The Half-Back

e depot nestling at the shoulder of a high wooded hill. To reach it the train suddenly leaves the river a mile

ing away to the river, and in it an oval track, a gayly colored grand stand, and just beyond, at some distance from each other, what appear to the uninitiate

the tree tops and where the sunlight strives year after year to find its way through the thick shade, and once more the river is

Old Joe" Pike, has grown gray between the station and the Eagle Tavern. If, instead of going on to the north, you had descended from the train, and had mounted to the seat beside

that you can just see is one of the halls--Masters they call it, after the man that founded the school. The big, new buildi

ver yonder to the right. Kind of high up, ain't it? Ev'ry time any one builds he goes higher up the hil

l, sir. That squatty place's the gymnasium; and them two littler houses of brick's the laboratories. Then the house with the wide piazza, that's Professor Wheeler's house; he's the Principal,

as'nt but sixty, and it was the biggest boardin' school for boys in New York State. And that wa'n't many years ago, neither. The boys? Oh, they're a fine lot, sir; a bit mischievous at times, of course, but we're used to 'em in the village. And, bless you, sir, what can you expec

schools. The original charter provides "that there be, and hereby is, established ... an Academy for promoting Piety and Virtue, and for the Education of Youth in the English, Latin, and Greek Languages, in Writing, Arithmetic,

The founder and first principal of the academy passed away in 1835, as an old record says, "full of honor, and commanding the respect and love of all who knew him." He was succeeded by that best-beloved of American schoolmasters, Dr. Hosea Bradley, whose portrait, showing a tall, dign

I can say but little about him. Perhaps the statement of a member of the upper middle class upon h

g first! He says things that count! You see, 'Wheels' has been a boy himse

!" I have no excuse to offer for him; I

given over to well-kept sod, and the massive elms throw a tapestry of grateful shade in summer, and in winter hold the snow upon their great limbs and transform the Green into a fairyland of white. From the cluster of buildings the land

owned by the Academy Buildings. Here and there along the path are little wooden benches to tempt the passer to rest and view from their hospitable seats the grand panorama

grows indistinct, merges into a broad ten-acre plot whereon are the track, gridiron, baseball ground, and the beginning of the golf links. This is the campus. And here is Stony Bunker, and beyond i