g in a
boarding-school, the characters of the boys would be well known to me
and to their companions and teachers, and we would have therefore the
means of knowing how far he succeeded in his experiment.

Thinking that an hour spent in this way would not be misspent, that it
would at least give some variety to the monotonous routine of study and
lessons, and, let me add, being not entirely without curiosity as to the
result, I consented to his proposition, and called the school together
in the large assembly-room. All the boys being in their seats, together
with the teachers and the ladies of the household, I stated briefly the
object of their assembling and the method in which it was proposed to
proceed with the experiment. They were to observe entire silence, and to
give no indication, by word or look, so far as they could help it, to
show whether the Professor was hitting the mark or not, as he read off
to them the characters of their companions. The boys took to the idea at
once, and the excitement very soon was at fever-heat.

Placing a chair upon the platform, in full view of the school, and the
Professor alongside of it, I called up

_Boy No. 1._--This happened to be a lad about fourteen, from the
interior of Alabama. He was the most athletic boy in school. "Full big
he was of brawn and eke of bones," as Chaucer says, in his picture of
the Miller. He could beat any boy in school in wrestling, and no doubt
could flog any of them in a fist-fight, though on this point I speak
only from conjecture, as this part of boys' amusements is not always as
well known to their teachers as it is to the boys themselves. The
Professor, after some little manipulation of the cranium, read off the
boy's character with tolerable accuracy. Any one, however, with a grain
of observation, who had seen the boy stalking up to the platform, with
bold, almost defiant air, or had noticed his bull-neck, hard fist, and
swaggering gait, could not have had much difficulty in guessing what
kind of a boy he was, without resort to his bumps for information. It
was written in unmistakable characters all over his physical
conformation, from his head to his heels.

I noticed, however, that while the Professor's fingers were busy with
the boy's cranium, his eyes were not less busy with the faces of his
youthful auditors. Whenever his interpretation of any bump was a
palpable hit, his success could be all too plainly read in the upturned
faces before