sometimes into the cheerful academy hall, sometimes under the shade of
the noble oaks, where we would study botany close to nature's heart
amid the songs of birds and the sublime chanting of the tree-tops.

We gave musical and dramatic entertainments, securing ample funds to
decorate the walls of our hall with works of art; we went on rides
together in barges, drank in long draughts of inspiration from the
glorious scenery, and studied geology, practically, like, if not equal
to Hugh Miller, among the rocks and boulders. I was doing good, and
here I should have remained; but the old unrest came back to me, and I
unwisely accepted a much larger salary in teaching in my native county
of Essex.

As soon as I took command of my two hundred boys and girls in B----,
I realized how vast is the contrast between free and unrestricted
educating, and the grind of cramming according to the ironclad rule of
the public school system.

Many children are so crammed with everything that they really
know nothing. In proof of this, read these veritable specimens of
definitions, written by public school children that very year in
another school of this town.

"Stability is the taking care of a stable."

"A mosquito is the child of black and white parents."

"Monastery is the place for monsters."

"Tocsin is something to do with getting drunk."

"Expostulation is to have the smallpox."

"Cannible is two brothers who killed each other in the
Bible."

"Anatomy is the human body, which consists of three parts,
the head, the chist and the stummick. The head contains the
eyes and brains, if any; the chist contains the lungs and a
piece of the liver. The stummick is devoted to the bowels, of
which there are five, a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes w, and y."

Every teacher was rated according to his ability to secure from his
pupils a high percentage in examinations for promotion.

I grew restless under the restraints imposed by a committee of
incompetents; besides, the minister who was chairman of the Board,
considered a Unitarian to be an infidel, demoralizing the religious
life of the young. I grew tired of his malicious peccadillos, and
accepted a "louder" call from that quaint town where the historic
Lloyd Ireson "with his hord horrt was torrd and futhered und Korrid in
a Kort by the wimmun o' Marrble ed."

Here I had one hundred boys in one room, many of whom went fishing in
summer to get up muscle to lic