Chapter 1

What is this chapter mainly about?

The narrator is there at the school to visit two "fearful sites." One is the marble stairs in the First Academy Building. What is the other?

Chapter 1 has two sections. The second section is a flashback. How many years separate the events narrated in these two sections?

Where is Devon School located?

The narrator notices something about the marble stairs that wasn't obvious to him when he was a student attending school there. What characteristic of the stairs does he notice?

In the second section of Chapter 1, which is a flashback in time, what does Phineas dare the other boys to do?

In the first three paragraphs of Chapter 1, the narrator observes that Devon School, and the fear that surrounded it, have been preserved. There was the school, "preserved by some considerate hand with varnish and wax. Preserved along with it, like stale air in an unopened room, was the well known fear which had surrounded and filled those days."

What does "preserved" mean in this context?

Is there anything that you are unsure about in this chapter?