Written in 1953, this book presents the reminiscences of a renowned scientist about his early education in a one-room school at Prairie View, Kansas, during the 1870s and 1880s. The first chapter records early memories of the road to school, and describes the community of Anglo and German farmers served by Prairie View. Other chapters describe classroom organization and furniture, children's games in the schoolyard and inside, children's social customs, relations between boys and girls, teachers (who often changed with every school term), discipline, the curriculum, textbooks and teaching methods, access to books, memorization and recitation of poems and prose, "exhibitions" given on the last day of school, songs and drama, community "literaries" and debate competitions, Fourth of July celebrations, patent medicine shows, meetings of the Grange, use of the schoolhouse as a polling place and a church, religious revivals, Sunday School, temperance meetings, funerals, and educational benefits and deficiencies of the era. An index is included. (SV)