than ever. They learned, some of
them, readily; but they forgot as readily. They had a vast capacity for
parrot-like repetition, and caught his long words so quickly, and
repeated them so volubly, with but slight comprehension of their
meaning, that his sensitive conscience shrank from using them, and he
was forced back upon a rude plainness of speech which was a pain to his
pedagogic ears. Where he had once said, "Demean yourselves with
sobriety," he now said, "Don't get drunk." He would have fared better if
he had learned to say "uncle" and "aunty," or "maumer," in the familiar
Southern fashion. But he had no knowledge of the customs; how could he
have? He could only blunder on in his slow Northern way.

His cabin stood in the pine forest, at a little distance from the
settlement; he had allowed himself that grace. There was a garden around
it, where Northern flowers came up after a while--a little pale,
perhaps, like English ladies in India, but doubly beautiful and dear to
exiled eyes. The schoolmaster had cherished from the first a wish for a
cotton-field--a cotton-field of his own. To him a cotton-field
represented the South--a cotton-field in the hot sunshine, with a gang
of slaves toiling under the lash of an overseer. This might have been a
fancy picture, and it might not. At any rate, it was real to him. There
was, however, no overseer now, and no lash; no slaves and very little
toil. The negroes would work only when they pleased, and that was
generally not at all. There was no doubt but that they were almost
hopelessly improvident and lazy. "Entirely so," said the planters. "Not
quite," said the Northern schoolmaster. And therein lay the difference
between them.

David lighted his fire of pitch-pine, spread his little table, and began
to cook his supper carefully. When it was nearly ready, he heard a knock
at his gate. Two representative specimens of his scholars were waiting
without--Jim, a field-hand, and a woman named Esther, who had been a
house-servant in a planter's family. Jim had come "to borry an axe,"
and Esther to ask for medicine for a sick child.

"Where is your own axe, Jim?" said the schoolmaster.

"Somehow et's rusty, sah. Dey gets rusty mighty quick."

"Of course, because you always leave them out in the rain. When will you
learn to take care of your axes?"

"Don' know, mars."

"I have told you not to call me master," said David. "I am not your
master."

"You's schoolmars, I reckon,