I remember studying Caesar there with George Brooks, afterward judge, and reading with him an account of some battle where Caesar barely escaped being killed, on which Brooks's comment was "I wish to thunder he had been!" I am afraid the boys did not respect the property of the owners of the neighboring apple orchards, as undoubtedly the better-trained boys of modern times do now.

We understood the law to be that all apples that grew on the branches extending over the highway were public property, and I am afraid that when the owner was not about we were not very particular as to the boundary line.

This seems to have been a trait of boy nature for generations.

You know Sidney Smith's account of the habit of boys at his school to rob a neighboring orchard, until the farmer bought a large, savage bulldog for his protection.
Some of the big boys told Sidney that if a boy would get down on his hands and knees and go backward toward the dog the dog would be frightened, and he could get the apples.

He tried the experiment unsuccessfully, and with the result that concluded, as he says, that "it makes no difference to a bulldog which end of a boy he gets hold of, if he only gets a good hold." The discipline of the schoolmaster in those days was pretty severe.