ught the old dinner-bell and set it down in the very middle of the
breakfast-table. Then he told his mother all about it. And she agreed
with him that he had done a very mean thing.

CHAPTER XV

AN ATTEMPT TO COLLECT

Three times a week the scholars of the "Greenbank Academy" met at the
house of Dr. Lanham to receive instruction from Professor Susan, for the
school trustees could not agree on a new teacher. Some of the people
wanted one thing, and some another; a lady teacher was advocated and
opposed; a young man, an old man, a new-fashioned man, an old-fashioned
man, and no teacher at all for the rest of the present year, so as to
save money, were projects that found advocates. The division of opinion
was so great that the plan of no school at all was carried because no
other could be. So Susan's class went on for a month, and grew to be
quite a little society, and then it came to an end.

One evening, when the lessons were finished, Professor Susan said: "I am
sorry to tell you that this is the last lesson I can give."

And then they all said "Aw-w-w-w-w!" in a melancholy way.

"I am going away to school myself," Susan went on. "My father thinks I
ought to go to Mr. Niles's school at Port William."

"I shouldn't think you'd need to go any more," said Joanna Merwin. "I
thought you knew everything."

"Oh, bless me!" cried Susan.

In former days the people of the interior--the Mississippi Valley--which
used then to be called "the West," were very desirous of education for
their children. But good teachers were scarce. Ignorant and pretentious
men, incompetent wanderers from New England, who had grown tired of
clock-peddling, or tin-peddling, and whose whole stock was assurance,
besides impostors of other sorts, would get places as teachers because
teachers were scarce and there were no tests of fitness. Now and then a
retired Presbyterian minister from Scotland or Pennsylvania, or a
college graduate from New England, would open a school in some country
town. Then people who could afford it would send their children from
long distances to board near the school, and learn English grammar,
arithmetic, and, in some cases, a little Latin, or, perhaps, to fit
themselves for entrance to some of the sturdy little country colleges
already growing up in that region. At Port William, in Kentucky, there
was at this time an old minister, Mr. Niles, who really knew what he
professed to teach, and it was to his schoo