sions forever. Suffice it to say, then, that my
pantomime kept pace and time with Mr. Hinman's system of punctuation
until the last line was sobbed and whacked out. I groped my bewildered
way to my seat through a mist of tears and sat down gingerly and
sideways, inly wondering why an inscrutable providence had given to the
rugged rhinoceros the hide which the eternal fitness of things had
plainly prepared for the school-boy.

But I quickly forgot my own sorrow and dried my tears with laughter in
the enjoyment of the subsequent acts of the opera, as the chorus
developed the plot and action. Mr. Hinman, who had been somewhat gentle
with me, dealt firmly with the larger boy who followed, and there was a
scene of revelry for the next twenty minutes. The old man shook Bill
Morrison until his teeth rattled so you couldn't hear him cry. He hit
Mickey McCann, the tough boy from, the Lower Prairie, and Mickey ran out
and lay down in the snow to cool off. He hit Jake Bailey across the legs
with a slate frame, and it hurt so that Jake couldn't howl--he just
opened his mouth wide, held up his hands, gasped, and forgot his own
name. He pushed Bill Haskell into a seat and the bench broke.

He ran across the room and reached out for Lem Harkins, and Lem had a
fit before the old man touched him. He shook Dan Stevenson for two
minutes, and when he let him go, Dan walked around his own desk five
times before he could find it, and then he couldn't sit down without
holding on. He whipped the two Knowltons with a skate-strap in each hand
at the same time; the Greenwood family, five boys and a big girl, he
whipped all at once with a girl's skipping rope, and they raised such a
united wail that the clock stopped.

He took a twist in Bill Rodecker's front hair, and Bill slept with his
eyes open for a week. He kept the atmosphere of that school-room full of
dust, and splinters, and lint, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth,
until he reached the end of the alphabet and all hearts ached and
wearied of the inhuman strife and wicked contention. Then he stood up
before us, a sickening tangle of slate frame, strap, ebony ferule and
skipping rope, a smile on his kind old face, and asked, in clear,
triumphant tones:

"WHO says there isn't going to be any more speaking pieces?"

And every last boy in that school sprang to his feet; standing there as
one human being with one great mouth, we shrieked in concerted anguish:

"NOBODY DON'T!"

And