to the size of your bank
account and the number of your horses and servants. In the one the
teachers were educators, free to develop superior methods along their
own original lines; in the other they were mere machines to carry out
the ironclad rules of the opinionated precedent-hunting school board.

In the former all seemed like one great family sympathizing and
loving; in the latter the newly-rich set the pace of ignoble luxury
and display; while the others aped their ways which led many to
bankruptcy, poverty, and misery. In the one you were free from all
social ostracism if you worshipped according to the dictates of your
own conscience; in the other you were ignored and disliked unless you
attended and contributed liberally for the support of the palatial
orthodox church.

I was early told that I would fail if I persisted in attending the
little Unitarian church; but I preferred failure to hypocrisy, and
would not sell my birthright of conscience for a mess of pottage.
Two of my ancient, sour-faced assistants were bigoted members of the
fashionable church, and at once set me down as a corruptor of youth
because I was an advocate of the liberal faith. The venomous spite of
one of these forcibly suggested the spirit of the inquisition, and one
day she found her blackboard decorated with the following truthful
poem, suggested by her spirit and the first syllable of her name:

"Old Aunt Dunk
Is a mean old skunk."

She flew into a furious rage, declared that some Unitarian must have
perpetrated this insult, and that I must find the culprit.

She never forgave me because I failed to do so, and at her urgent
solicitation the minister, after great exertion, secured a few
signatures to a petition for my discharge on the plea that I chewed
tobacco and expectorated on the floor in the presence of my class.
As I easily proved that I never chewed tobacco, and as my patrons
presented an overwhelming protest, the prayer of the petitioners was
unanimously refused by the school board.

It would have been laughable had it not been so serious and pitiful,
to see the frantic attempts of the poor in this town to keep up
appearances, and counterfeit the style of those who had grown rich by
cheating widows and orphans in bucket shops and stock gambling. The
little minnows put on all the snobbish airs of the whales who had
grown so large by devouring all the small fish in their business seas.

One pillar of the church, who w