There had to be a spelling-school.  Not only for the sake of my story, which would not have been worth the telling if the spelling-school had not taken place, but because Flat Creek district had to have a spelling-school.  It is the only public literary exercise known in Hoopole County.  It takes the place of lyceum lecture and debating club.  Sis Means, or, as she wished now to be called, Mirandy Means, expressed herself most positively in favor of it.  She said that she ’lowed the folks in that district couldn’t in no wise do without it.  But it was rather to its social than to its intellectual benefits that she referred.  For all the spelling-schools ever seen could not enable her to stand anywhere but at the foot of the class.  There is one branch diligently taught in a backwoods school.  The public mind seems impressed with the difficulties of English orthography, and there is a solemn conviction that the chief end of man is to learn to spell. “’Know Webster’s Elementary’ came down from Heaven,” would be the backwoods version of the ’Greek saying but that, unfortunately for the Greeks, their fame has not reached so far.  It often happens that the pupil does not know the meaning of a single word in the lesson.  This is of no consequence.  What do you want to know the meaning of a word for?  Words were made to be spelled, and men were probably created that they might spell them.  Hence the necessity for sending a pupil through the spelling-book five times before you allow him to begin to read, or indeed to do anything else.  Hence the necessity for those long spelling-classes at the close of each forenoon and afternoon session of the school, to stand at the head of which is the cherished ambition of every scholar.  Hence, too, the necessity for devoting the whole of the afternoon session of each Friday to a “spelling-match.”  In fact, spelling is the “national game” in Hoopole County.  Baseball and croquet matches are as unknown as Olympian chariot-races.  Spelling and shucking[10] are the only public competitions.

So the fatal spelling-school had to be appointed for the Wednesday of the second week of the session, just when Ralph felt himself master of the situation.  Not that he was without his annoyances.  One of Ralph’s troubles in the week before the spelling-school was that he was loved.  The other that he was hated.  And while the time between the appointing of the spelling tournament and the actual occurrence of that remarkable event is engaged in elapsing, let me narrate two incidents that made it for Ralph a trying time.

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