The New England magazine . tended to keep uswithin bounds. W7e learned to write by copying a beautiful slantingscript copy at the top of theblank pages of our copies were proverbs sup-posed to embody the capitalsand small letters, and, incident-ally, ennoble our characters. Iremember one which I havenever been able to really under-stand. It was, A rolling stonegathers no moss. Now, if mossis a figurative expression forfinancial success — the accumula-tion of money and the thingsmoney will buy — and stonestands for us poor humans, myobservations have proved the con-trary of thi
The New England magazine . tended to keep uswithin bounds. W7e learned to write by copying a beautiful slantingscript copy at the top of theblank pages of our copies were proverbs sup-posed to embody the capitalsand small letters, and, incident-ally, ennoble our characters. Iremember one which I havenever been able to really under-stand. It was, A rolling stonegathers no moss. Now, if mossis a figurative expression forfinancial success — the accumula-tion of money and the thingsmoney will buy — and stonestands for us poor humans, myobservations have proved the con-trary of this statement to be roving boys and girls, those wholeft the old town, are the ones whohave been most successful. We allrecall with much pride the careerof one of our number who wentinto business up west somewhere,Boston way, I believe, and amasseda fortune of several thousand dollarswhich he left to the old town fora library. But maybe moss in theproverb does not mean worldly suc-cess. This was borne in upon me. WHO NEVER LEFT HIS ANCESTRAL ACRES OLD SCHOOL DAYS ON THE MAINE COAST 479 one day when I met old EbenStubbs, who never left his ancestralacres, and I observed the beautifulmoss-green color of his old black coat. Other troublesome and contradic-tory proverbs were in that old copy-book, namely, Let well enoughalone, and, on the next page, Noth-ing venture, nothing have, etc. Wegot a good deal of spelling. Besidesthe everyday lesson, which we spelledoff standing in line with our toes on acrack in the floor, there were occasionalspelling matches. The aim of theteacher seemed to be to put out wordswhich we never had seen and whichprobably we never should see outsideof the dictionary. I recall two ofthem, pterodactyl and valetudi-narianism, which in all the longyears that have passed since then Ihave not been able to work either intomy correspondence or my conversa-tion. The last I may be able to usehowever, if I am spared a few moreyears. English grammar was taug
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