than a rumor. Finally he said: "There's a new
school-ma'am over to North Adams." He cocked his head sidewise to look
at the schoolmaster. "She knows more than you, Jeminy," he said.

Mr. Jeminy sat bowed and still, his hands folded in his lap. He
remembered how he had come to Hillsboro thirty years before, a young
man full of plans and fancies. He was soon to learn that what had been
good enough for Great Grandfather Ploughman, was thought to be good
enough for his grandson, also. Mr. Jeminy remained in Hillsboro, at
first out of hope, later out of habit. At last it seemed to him as if
Hillsboro were his home. "Where else should I go?" he had asked
himself. "Here is all I have in the world. Here are my only friends.
Well, after all," he said to himself more than once, "I am not wasted
here, exactly." And he tried to comfort himself with this reflection.

He had started out to build a new school in the wilderness. "I shall
teach my pupils something more than plus and minus," he declared. He
remembered a little verse he used to sing in those days:

Laws, manuals,
And texts incline us
To cheat with plus
And rob with minus.

But it had all slipped away, like sand through his fingers. Now he
hoped to find one child to whom he could say what was in his mind.

One by one the brighter boys had drifted off to the county schools,
leaving the little schoolhouse to the dull and to the young. Some were
taken out of classes early, and added, like another pig, to the farms.
Girls, when they were old enough, were kept at home to help their
mothers; after a while they, too, married; then their education was
over. In the winter they nailed the windows shut; in the summer they
worked with the men, hoarded their pennies, and prayed to God at first,
but only wished at last, to do better than their neighbors.

Of all whom Mr. Jeminy had taught reading, writing and arithmetic, not
one was either better or happier than in childhood.

"Not one," said Mr. Jeminy, "is tidy of mind, or humble of heart. Not
one has learned to be happy in poverty, or gentle in good fortune."

"There's no poverty to-day," said Mr. Tomkins simply. It really seemed
to him as though every one were well off, because the war was over.

"There is more poverty to-day than ever before," said Mr. Jeminy.

"Hm," said Mr. Tomkins.

"Last fall," said Mr. Jeminy, "Sara Barly and Mrs. Grumble helped each
other put up vegetables. And Anna Bar