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Thomas Chandler Haliburton - Boyhood Recollections - Hurley on Ice c1800
From - The Attaché, second series, by T. C. Haliburton

Thomas Chandler Haliburton

[Historian Victor Lovitt Oakes Chittick proclaims the following to be an "obviously autobiographical passage"]

"... Memory acts on thought like sudden heat on a dormant fly, it wakes it from the dead, puts new life into it, and it stretches out its wings and buzzes round as if it had never slept. When you see him [your old schoolfellow] don't the old school master rise up before you as nateral as if it were only yesterday? And the Schoolroom, and the noisy, larkin' happy holidays, and you boys let out racin', yelpin', hollerin, and whoopin' like mad with pleasure, and the play-ground, and the games at bass [base] in the fields, or hurly on the long pond on the ice, or campin' out at Chester lakes to fish - catchin' no trout, gettin' wet thro' and thro' with rain like a drowned rat, - eat up body and bones by black flies and muschetoes [mosquitos], returnin' tired to death, and callin' it a party of pleasure; or riggin' out in pumps for dancin' school, and the little fust [first] loves for the pretty little gals there, when the heart was romantic and looked away ahead into an avenue of years, and seed you and your little tiny partner at the head of it, driven in a tandem sleigh of your own, and a grand house to live in, and she your partner through life; or else you in the grove back o' the school away up in a beech tree, settin' straddle-legged on a limb with a jack-knife in your hand cuttin' into it the two first letters of her name-F.L., fust [first] love; never dreamin' the bark would grow over them in time on the tree, and the world, the flesh, and the devil rub them out of the heart in arter years also. Then comes robbin' orchards and fitchin' [fetching] home nasty puckery apples to eat, as sour as Greek, that stealin' made sweet; or gettin' out o' windows at night, goin' down to old Ross's, orderin' a supper and pocketin' your- first whole bottle of wine- oh! That first whole bottle christened the man, and you woke up sober next mornin', and got the first taste o' the world,- sour in the mouth- sour in the stomach- sour in the temper, and sour all over;- yes, that's the world. "

The Attaché, second series, II, chapter 55, Paying and Returning Visits 112-114:

(Sam speaking of the Squire going to visit an old schoolfellow while in England)

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