ell in love with a farmer's daughter--and married
her. The farmer's daughter was a buxom wench, and, to the schoolmaster's
delight--he had a careless, charming soul--she presented him in course
of time with a round dozen of sturdy children. Peter compared himself
with Priam of Troy, with Jacob, with King Solomon of Israel and with
Queen Anne of England. Peter wrote a Latin ode to each offspring in
turn, which he recited to the assembled multitude when the midwife put
into his arms for the first time the new arrival. There was great
rejoicing over the birth of every one of the twelve children; but, as
was most proper in a land of primogeniture, the chiefest joy was the
first-born; and to him Peter wrote an Horatian ode, which was two
stanzas longer than the longest Horace ever wrote. Peter vowed that no
infant had ever been given the world's greeting in so magnificent a
manner; certainly he had never himself surpassed that first essay. As he
told the parson, to write twelve odes on paternity, twelve greetings to
the new-born soul, is a severe tax even on the most fertile imagination.

But the object of all this eloquence was the cause of the first and only
quarrel between the gentle schoolmaster and his spouse; for the learned
man had dug out of one of his old books the name of Amyntas, and Amyntas
he vowed should be the name of his son; so with that trisyllable he
finished every stanza of his ode. His wife threw her head back, and,
putting her hands on her hips, stood with arms akimbo; she said that
never in all her born days had she heard of anyone being called by such
a name, which was more fit for a heathen idol than for a plain,
straightforward member of the church by law established. In its stead
she suggested that the boy be called Peter, after his father, or John,
after hers. The gentle schoolmaster was in the habit of giving way to
his wife in all things, and it may be surmised that this was the reason
why the pair had lived in happiest concord; but now he was firm! He said
it was impossible to call the boy by any other name than Amyntas.

'The name is necessary to the metre of my ode,' he said. 'It is its very
life. How can I finish my stanzas with Petrus or Johannes? I would
sooner die.'

His wife did not think the ode mattered a rap. Peter turned pale with
emotion; he could scarcely express himself.

'Every mother in England has had a child; children have been born since
the days of Cain and Abel thicker t