fer to teach, when on the same pay they might be
corporals in the army, and teach the use of firearms, which offers
fewer headaches and more fresh air.

I would even rather be a preacher; for he does work with people who are
interested and come to hear him of their own free will. The teacher
has to fight continually with indifference, and with the extremely
dangerous rivalry of tops, marbles, and paper-dolls--not to speak of
candy, scarlatina and weak mothers.

Pennewip was a man of the old school. At least he would seem so to
us if we could see him in his gray school jacket and short trousers
with buckles, and his brown wig, which he was continually pushing
into place. At the first of the week this was always curly, when it
was not raining--rain isn't good for curls; and on Sundays "the man
with the curling irons" came.

Antiquated? But perhaps this is only imagination. Who knows? perhaps
in his day he was quite modern. How soon people will say the same
of us! At all events, the man called himself "Master" and his school
was a school and not an "Institute." It is no advance to call things
by other than their right names. In his school boys and girls sat
together indiscriminately, according to the naive custom of those
days. They learned, or might learn, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic,
National History, Psalmody, Sewing, Knitting, and Religion. These
were the order of the day, but if anyone distinguished himself by
a show of talent, diligence or good behavior, that one received
special instruction in versification, an art in which Pennewip took
great pleasure.

Thus he taught the boys till they were sufficiently advanced to be
confirmed. With the help of his wife he gave the girls a "finishing
course." They were graduated with a paternoster done in red on a black
background, or perhaps a pierced heart between two flower-pots. Then
they were through and ready to become the grandmothers of their
own generation.

There was no natural science then. Even to-day there is room for
improvement along this line. It is said that some advance has been
made recently. It is more useful for a child to know how corn grows
than to be able to call the name of it in a foreign language. I don't
say that either is incompatible with the other.

The public schools were most deficient at the time when Walter and
Keesje were slowly crawling around the arena of honor; but I doubt if
one could say much more of the "institutes" of to-day. I