r. Daaken was born to the birch. His long, lanky
legs were made for striding after culprits, and his arms for caning them.
He taught, among other things, the classics, of course, the English
language grammatically, arithmetic in all its branches, book-keeping
in the Italian manner, and the elements of algebra, geometry, and
trigonometry with their applications to surveying and navigation.
He also wrote various sorts of hands, fearful and marvellous to the
uninitiated, with which he was wont to decorate my monthly reports to my
grandfather. I can shut my eyes and see now that wonderful hyperbola in
the C in Carvel, which, after travelling around the paper, ended in
intricate curves and a flourish which surely must have broken the quill.

The last day of every month would I fetch that scrolled note to Mr.
Carvel, and he laid it beside his plate until dinner was over. And then,
as sure as the sun rose that morning, my flogging would come before it
set. This done with, and another promised next month provided Mr. Daaken
wrote no better of me, my grandfather and I renewed our customary footing
of love and companionship.

But Mr. Daaken, unwittingly or designedly, taught other things than those
I have mentioned above. And though I never once heard a word of politics
fall from his lips, his school shortly became known to all good Tories as
a nursery of conspiracy and sedition. There are other ways of teaching
besides preaching, and of that which the dominie taught best he spoke not
a word. He was credited, you may well believe, with calumnies against
King George, and once my Uncle Grafton and Mr. Dulany were for clapping
him in jail, avowing that he taught treason to the young. I can account
for the tone of King William's School in no other way than to say that
patriotism was in the very atmosphere, and seemed to exude in some
mysterious way from Mr. Daaken's person. And most of us became
infected with it.

The dominie lived outside the town, in a lonely little hamlet on the
borders of the Spa. At two of the clock every afternoon he would dive
through School Street to the Coffee House, where the hostler would have
his bony mare saddled and waiting. Mr. Daaken by no chance ever entered
the tavern. I recall one bright day in April when I played truant and
had the temerity to go afishing on Spa Creek with Will Fotheringay, the
bass being plentiful there. We had royal sport of it that morning, and
two o'clock came and went with