h success, the
under-teachers threw aside all disguise and revealed themselves in
their true colors. A cigar was actually taken out of a day scholar's
mouth during prayers! A flask of whisky was dragged from another's
desk, and then thrown out of the window. And finally, Profanity,
Hazing, Theft, and Lying were almost discouraged!

Could the youth of America, conscious of their power and a literature
of their own, tamely submit to this tyranny? Never! We repeat it
firmly. Never! We repeat it to parents and guardians. Never! But the
fiendish tutors, chuckling in their glee, little knew what was passing
through the cold, haughty intellect of Charles Fanuel Hall Golightly,
aged ten; what curled the lip of Benjamin Franklin Jenkins, aged seven;
or what shone in the bold blue eyes of Bromley Chitterlings, aged six
and a half, as they sat in the corner of the playground at recess.
Their only other companion and confidant was the negro porter and
janitor of the school, known as "Pirate Jim."

Fitly, indeed, was he named, as the secrets of his early wild
career--confessed freely to his noble young friends--plainly showed. A
slaver at the age of seventeen, the ringleader of a mutiny on the
African Coast at the age of twenty, a privateersman during the last war
with England, the commander of a fire-ship and its sole survivor at
twenty-five, with a wild intermediate career of unmixed piracy, until
the Rebellion called him to civil service again as a blockade-runner,
and peace and a desire for rural repose led him to seek the janitorship
of the Doemville Academy, where no questions were asked and references
not exchanged: he was, indeed, a fit mentor for our daring youth.
Although a man whose days had exceeded the usual space allotted to
humanity, the various episodes of his career footing his age up to
nearly one hundred and fifty-nine years, he scarcely looked it, and was
still hale and vigorous.

"Yes," continued Pirate Jim, critically, "I don't think he was any
bigger nor you, Master Chitterlings, if as big, when he stood on the
fork'stle of my ship, and shot the captain o' that East Injymen dead.
We used to call him little Weevils, he was so young-like. But, bless
your hearts, boys! he wa'n't anything to little Sammy Barlow, ez once
crep' up inter the captain's stateroom on a Rooshin frigate, stabbed
him to the heart with a jack-knife, then put on the captain's uniform
and his cocked hat, took command of the ship a