I remember just how the different countries looked and how they were bounded--though many of these 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 and play some school song as lively as the instrument admitted of, and set us all singing for five or ten minutes, chanting the multiplication tables, the names of the states, the largest cities of the country, or even the Books of the Bible.

At other times he would throw open the windows and set us shouting Patrick Henry's speech, or Byron's Apostrophe to the Ocean.

In short, "old Joel" was what now would be called a "live wire." He was twenty-two then and a student working his own way through Bates College.
After graduating he migrated to a far western state where he taught for a year or two, became supervisor of schools, then State Superintendent, and afterwards a Representative to Congress.

He is an aged man now and no word of mine can add much to the honors which have worthily crowned 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 what you are in this world for." (More rubs!) "You don't seem to know yet.