nowledge I never could discover: both my
foster-parents were grossly illiterate. Perhaps old Ford taught me--but
this is one of the mysteries I could never solve; and it is strange that
I should have so totally forgotten all about an affair so important, as
not to remember a single lesson, and yet to hold so clear a recollection
of many minor events. But so it is. To school I went: my master was a
cadaverous, wooden-legged man, a disbanded soldier, and a
disciplinarian, as well as an a-b-c-darian.

I well remember old Isaacs, and his tall, handsome, crane-necked
daughter. The hussy was as straight as an arrow, yet, for the sake of
coquetry, or singularity, she would sit in the Methodist chapel, with
her dimpled chin resting upon an iron hoop, and her finely formed
shoulders braced back with straps so tightly, as to thrust out in a
remarkable manner her swanlike chest, and her almost too exuberant bust.
This instrument for the distorted, with its bright crimson leather,
thus pressed into the service of the beautiful, had a most singular and
exciting effect upon the beholder. I have often thought of this girl in
my maturer years, and confess that no dress that I ever beheld gave a
more piquant interest to the wearer, than those straps and irons. The
jade never wore them at home: perhaps the fancy was her father's, he
being an old soldier, and his motto "Eyes right! dress!" Whosever fancy
it was, his daughter rejoiced in it. "Eyes right! dress!" is as good a
motto for the ladies as for the army--and well do they act up to it.

The most important facts that my mind has preserved concerning this
scholastic establishment are--that one evening, for a task, I learned
perfectly by heart the two first chapters of the Gospel according to
Saint John; that there was an unbaked gooseberry pie put prominently on
the shelf in the schoolroom, a fortnight before the vacation at
Midsummer, to be partaken of on the happy day of breaking-up, each boy
paying fourpence for his share of the mighty feast. There were between
forty and fifty of us. I had almost forgotten to mention that I was to
be duly punished whenever I deserved it, but the master was, on no
account, to hurt me, or make me cry. I deserved it regularly three or
four times a day, and was as regularly horsed once. Oh! those
floggings, how deceptive they were, and how much I regretted them when I
came to understand the thing fundamentally. Old Isaacs could not have
p