y men and women of all stations, and even
children. Each citizen was ready, nay, forward, in taking an active part
in all political movements, and the children mimicked their elders. Old
William Farris read his news of a morning before he began the mending of
his watches, and by evening had so well digested them that he was primed
for discussion with Pryse, of the opposite persuasion, at the Rose and
Crown. Sol Mogg, the sexton of St. Anne's, had his beloved Gazette in
his pocket as he tolled the church bell of a Thursday, and would hold
forth on the rights and liberties of man with the carpenter who mended
the steeple. Mrs. Willard could talk of Grenville and Townshend as
knowingly as her husband, the rich factor, and Francie Willard made many
a speech to us younger Sons of Liberty on the steps of King William's
School. We younger sons, indeed, declared bitter war against the
mother-country long before our conservative old province ever dreamed of
secession. For Maryland was well pleased with his Lordship's government.

I fear that I got at King William's School learning of a far different
sort than pleased my grandfather. In those days the school stood upon
the Stadt House hill near School Street, not having moved to its present
larger quarters. Mr. Isaac Daaken was then Master, and had under him
some eighty scholars. After all these years, Mr. Daaken stands before me
a prominent figure of the past in an ill-fitting suit of snuff colour.
How well I recall that schoolroom of a bright morning, the sun's rays
shot hither and thither, and split violet, green, and red by the bulging
glass panes of the windows. And by a strange irony it so chanced that
where the dominie sat--and he moved not the whole morning long save to
reach for his birches--the crimson ray would often rest on the end of
his long nose, and the word "rum" be passed tittering along the benches.
For some men are born to the mill, and others to the mitre, and still
others to the sceptre; but Mr. 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, wi