Peter’s reputation for hopelessness began when he went to school, but it didn’t end there.  He really was somewhat of a trial to an average school-teacher, who very often knows less of the human nature of a child than any other created being.  Peter used the carelessly good-and-easy English one inherits in the South, but he couldn’t understand the written rules of grammar to save his life; he was totally indifferent as to which states bounded and bordered which; and he had been known to spell “physician” with an f and two z’s.  But it was when confronted by a sum that Peter stood revealed in his true colors of a dunce!

“A boy buys chestnuts at one dollar and sixty cents the bushel and sells them at ten cents the quart, liquid measure.—­Peter Champneys, what does he get?”

Peter Champneys stood up, and reflected.

“It all depends on the judge, and whether the boy’s a white boy or a nigger,” he decided.  “It’s against the law to use liquid measure, you know.  But I should think he’d get about thirty days, if he’s a nigger.”

Whereupon Peter Champneys went to the principal with a note, and received what was coming to him.  When he returned to his seat, which was decidedly not comfortable just then, the teacher smiled a real, sure-enough schoolma’am smile, and remarked that she hoped our brilliant scholar, Mister Champneys, knew now what the boy got for his chestnuts.  The class laughed as good scholars are expected to laugh on such occasions.  Peter came to the conclusion that Herod, Nero, Bluebeard, and The Cruel Stepmother all probably began their bright careers as school-teachers.

Peter was a friendly child who didn’t have the useful art of making friends.  He used to watch more gifted children wistfully.  He would so much have liked to play familiarly with the pretty, impertinent, pigtailed little girls, the bright, noisy, cock-sure little boys; but he didn’t know how to set about it, and they didn’t in the least encourage him to try.  Children aren’t by any means angels to one another.  They are, as often as not, quite the reverse.  Peter was loath to assert himself, and he was shoved aside as the gentle and the just usually are.

Being a loving child, he fell back upon the lesser creatures, and discovered that the Little Brothers do not judge one upon hearsay, or clothes, or personal appearance.  Theirs is the infallible test:  one must be kind if one wishes to gain and to hold their love.

Martin Luther helped teach Peter that.  Peter discovered Martin Luther, a shivering gray midget, in the cold dusk of a November evening, on the Riverton Road.  The little beast rubbed against his legs, stuck up a ridiculous tail, and mewed hopefully.  Peter, who needed friendliness himself, was unable to resist that appeal.  He buttoned the forlorn kitten inside his old jacket, and, feeling the grateful warmth of his body, it cuddled and purred.  The wise little cat didn’t care the tip of a mouse’s tail whether or not Peter was the congenital dunce his teacher had declared him to be, only that morning.  The kitten knew he was just the sort of boy to show compassion to lost kittens, and trusted and loved him at sight.