hair which made her cry either, though I am sure it
must have hurt. No; it was the thought of the master, that dreadful man
with the ferule and the birch sticks.

Her mother stood at the door with a saucer pie in her hand. She knew
there was nothing Patty liked better.

"Here, Patience," said she, in a tone of motherly pity, "here's a pie
for you. Don't you think now you can go without crying?"

Patience brightened at that, and put the bunch of comfort into Moses's
dinner pail, along with some doughnuts as big as her arm, and some brown
bread and sausages.

It was a long way to the school-house, and by the time the children got
there their feet were numb. There was a great roaring fire in the
enormous fireplace; but it did Patty no good, for this was one of the
master's "whipping days," and he strode the brick hearth like a savage
warrior. Where was the _little_ boy or girl brave enough to say,
"Master, may I go to the fire?"

Poor Patty took out her Ladies' Accidence, and turned over the leaves.
It was a little book, and the title sounds as if it was full of stories;
but you must not think Patty would have carried a story book to school!

No; this was a Grammar. In our times little girls scarcely seven years
old are not made to study such hard things, for their teachers are wise
enough to know it is of no use. Patty was as good a scholar as any in
school for her age. Her letters had been boxed into her ears very young
by Miss Judkins, and now she could read in Webster's Third Part as fast
as a squirrel can run up a tree; but as for grammar, you could put all
she knew into a doll's thimble. She could not tell a noun from a verb,
nor could Linda Chase or Sally Potter, if you stood right over them, all
three, with three birch switches. They all knew long strings of words,
though, like this:--

"A noun is the name of anything that exists, or that we have any notion
of."

She liked to rattle that off--Patty did--or her little nimble tongue,
her head keeping time to the words.

I wish you had heard her, and seen her too, or that I could give you any
idea of Mr. Purple's school.

Stop a minute. Shut your eyes, and think you are in
Perseverance.--There, do you see that man in a blue swallow-tail coat?
This is the master. His head runs up to a peak, like an old-fashioned
sugar loaf, and blazes like a maple tree in the fall of the year. He
stands by his desk making a quill pen, and looking about him with sharp
glan