Nearby was a backwoods school which was called the White Birch, where about eighty scholars met in winter to fit themselves for future eminence. Here it was that life's troubles began with me. The mode of punishment in those days for a boy was to draw him over the master's knee and spank him, and I am quite sure I got more floggings than all the other seventy-nine scholars together. Tom Wheelock often spanked me so furiously that the rising dust often made the other scholars think he was setting me on fire.

From the first at school I had been a mental genius. When eight years old I could calculate in my head problems intended for large scholars to work out with slate and pencil. The knottiest problems in Colburn's old mental arithmetic were as simple for me as three times ten, and this I could do without ever looking at the rules. But, oh, my spelling, reading and writing were shockingly deficient, and my grammar was laughable. Once the master compelled me to write a composition, and when he read it he laughed and said, "The ideas are good, Merrick, but it needs a Philadelphia lawyer to connect them."

I would as soon fight as eat and was ready to hammer any boy of my size who had broken up a bird's nest, and was ready to protect the girls to the limit of my strength and ability. Whether I was right or wrong, I can now see that I was unconsciously following the dictates of conscience. When fourteen years old I took a serious dislike to punishment of any kind, and the result was that I left school for good.

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