Jerome, on his very way to the district school, learned tasks of bitter realism more impressive to his peculiar order of mind than the tables and columns in the text-books.
There was a short cut across the fields between the school-house and the Edwards house.

Jerome and Elmira usually took it, unless the snow was deep, as by doing so they lessened the distance considerably.
The Edwards house was situated upon a road crossing the main highway of the village where the school-house stood.

In the triangle of fields between the path which the Edwards children followed on their way to school and the two roads was the poorhouse.

It was a low, stone-basemented structure, with tiny windows, a few of them barred with iron, retreating ignominiously within thick walls; the very grovelling of mendicancy seemed symbolized in its architecture by some unpremeditatedness of art.

It stood in a hollow, amid slopes of stony plough ridges, over which the old male paupers swarmed painfully with spades and shovels when spring advanced.