doesn't wake up
more than once or twice in twenty years. Most of the time it is only
talking in its sleep. Now that Greenbank had its eyes open for a little
time, it was surprised to see that while the cities along the river had
all adopted graded schools,--_de_-graded schools, as they were called by
the people opposed to them,--and while even the little villages in the
hill country had younger and more enlightened teachers, the county-town
of Greenbank had made no advance. It employed yet, under the rule of
President Fillmore, the same hard old stick of a master that had beaten
the boys in the log school-house in the days of John Quincy Adams and
Andrew Jackson. But, now it was awake, Greenbank kept its eyes open on
the school question. The boys wrote on the fences, in chalk:

DOWN WITH OLD BAWL!

and thought the bad spelling of the name a good joke, while men and
women began to talk about getting a new master.

Will Riley and Ben Berry had the hardest time. For the most part they
stayed at home during the excitement, only slinking out in the evening.
The boys nicknamed them "Gunpowder cowards," and wrote the words on the
fences. Even the loafers about the street asked them whether Old Ball
had given them that whipping yet, and how they liked "powder and Ball."

CHAPTER XIII

PROFESSOR SUSAN

Mr. Ball did not let go easily. He had been engaged for the term, and he
declared that he would go on to the end of the term, if there should be
nothing but empty benches. In truth, he and his partisans hoped that the
storm would blow over and the old man be allowed to go on teaching and
thrashing as heretofore. He had a great advantage in that he had been
trained in all the common branches better than most masters, and was
regarded as a miracle of skill in arithmetical calculations. He even
knew how to survey land.

Jack was much disappointed to miss his winter's schooling, and there was
no probability that he would be able to attend school again. He went on
as best he could at home, but he stuck fast on some difficult problems
in the middle of the arithmetic. Columbus had by this time begun to
recover his slender health, and he was even able to walk over to Jack's
house occasionally. Finding Jack in despair over some of his "sums," he
said:

"Why don't you ask Susan Lanham to show you? I believe she would; and
she has been clean through the arithmetic, and she is 'most as good as
the master himself."

"I do