits, of running, leaping, and wrestling. The
militia musters, now done away with, gave many occasions for them.
Every year we had one or two great squirrel-hunts, ended by a supper,
paid for by the losing side, that is, by the side shooting the fewest.

Almost every season we had a dancing-school. Singing-schools, too,
there were every winter. There was also a small band of music in the
village, and serenades were not uncommon. We, boys used to give
them on the flute to our favorites. But when the band came to serenade
us, I shall never forget the commotion it made in the house, and the
delight we had in it. We children were immediately up in a wild hurry
of pleasure, and my father always went out to welcome the performers,
and to bring them into the house and give them such entertainment as
he could provide.
The school-days of my childhood I remember with nothing but pleasure.
I must have been a dull boy, I suppose, in some respects, for I never got
into scrapes, never played truant, and was never, that I can remember,
punished for anything. The instruction was simple enough. Special
stress was laid upon spelling, and I am inclined to think that every one
of my fellow-pupils [22] learned to spell more correctly than some
gentlemen and ladies do in our days.
Our teachers were always men in winter and women in summer. I
remember some of the men very well, but one of them especially. What
pupil of his could ever forget Asa Day,--the most extraordinary figure
that ever I saw, a perfect chunk of a man? He could not have been five
feet high, but with thews and sinews to make up for the defect in height,
and a head big enough for a giant. He might have sat for Scott's "Black
Dwarf;" yet he was not ill-looking, rather handsome in the face. And I
think I never saw a face that could express such energy, passion, and
wrath, as his. Indeed, his whole frame was instinct with energy. I see
him now, as he marched by our house in the early morning, with quick,
short step, to make the school-room fire; and a roaring one it was, in a
large open fireplace; for he did everything about the school. In fact, he
took possession of school, schoolhouse, and district too, for that matter,
as if it were a military post; with the difference, that he was to fight, not
enemies without, but within,--to beat down insubordination and enforce
obedience. And his anger, when roused, was the most remarkable thing.
It stands before me now, through all my life, as the one picture of a
man in a fury. But if he frightened us children, he taught us too, and
that thoroughly.

In general our teachers were held in great [23] reverence and affection.
I remember especially the pride with which I once went in a chaise,
when I was about ten, to New Marlborough, to fetch the schoolma'am.
No courtier, waiting upon a princess, could have been prouder or more
respectful than I was.
To turn, for a moment, to a different scene, and to much humbler
persons, that pass and repass in the camera obscura of my early
recollections. The