ee of
Janeville school directors, and he had departed from his every-day
mechanical style of teaching in favor of some fancy methods which he
had imbibed at the Normal School during his attendance at the spring
term, and which he reserved for use on occasions like the present.
Tillie watched him with profound attention, but hardly with profound
respect.

"Childern," Ezra said, with a look of deep thought, as he impressively
paced up and down before the class of small boys and girls ranged on
the platform, "now, childern, what's this reading lesson ABOUT?"

"'Bout a apple-tree!" answered several eager little voices.

"Yes," said Ezra. "About an apple-tree. Correct. Now,
childern--er--what grows on apple-trees, heh?"

"Apples!" answered the intelligent class.

"Correct. Apples. And--now--what was it that came to the apple-tree?"

"A little bird."

"Yes. A bird came to the apple tree. Well--er," he floundered for a
moment, then, by a sudden inspiration, "what can a bird do?"

"Fly! and sing!"

"A bird can fly and sing," Ezra nodded. "Very good. Now, Sadie, you
dare begin. I 'll leave each one read a werse."

The next recitation was a Fourth Reader lesson consisting of a speech
of Daniel Webster's, the import of which not one of the children, if
indeed the teacher himself, had the faintest suspicion. And so the
class was permitted to proceed, without interruption, in its labored
conning of the massive eloquence of that great statesman; and the
directors presently took their departure in the firm conviction that in
Ezra Herr they had made a good investment of the forty-five dollars a
month appropriated to their town out of the State treasury, and they
agreed, on their way back to Janeville, that New Canaan was to be
pitied for having to put up with anything so unheard-of as "a Harvard
gradyate or whatever," after having had the advantages of an educator
like Ezra Herr.

And Tillie, as she walked home with her four brothers and sisters,
hoped, for the sake of her own advancement, that a Harvard graduate was
at least not LESS intelligent than a Millersville Normal.

XIV

THE HARVARD GRADUATE

That a man holding a Harvard degree should consider so humble an
educational post as that of New Canaan needs a word of explanation.

Walter Fairchilds was the protege of his uncle, the High Church bishop
of a New England State, who had practically, though not legally,
adopted him, upon the death of his father,