leather-flaps of the “bags” and seeing a wooden cartridge-box, with holes for the death-dealing vials; and last, but not least, the town blacksmith, who was, in fact, worth all the other trustees put together, being a man of sound common sense, with something more than a sprinkling of useful education.  Under the auspices of these trustees, this “man-school” was thus opened for the winter.  “Now look you what befell.”

For the first four or five days, our schoolmaster was quite amiable—­or so at least he seemed.  His “rules,” and they were arbitrary enough, were given out on the second day; five scholars were “admonished” on the third; on the fourth, about a dozen were “warned,” as the pedagogue termed it; and on the fifth, there was set up in the corner of an open closet, in plain sight of all the school, a bundle containing about a dozen birch switches, each some six feet long, and rendered lithe and tough by being tempered in the hot embers of the fire.  These were to be the “ministers of justice;” and the portents of this “dreadful note of preparation” were amply fulfilled.

I had just begun to learn to write.  My copy-book had four pages of “straight marks,” so called, I suppose, because they are always crooked.  I had also gone through “the hooks,” up and down; but my hand was cramped; and I fear that my first “word-copy” was not as good as it ought to have been; but I “run out my tongue and tried” hard; and it makes me laugh, even now, to remember how I used to look along the line of “writing-scholars” on my bench, and see the rows of lolling tongues and moving heads over the long desk, mastering the first difficulties of chirography; some licking off “blots” of ink from their copy-books, others drawing in or dropping slowly out of the mouth, at each upward or downward “stroke” of the pen.

One morning, “the master” came behind me and overlooked my writing—­

“Louis,” said he, “if I see any more such writing as that, you’ll repent it!  I’ve talked to you long enough.”

I replied that he had never, to my recollection, blamed me for writing badly but once; nor had he.

“Don’t dare to contradict me, sir, but remember!” was his only reply.

From this moment, I could scarcely hold my pen aright, much less “write right.”  The master had a cat-like, stealthy tread, and I seemed all the while to feel him behind me; and while I was fearing this, and had reached the end of a line, there fell across my right hand a diagonal blow, from the fierce whip which was the tyrant’s constant companion, that in a moment rose to a red and blue welt as large as my little finger, entirely across my hand.  The pain was excruciating.  I can recall the feeling as vividly, while I am tracing these lines, as I did the moment after the cruel blow was inflicted.