, and broke down in the
middle of it. A ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked under
him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the
house but he had the house's silence, too, which was even worse than
its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom
struggled awhile and then retired, utterly defeated. There was a weak
attempt at applause, but it died early.

"The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck" followed; also "The Assyrian Came
Down," and other declamatory gems. Then there were reading exercises,
and a spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with honor. The
prime feature of the evening was in order, now--original "compositions"
by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of
the platform, cleared her throat, held up her manuscript (tied with
dainty ribbon), and proceeded to read, with labored attention to
"expression" and punctuation. The themes were the same that had been
illuminated upon similar occasions by their mothers before them, their
grandmothers, and doubtless all their ancestors in the female line
clear back to the Crusades. "Friendship" was one; "Memories of Other
Days"; "Religion in History"; "Dream Land"; "The Advantages of
Culture"; "Forms of Political Government Compared and Contrasted";
"Melancholy"; "Filial Love"; "Heart Longings," etc., etc.

A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted
melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of "fine language";
another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words
and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that
conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable
sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one
of them. No matter what the subject might be, a brain-racking effort
was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and
religious mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring
insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the
banishment of the fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient
to-day; it never will be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps.
There is no school in all our land where the young ladies do not feel
obliged to close their compositions with a sermon; and you will find
that the sermon of the most frivolous and the least religious girl in
the school is always the longest and the most relentlessly pious.