There was prim Miss Spinacher, thin as a lath and bony, with hands that you could almost see through and fingers that rattled against each other when she shook one threateningly at a boy or girl.  She had a hobby of keeping her pupils perpetually front face, and of having them sit up straight all the time, with folded arms, so that her school room always had the appearance of a deal board stuck full of stiff pegs, all in rows, every one as tight in its place as a wedge and never to be moved on any account whatever.

Right opposite to the school house where this woman taught was a rich man’s residence, in the front yard of which there stood a marble statue, a bronze deer, a cast-iron dog and a stone rabbit.  “Dodd” used to look over to these when he was very tired from sitting up so straight so long, and wish that Miss Spinacher had a roomful of such for pupils.  It would have been as well for her and “Dodd” and the rest of the school if she had.  Perhaps it would have been better!  Yet you all know Miss Spinacher, don’t you, ladies and gentlemen?

Again, he fell into the hands of Mr. Sliman, whose sole end and aim in life as a school teacher was the extermination of whispering.  For this purpose he had devised a set of rules, which he had printed in full and sent all over town to every patron of the school.

The “self-reporting” system was the hobby of this man.  “Dodd” told the truth to him for a few evenings, at roll-call, acknowledging that he had whispered, as he and all the rest of the pupils had; but he soon observed that it was the custom of most of the boys and girls to falsify about their conduct, and that they got great glory thereby.

He took up this custom himself ere long.  It troubled his conscience a good deal at first, but by dint of constant daily practice he got so that he could look his teacher squarely in the eye and answer “perfect” as well as any one, even if he had whispered the whole day through, and knew that the man who recorded his mark knew he had and set down a clean record for the sake of having a good score to show to visitors!

Oh, Mr. Sliman, you were very sharp, weren’t you?  You thought you did your little trick so cleverly that no one would find you out, but your kind always think that!

It did make a fine showing for visitors, this clean whispering record of yours, and it was a fine thing for you to talk about at teachers’ meetings, where you boasted to your fellows of what you had done, and looked so honest, and made them all feel so envious, as you drew forth your record-book from next your shiny shirt-bosom, and showed how there was no denying your statement, for the testimony was all down in black and white!  It was all very nice, but it was very, very bad, for all that.

You knew it was, too, and most of us who heard you brag knew it was; but that didn’t make very much difference, because we were old and could stand it, and as for you—­the less said the better.