reindeer,' said the other elephant; 'he's
dead. Never saw anything so sad in my life. He skipped so, and
made a noise like that, and then he died.' The elephant jumped up
and down, trying the light skip of the reindeer and gave a great
roar for the bleat of the dying animal, 'What,' said the first
elephant, 'did he skip so, and cry that way?' And he tried it.
'No, not that way but this way,' said the other; and he went
through it again. By this time every animal in the show had begun
to roar with laughter. 'What on earth are you doing?' said the
rhinoceros. 'It's the way the reindeer died,' said one of the
elephants.

"'Never saw anything so funny,' said the rhinoceros; 'if the poor
thing died that way, it's a pity he couldn't repeat the act.'

"'This is terrible,' said the zebra, straining at his halter. 'The
reindeer is dead, and the elephants have gone crazy.'"

"Sidney Trove," said the teacher, as he was walking away that
evening, "you'll have to look out for yourself. You're a teacher
and you ought to be a man--you must be a man or I'll have nothing
more to do with you."

XIX

Amusement and Learning

There was much doing that winter in the Linley district. They were
a month getting ready for the school "exhibition." Every home in
the valley and up Cedar Hill rang with loud declamations. The
impassioned utterances of James Otis, Daniel Webster, and Patrick
Henry were heard in house, and field, and stable. Every evening
women were busy making costumes for a play, while the young
rehearsed their parts. Polly Vaughn, editor of a paper to be read
that evening, searched the countryside for literary talent. She
found a young married woman, who had spent a year in the State
Normal School, and who put her learning at the service of Polly, in
a composition treating the subject of intemperance. Miss Betsey
Leech sent in what she called "a piece" entitled "Home." Polly,
herself, wrote an editorial on "Our Teacher," and there was hemming
and hawing when she read it, declaring they all had learned much,
even to love him. Her mother helped her with the alphabetical
rhymes, each a couplet of sentimental history, as, for example:--

"A is for Alson, a jolly young man,
He'll marry Miss Betsey, they say, if he can."

They trimmed the little schoolhouse with evergreen and erected a
small stage, where the teacher's desk had been. Sheets were hung,
for curtains, on a ten-foot rod.

A while a