Crown. Sol Mogg, the sexton of St. Anne's, had his beloved Gazette in
his pocket as he tolled the church bell of a Thursday, and would hold
forth on the rights and liberties of man with the carpenter who mended
the steeple. Mrs. Willard could talk of Grenville and Townshend as
knowingly as her husband, the rich factor, and Francie Willard made many
a speech to us younger Sons of Liberty on the steps of King William's
School. We younger sons, indeed, declared bitter war against the
mother-country long before our conservative old province ever dreamed of
secession. For Maryland was well pleased with his Lordship's government.

I fear that I got at King William's School learning of a far different
sort than pleased my grandfather. In those days the school stood upon
the Stadt House hill near School Street, not having moved to its present
larger quarters. Mr. Isaac Daaken was then Master, and had under him
some eighty scholars. After all these years, Mr. Daaken stands before me
a prominent figure of the past in an ill-fitting suit of snuff colour.
How well I recall that schoolroom of a bright morning, the sun's rays
shot hither and thither, and split violet, green, and red by the bulging
glass panes of the windows. And by a strange irony it so chanced that
where the dominie sat--and he moved not the whole morning long save to
reach for his birches--the crimson ray would often rest on the end of his
long nose, and the word "rum" be passed tittering along the benches. For
some men are born to the mill, and others to the mitre, and still others
to the sceptre; but Mr. Daaken was born to the birch. His long, lanky
legs were made for striding after culprits, and his arms for caning them.
He taught, among other things, the classics, of course, the English
language grammatically, arithmetic in all its branches, book-keeping
in the Italian manner, and the elements of algebra, geometry, and
trigonometry with their applications to surveying and navigation.
He also wrote various sorts of hands, fearful and marvellous to the
uninitiated, with which he was wont to decorate my monthly reports to my
grandfather. I can shut my eyes and see now that wonderful hyperbola in
the C in Carvel, which, after travelling around the paper, ended in
intricate curves and a flourish which surely must have broken the quill.

The last day of every month would I fetch that scrolled note to Mr.
Carvel, and he laid it beside his plate until dinner was over.