ot taking it."

[Footnote 2: Antimony.]

The young people appreciated this last witticism and roared with
laughter.

One of Mr. Korde's cubs took the liberty, however, of stretching out two
fingers, which signified that he had a question to ask.

"Well, Slipik, out with it!"

"Mr. Rector, is the stuff sweetish like?"

"Asine! have I not told you what it was? You have not been attending;
hold out your paw!"

The urchin got a smart rap on the palm of his hand with the ruler.

"And now the other!"

And so both hands smarted instead of his ears.

"And now, Guszti Klimpa, stand out and repeat to these blockheads what I
have been saying."

Guszti Klimpa was the head boy, because his father rented the village
pot-house, and he himself wore the best jacket of them all, so he was
the master's favourite. The urchin hastily pocketed the pen-knife with
which he had hitherto been carving his bench, blushed deeply in his
embarrassment, and his eyes almost started from his head in his
endeavours to find an answer to the question put to him.

"Well, my son, come, what did I say now?"

The lad took a plunge at random.

"Nixnus is a fluid which becomes a powder, which, can be made from
anything, and very much resembles a piskota."[3]

[Footnote 3: Biscuit.]

"_Bene, proestanter, eminentissime._ Only not _piskota_ but
_piskotum_;[4] not feminine, you know, but neuter gender, second
declension."

[Footnote 4: Antimony.]

So Guszti Klimpa returned to his seat very well satisfied with himself.

"Moreover, this I must add--and mind you tell it to your parents when
you get home--that nothing is so good in these dangerous times as to
drink one glass of brandy in the early morning on an empty stomach,
another in the afternoon, a third on lying down, and as many times more
as one feels any foreign substance in the stomach. That is the best
remedy of all. And, Guszti Klimpa! mind you don't forget to inform your
dear father that your schoolmaster, the rector, is very much afraid of
the morbus, and that my spirit flask is still with you."

Guszti Klimpa's face assumed a pious expression at this reminder, and
shoving beneath his hymn-book the shaft of his quill pen out of which he
was manufacturing a pocket pistol, he promised to deliver the message at
home.

"And now let us sing a hymn and say a prayer. And after that there will
be no more school till the morbus has departed."

Great was the joy of the promising youths