e shuffling of
feet and some noise with books and slates. Moreover, boys and girls
unused to study for nine months of the year are not always able at first
to con lessons without unconsciously and audibly moving their lips.

Buzzing lips, however, were among the seven "deadly sins" under the
regime of Czar Brench. Dropping a book or a slate, wriggling about in
your seat, whispering to a seatmate, sitting idly without seeming to
study and not knowing your lesson reasonably well were other grave
offenses.

Because of the length of the lessons, there were frequently failures in
class; the punishment for that was to stand facing the school, and study
the lesson diligently, feverishly, until you knew it. There were few
afternoons that term when three or four pupils were not out there, madly
studying to avoid remaining after school. For no one knew what would
happen if you were left there alone with Czar Brench!

He seemed to care for little except order and strict discipline. He used
to take off his boots and, putting on an old pair of carpet slippers,
walk softly up and down the room, leisurely swinging his ruler. First
and last that winter he feruled nearly all of us boys and several of the
girls. "Little love pats to assist memory," he used to say, as he
brought his ruler down on the palms of our hands.

Feruling with the ruler was for ordinary, miscellaneous offenses; but
Czar Brench had more picturesque punishments for the six or seven
"deadly sins." If you dropped a book, he would instantly cry, "Pick up
that book and fetch it to me!" Then, when you came forward, he would
say, "Take it in your right hand. Face the school. Hold it out straight,
full stretch, and keep it there till I tell you to lower it."

Oh, how heavy that book soon got to be! And when Czar Brench calmly went
on hearing lessons and apparently forgot you there, the discomfort soon
became torture. Your arm would droop lower and lower, until Czar
Brench's eye would fall on you, and he would say quietly, "Straight out,
there!"

There were many terribly tired arms at our school that winter!

But holding books at arm's length was a far milder penalty than "sitting
on nothing," which was Czar Brench's specially devised punishment for
those who shuffled uneasily on those hard old benches during study
hours.

"Aha, there, my boy!" he would cry. "If you cannot sit still on that
bench, come right out here and sit on nothing."

Setting a stool against