my wages up to sixteen dollars a month. But the cautious Scots
urged a conditional engagement,--a trial of one month,--a condition
which, as I might have anticipated, would end the engagement with
the month, considering the composition of the district and the usual
difference of views among the people. The two most advanced and oldest
of the pupils belonged to families bound together by the most cordial
jealousy which a petty community could inspire, and one of these was
my Latin pupil. His rival was a lazy student and a turbulent scholar,
with whom I had difficulties from insubordination from the beginning.
As, however, I had adopted the rule of depending entirely on moral
suasion in the government of the school and refused to flog, but
instead offered prizes for good behavior and studiousness at my own
expense for each week, my confidence in the better qualities of human
nature betrayed me from the beginning. The prizes went to stimulate
the jealousies between the two leaders, and the only punishment I
would inflict, that of sending the pupil home for disobedience, made
domestic difficulties.

The first week of the month I was boarded in the family of our
patriarch, whose grandsons furnished a number of the pupils, and the
life they led me was not one to make me regret the termination of the
engagement. I was awaked while it was still night to join in family
prayers, which were of a severity of which I had never dreamed. First
a long selection of Psalms was read, then another long one sung, and
then a prayer which, as I noticed by the clock, varied from ten to
twelve minutes, through which, being still drowsy, I slept, being
awakened by the family rising from their knees. This was the
invariable routine gone through twice a day. As in our own family,
with the exception of the Saturday morning family service, the
devotions were always those of the closet, this tedium of godliness
was a serious infliction. I was waked out of sound sleep, and bored
through, before breakfast, by vain repetitions lasting on an average
half an hour, after having endured the same for another half-hour
before being allowed to go to bed. No escape was permitted even to the
ill-willing, and it may easily be imagined that this addendum to
the annoyances of my school hours made the position of the
district schoolmaster one for which sixteen dollars a month was no
compensation.

The conflicts in the school, if they gave me less tedium, were all