CHAPTER I

A PRIVATE LESSON FROM A BULLDOG.

“Want to be a school-master, do you?  You?  Well, what would you do in Flat Crick deestrick, I’d like to know?  Why, the boys have driv off the last two, and licked the one afore them like blazes.  You might teach a summer school, when nothin’ but children come.  But I ’low it takes a right smart man to be school-master in Flat Crick in the winter.  They’d pitch you out of doors, sonny, neck and heels, afore Christmas.”

The young man, who had walked ten miles to get the school in this district, and who had been mentally reviewing his learning at every step he took, trembling lest the committee should find that he did not know enough, was not a little taken aback at this greeting from “old Jack Means,” who was the first trustee that he lighted on.  The impression made by these ominous remarks was emphasized by the glances which he received from Jack Means’s two sons.  The older one eyed him from the top of his brawny shoulders with that amiable look which a big dog turns on a little one before shaking him.  Ralph Hartsook had never thought of being measured by the standard of muscle.  This notion of beating education into young savages in spite of themselves dashed his ardor.

He had walked right to where Jack Means was at work shaving shingles in his own front yard.  While Mr. Means was making the speech which we have set down above, and punctuating it with expectorations, a large brindle bulldog had been sniffing at Ralph’s heels, and a girl in a new linsey-woolsey dress, standing by the door, had nearly giggled her head off at the delightful prospect of seeing a new school-teacher eaten up by the ferocious brute.

The disheartening words of the old man, the immense muscles of the young man who was to be his rebellious pupil, the jaws of the ugly bulldog, and the heartless giggle of the girl, gave Ralph a delightful sense of having precipitated himself into a den of wild beasts.  Faint with weariness and discouragement, and shivering with fear, he sat down on a wheelbarrow.

“You, Bull!” said the old man to the dog, which was showing more and more a disposition to make a meal of the incipient pedagogue, “you, Bull! git aout[2], you pup!” The dog walked sullenly off, but not until he had given Ralph a look full of promise of what he meant to do when he got a good chance.  Ralph wished himself back in the village of Lewisburg, whence he had come.

“You see,” continued Mr. Means, spitting in a meditative sort of a way, “you see, we a’n’t none of your saft sort in these diggings.  It takes a man to boss this deestrick.  Howsumdever, ef you think you kin trust your hide in Flat Crick school-house I ha’n’t got no ’bjection.  But ef you git licked, don’t come on us.  Flat Crick don’t pay no ’nsurance, you bet!  Any other trustees?  Wal, yes.  But as I pay the most taxes, t’others jist let