would advise
everyone to visit such a school as he attended when a boy; and I am
convinced that after this test many a father who has the welfare of
his children at heart will prefer to keep them at home. One comes to
the conclusion, that after all in the school of clever Master Miller,
who was so clever that he got himself addressed as M'sieu Millaire,
precious little was to be learned.

Failing to make this test we continue to believe in the infallibility
of M'sieu of Millaire. We always consider that one a great man whom
we have known in childhood and haven't seen since.

When I remarked a moment ago that school-teachers are paid so
niggardly, I didn't mean that their remuneration was insufficient,
considering the quality and quantity of the goods delivered--knowledge,
scholarship, education. I only had in mind the bitterness of their
lot, and the poor indemnity given to the man who spends his life in
a wasp's nest.

In addition to versifying, Pennewip had still another hobby, which gave
him more claim to a throne than did anything else. He was possessed
with the mania for classifying, a passion known to few, but still of
not infrequent occurrence. I have never quite understood the disease;
and I gave up my search for the "first cause" as soon as I saw how
difficult it is to get around with a hobby-horse taken from somebody
else's stable. So I am going to give only a short sketch of Pennewip's
harmless animal.

Everything that he saw, perceived, experienced he divided into
families, classes, genera, species and sub-species, and made of the
human race a sort of botanical garden, in which he was the Linne. He
regarded that as the only possible way to grasp the final purpose
of creation and clear up all obscure things, both in and out of
school. He even went so far as to say that Walter's New Testament
would have turned up again if Juffrouw Pieterse had only been able
to tell to what class the man belonged who had bound the volume in
black leather. But that was something she didn't know.

As for myself, I shouldn't have said a word about Pennewip's mania for
classifying everything, if I hadn't thought it might help me to give
the reader a better picture of our hero and his surroundings. I should
have preferred to leave the said Pennewip in undisturbed intercourse
with the muses; but we shall have occasion later to refer to his
poetic art, when we shall quote some poems by his pupils.

After the usual general div