lass was the highest in the
school, and contained only the largest scholars. The school laughed at
the bare notion of little Christopher Columbus reading in the fourth
reader, and the little fellow looked around the room, puzzled to guess
the cause of the merriment.

"We'll try you," said the master, with suspicion. When the fourth-reader
class was called, and Harvey Collins and Susie Lanham and some others of
the nearly grown-up pupils came forward, with Jack Dudley as quite the
youngest of the class, the great-eyed, emaciated little Columbus Risdale
picked himself up on his pipe-stems and took his place at the end of
this row.

It was too funny for anything!

Will Riley and Pewee and other large scholars, who were yet reading in
that old McGuffey's Third Reader, which had a solitary picture of
Bonaparte crossing the Alps, looked with no kindly eyes on this
preposterous infant in the class ahead of them.

The piece to be read was the poem of Mrs. Hemans's called "The Better
Land." Poems like this one are rather out of fashion nowadays, and
people are inclined to laugh a little at Mrs. Hemans. But thirty years
ago her religious and sentimental poetry was greatly esteemed. This one
presented no difficulty to the readers. In that day, little or no
attention was paid to inflection--the main endeavor being to pronounce
the words without hesitation or slip, and to "mind the stops." Each one
of the class read a stanza ending with a line:

"Not there, not there, my child!"

The poem was exhausted before all had read, so that it was necessary to
begin over again in order to give each one his turn. All waited to hear
the little Columbus read. When it came his turn, the school was as still
as death. The master, wishing to test him, told him, with something like
a sneer, that he could read three stanzas, or "verses," as Mr. Ball
called them.

The little chap squared his toes, threw his head back, and more fluently
even than the rest, he read, in his shrill, eager voice, the remaining
lines, winding up each stanza in a condescending tone, as he read:

"Not there, not there, my child!"

The effect of this from the hundred-year-old baby was so striking and so
ludicrous that everybody was amused, while all were surprised at the
excellence of his reading. The master proceeded, however, to whip one or
two of the boys for laughing.

When recess-time arrived, Susan Lanham came to Jack with a request.

"I wish you'd look