had already been accepted.

As several of the older boys of our own district school had become
somewhat unruly--including Newman Darnley, Alf Batchelder and, I grieve
to say, our cousin Halstead--the impression prevailed that the school
needed a "straightener." Looking about therefore at such short notice,
the school agent was led to hire a master, widely noted as a
disciplinarian, named Nathaniel Brench, who for years had borne the
nickname of "Czar" Brench, owing to his autocratic and cruel methods of
school government.

I remember vividly that morning in November, the first day of school,
when Czar Brench walked into the old schoolhouse, glanced smilingly
round, and laid his package of books and his ruler, a heavy one, on the
master's desk; then, coming forward to the box stove in the middle of
the floor, he warmed his hands at the stovepipe. Such a big man! Six
feet three in his socks, bony, broad-shouldered, with long arms and big
hands.

He wore a rather high-crowned, buff-colored felt hat. Light buff,
indeed, seemed to be his chosen color, for he wore a buff coat, buff
vest and buff trousers. Moreover, his hair, his bushy eyebrows and his
short, thin moustache were sandy.

Beaming on us with his smiling blue eyes, he rubbed his hands gently as
he warmed them.

"I hope we are going to have a pleasant term of school together," he
said, in a tone as soft as silk. "And it will not be my fault if we
don't have a real quiet, nice time."

We learned later that it was his custom always to begin school with a
beautiful speech of honeyed words--the calm before the storm.

"Of course we have to have order in the schoolroom," he said
apologetically. "I confess that I like to have the room orderly, and
that I do not like to hear whispering in study hours. When the scholars
go out and come in at recess time, too, it sort of disturbs me to have
crowding and noise. I never wish to be hard or unreasonable with my
scholars--I never am, if I can avoid it. But these little things, as you
all know, have to be mentioned sometimes, if we are going to have a
really pleasant and profitable term.

"There is another thing that always make me feel nervous in school
hours, and that is buzzing with the lips while you are getting your
lessons, I don't like to speak about it, and there may be no need for
it, but lips buzzing in study hours always make me feel queer. It's just
as easy to get your lessons with your eyes as with your lip