He was the orphan nephew of two farmers in the district, men who had taken turns in caring for him during his childhood.  These men were school directors and had been elected to their positions for the very purpose of getting Amos to teach the “fall-and-winter school.”  This had further been made possible by the fact that two winters before the young man had “got religion,” and his friends in the church had an eye on him for the ministry.  To work him toward this goal they had resolved that he, being poor, should teach their school to fill his purse; and so glorify God through the school fund, and his uncles had been chosen directors to that end.

Hush!  Don’t say a word!  The thing is done, time and again, all over the country!

The matter had been set up for the year before, but the examiner of teachers had vetoed the plan by refusing a certificate to teach to the young man who talked so much and knew so little.  This official had asked the candidate, when he came for examination, to add together 2/3, 3/4, 5/6, and 7/8, whereupon he wrote:  “Since you cannot reduce these fractions to a common denominator, I adopt the method of multiplying the numerators together for a new numerator, and the denominators together for a new denominator=210/576!  This, reduced to the greatest common divisor, or, add numerators and denominators=17/21!”

Please do not think that I am jesting, for I have copied this quotation verbatim from a set of examination papers that lie before me as I write, papers that were written before the very face and eyes of an examiner in this great State of Illinois, by a bona fide candidate for a certificate, on the 16th day of December, in the year of grace, 1875; the man who wrote them being over thirty years of age and having taught school for more than half a decade!  This is a truthful tale, if nothing else.

So Amos did not teach the first year that his friends and relations wanted him to.  His friends and relations, however, had their own way about it after all, for they met and resolved that it should be “Amos or nobody,” and they got the latter.  That is, they asked the examiner to send them a teacher if he would not let them have the one they wanted.

The examiner asked them what they would pay for a good teacher and they replied, “Twenty dollars a month!” The poor man sent them the best he had for that money, but it was of so poor a quality that it could ill stand the strain put upon it by the wrangling and angered patrons of “deestrick four,” and it broke down before the school had run a month.

This year they had tried the same thing again, and the examiner, in sheer despair, gave them their way, as perhaps the lesser of two evils.

If any one thinks this an unnatural picture, please address, stamp enclosed, any one of the one hundred and two county superintendents of schools in Illinois, and if you don’t get what you want to know, then try Iowa, or Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or even the old Bay State.  The quality is largely distributed, and specimens can be picked up in almost any locality where it is made possible by the system that permits such a condition.