only through him. (5) A teacher is never asked the contemptible
question, "How much salary do you expect?" The amount of salary
attached, together with a description of the duties of the position, is
set down in the notification. (6) The agent is simply an introducer: he
of course has to be satisfied, _before_ the registration of the
applicant, that the latter is really a teacher and a man of character,
but beyond that the "judgment" part of the business is relegated to the
principal who receives the application.

Reverting again to my first summer, I have a little incident to relate:
One evening I was introduced to a middle-aged, sharp-looking little
man, who, I was informed, was the principal of a flourishing college in
a Western State--a college in a town, both of which he had himself
founded. This gentleman and I managed to spend the evening together
pleasantly enough, but my astonishment was great next morning when I
received a letter from him offering me a situation in his establishment.
I had an interview with him, and concluding from all the appearances
that the location was a healthy and civilized one, the school a
prosperous one, and himself an energetic, cultivated gentleman, I was on
the point of accepting, when it suddenly occurred to me that in my
anxiety to learn whether the position was desirable in other respects
not a word had been said on the subject of salary. My expressing a wish
to be enlightened upon this important particular produced an immediate
hitch in the negotiations, but the practical upshot was that the greater
part of my salary was to consist virtually of unreclaimed land! Since
that magnificent occasion I have regarded with magnanimous forbearance
requisitions emanating from that portion of the West.

At last, however, my answer to an advertisement was successful, and in
September I was duly installed as teacher of the classics in a school of
some fifty boys in one of the three cities I have mentioned. The
following extract from the principal's letter of engagement will show
what is naturally the chief difficulty an English teacher has to
encounter in his search for an employer in the United States: "On the
whole, I think the most favorably of you out of some forty applicants;
the only fear I have arising from the well-known fact that American lads
are so unlike those of the old country, and require different methods of
discipline."

The salary, though a moderate one--not by a third e