do as he saw others doing at once,
and he cast many troubled looks at the lord of a hundred boys. When the
name of "Ebenezer Baird" was called out, he burst into tears, he sobbed,
terror overwhelmed him. But when the teacher approached him kindly, took
him from his seat, placed him between his knees, patted his head, and
desired him to speak after him, the heart of the little cripple was
assured, and more than assured; it was the first time he had experienced
kindness, and he could have fallen on the ground and hugged the knees of
his master. The teacher, indeed, found Ebenezer the most ignorant
scholar he had ever met with, but he was no tyrant of the birch, though
to his pupils

"A man severe he was, and stern to view;"

and though he had all the manners and austerity of the old school about
him, he did not lay his head upon the pillow with his arm tired by the
incessant use of the ferule. He was touched with the simplicity and the
extreme ignorance of his new boarder, and he felt also for his lameness
and deformity. Thrice he went over the alphabet with his pupil,
commencing, "_Big Aw_--_Little Aw_," and having got over _b_, he told
him to remember that _c_ was like a half-moon. "Ye'll aye mind _c_
again," added he; "think ye _see_ the moon." Thus they went on to _g_,
and he asked him what the carters said to their horses when they wished
them to go faster; but this Ebenezer could not tell--carts and horses
were sights that he had seen as objects of wonder. They are but seldom
seen amongst the hills now, and in those days they were almost unknown.
Getting over _h_, he strove to impress _i_ upon the memory of his pupil,
by touching the solitary grey orbit in his countenance (for Ebenezer had
but one), and asking him what he called it. "My _e'e_," answered
Ebenezer.

"No, sir, you must not say your _e'e_, but your _eye_--mind that; and
that letter is _I_."

The teacher went on, showing him that he could not forget round O, and
crooked S; and in truth, after his first lesson, Ebenezer was master of
these two letters. And, afterwards, when the teacher, in trying him
promiscuously through the alphabet, would inquire, "What letter is
this?"--"I no ken," the cripple would reply; "but I'm sure it's no O,
and it's no S." Within a week he was master of the six-and-twenty
mystical symbols, with the exception of four--and those four were _b_
and _d_, _p_ and _q_. Ebenezer could not for three months be brought to
distingu