She showed “Dodd” how to divide the handful of beans into little bunches of three each, and how to lay each pile by itself along the top of the desk, and then left him to be amused according to the rule in such cases made and provided.

Now it is admitted, right here, that beans are not a strictly Kindergarten “property”—­to bring a stage term into the schoolroom—­but one seldom sees genuine Kindergarten properties, or hardly ever, even in St. Louis, and beans are so commonly used as above stated, that it can hardly be the fault of the harmless vegetable that Miss Stone’s plan did not succeed exactly as she wished it to.  The fact is, “Dodd” knew how to count before he went to school, and could even add and subtract fairly, as was shown by his doing errands at the store for his mother and counting the change which he brought back to her.  The bean business was therefore mere nonsense to him.  He turned up his nose at the inoffensive kidney-shaped pellets before him, and his reverence for the dignity of the schoolroom and his faith in Miss Stone fell several degrees in a few minutes.

Perhaps it would not have been so in Boston.  In that city, I am told, the bean is held in such reverence by all grown-up people that one might well expect to see the quality descend to all children, as a natural inheritance.  But Circleville is not Boston, and there are thousands of other towns in these United States that are like Circleville in this respect.

However, “Dodd” sat idly moving the beans about for some time.  He was quiet, and gradually Miss Stone forgot him in the press of other thoughts.  To be plain, she had recently joined an Art Club, an organization composed of a few ladies in the little village, women whose husbands were well-to-do, and who, being childless, were restless and anxious to “become developed.”  Miss Stone was a member of this club, and in a few days she was to read a paper on “Giunta Pisano, and his probable relation to Cimabue,” and the subject was working her mightily, for she was anxious to have her production longer than Miss Blossom’s, read at the last meet, and to secure this was no small task.  She had been to the “up-stairs room” during recess and brought down the cyclopedia, and, happily, had found a page and a half regarding Giunta Pisano therein, which she was copying verbatim.  To be sure, there was no word in it about Cimabue, or the relation of the one to the other, but this was not taken into account.  There were plenty of words in the article, and that was the chief end just then.

So Miss Stone was soon busy with her pen, the index finger of her left hand noting the line in the cyclopedia which should be next transcribed.  The children whispered and played a good deal, but she paid little heed.  There was little danger of visitors, for no one visited schools in Circleville (how like all other towns it is in this respect!) and Miss Stone knew how to hustle classes through recitations and make time on a down grade just before dinner, and so took her time at her task of writing up poor old Giunta.