words and looks. The stage scare in others was amusing to those who had passed the ordeal, while a few whose budding ambitions looked forward to the thrones of power, or senatorial honors, or a residence in the White House, assumed a dignity unsurpassed. The studious Ames Wells, the genial spirited Horace Lee, the sunny Henry Chapin, the well poised John Pynchon, and many others most kind and friendly, troop before me as I write."
One of the scholars now residing in Western New York writes: "Simeon H. Calhoun is remembered with affectionate respect, a man of equable temper, not harsh though constitutionally Puritanic, not letting down to levels of boyish relaxation but holding to the dignity of his office, a sample of the best old-time schoolmasters. As I remember, he showed no difficulty in teaching morals, leaving unsaid all religious dogmatism; and in this teaching his influence compared with that of others must have been decided, but how could one man do much (anything) with such a heterogeneous crowd as we were? Besides the differences as great as could well have been sixty years ago in a New England town, we had fellows all the way from flounderers in the three R's, to such fittings for college as those times called for."
There were two factions among the boys, and considerable rivalry existed between them as to which side should win in the ball games or in an engagement in the trial of tour de force.
Those boys living on the "Hill" were known as the "Hillers," and those on Main street were called "Streeters." The former were environed by the presence of Uncle Sam's gleaming guns, whose shot (fired by the war-worn veterans of the Revolution) went and left their mark on the "Wait Mon-u-ment," and dispersed the misguided men of Daniel Shays, so that this event in their youthful minds raised their spirits as they were inclined. While the latter lived mostly in the foggy atmosphere of "Hasseky Marsh," which did not promote a spirit of aggressive valor, though many of them were obliged to pass daily by the "old
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