e uprising of this fierce democracy.
This was a thing that used to be not very uncommon; but in so
"intelligent" a community as that of Pigwacket Centre, in an era of
public libraries and lyceum-lectures, it was portentous and alarming.

The rebellion began under the ferule of Master Weeks, a slender youth
from a country college, underfed, thin-blooded, sloping-shouldered,
knock-kneed, straight-haired, weak-bearded, pale-eyed, wide-pupilled,
half-colored; a common type enough in in-door races, not rich enough to
pick and choose in their alliances. Nature kills off a good many of this
sort in the first teething-time, a few in later childhood, a good many
again in early adolescence; but every now and then one runs the gauntlet
of her various diseases, or rather forms of one disease, and grows up,
as Master Weeks had done.

It was a very foolish thing for him to try to inflict personal
punishment on such a lusty young fellow as Abner Briggs, Junior, one
of the "hardest customers" in the way of a rough-and-tumble fight that
there were anywhere round. No doubt he had been insolent, but it would
have been better to overlook it. It pains me to report the events
which took place when the master made his rash attempt to maintain his
authority. Abner Briggs, Junior, was a great, hulking fellow, who had
been bred to butchering, but urged by his parents to attend school, in
order to learn the elegant accomplishments of reading and writing,
in which he was sadly deficient. He was in the habit of talking and
laughing pretty loud in school-hours, of throwing wads of paper reduced
to a pulp by a natural and easy process, of occasional insolence and
general negligence. One of the soft, but unpleasant missiles just
alluded to flew by the master's head one morning, and flattened itself
against the wall, where it adhered in the form of a convex mass in alto
rilievo. The master looked round and saw the young butcher's arm in an
attitude which pointed to it unequivocally as the source from which the
projectile had taken its flight.

Master Weeks turned pale. He must "lick" Abner Briggs, Junior, or
abdicate. So he determined to lick Abner Briggs, Junior.

"Come here, Sir!" he said; "you have insulted me and outraged the
decency of the schoolroom often enough! Hold out your hand!"

The young fellow grinned and held it out. The master struck at it with
his black ruler, with a will in the blow and a snapping of the eyes,
as much as to say t