then formed, that Mr. Parasyte, the
principal, was a "toady" of the first water; that he was a
narrow-minded, partial man, in whom the principle of justice had never
been developed. He was a good teacher, an excellent teacher; by which
I mean only to say that he had a rare skill and tact for imparting
knowledge, the mere dry bones of art, science, and philosophy. He was
a capital scholar himself, and a capital teacher; but that is the most
that can be said of him.

I have no hesitation in saying that his influence upon the boys was
bad, as that of every narrow-minded, partial, and unjust man must be;
and if I had any boys to send away to a boarding school, they should
go to a good and true man, even if I knew him to be, intellectually,
an inferior teacher, rather than to such a person as Mr. Parasyte. He
"toadied" to the rich boys, and oppressed the poorer ones. Poodles
was the most important boy in the school, and he was never punished
for his faults, which were not few, nor compelled to learn his
lessons, as other boys were. But I think Poodles hated the magnate of
the Parkville Liberal Institute as much as any other boy.

Parkville is situated on Lake Adieno, a beautiful sheet of water,
twenty miles in length, in the very heart of the State of New York.
The town was a thriving place of four thousand inhabitants, at which a
steamboat stopped twice every day in her trip around the lake. The
academy was located at the western verge of the town, while my home
was about a mile beyond the eastern line of the village.

I lived with my uncle, Amos Thornton. His residence was a vine-clad
cottage, built in the Swiss style, on the border of the lake, the lawn
in front of it extending down to the water's edge. My uncle was a
strange man. He had erected this cottage ten years before the time at
which my story opens, when I was a mere child. He had employed in the
beginning, before the house was completed, a man and his wife as
gardener and housekeeper, and they had been residents in the cottage
ever since.

I said that my uncle was a strange man; and so he was. He hardly ever
spoke a word to any one, and never unless it was absolutely necessary
to do so. He was not one of the talking kind; and old Jerry, the
gardener, and old Betsey, the housekeeper, seemed to have been cast in
the same mould. I never heard them talking to each other, and they
certainly never spoke to me unless I asked them a question, and then
only in the b