out of sight in holes and corners, Dinah would dress
herself up in a smart dress, clean apron, and high, brilliant Madras
turban, and tell all marauding "young uns" to keep out of the kitchen,
for she was gwine to have things kept nice. Indeed, these periodic
seasons were often an inconvenience to the whole household, for Dinah
would contract such an immoderate attachment to her scoured tin as to
insist upon it that it shouldn't be used again for any possible
purpose,--at least till the ardor of the "clarin'-up" period abated.

THE STRIKE AT HINMAN'S

BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE

Away back in the fifties, "Hinman's" was not only the best school in
Peoria, but it was the greatest school in the world. I sincerely thought
so then, and as I was a very lively part of it, I should know. Mr.
Hinman was the Faculty, and he was sufficiently numerous to demonstrate
cube root with one hand and maintain discipline with the other. Dear old
man; boys and girls with grandchildren love him to-day, and think of him
among their blessings. He was superintendent of public instruction,
board of education, school trustee, county superintendent, principal of
the high school and janitor. He had a pleasant smile, a genius for
mathematics, and a West Point idea of obedience and discipline. He
carried upon his person a grip that would make the imported malady which
mocks that name in these degenerate days, call itself Slack, in very
terror at having assumed the wrong title.

We used to have "General Exercises" on Friday afternoon. The most
exciting feature of this weekly frivolity consisted of a free-for-all
exercise in mental arithmetic. Mr. Hinman gave out lists of numbers,
beginning with easy ones and speaking slowly; each succeeding list he
dictated more rapidly and with ever-increasing complications of
addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, until at last he was
giving them out faster than he could talk. One by one the pupils dropped
out of the race with despairing faces, but always at the closing
peremptory:

"Answer?"

At least a dozen hands shot into the air and as many voices shouted the
correct result. We didn't have many books, and the curriculum of an
Illinois school in those days was not academic; but two things the
children could do, they could spell as well as the dictionary and they
could handle figures. Some of the fellows fairly wallowed in them. I
didn't. I simply drowned in the shallowest pond of numbers