Accordingly she wrote out the letters of the alphabet with large simplicity and a sublime renunciation of flourish.  The class received it tepidly.  Mary grew eloquent over its unswerving verities.  The class remained lukewarm.  The difference between a and b was a matter of indifference to the house of Yellett.  They regarded their teacher’s strenuous efforts to furnish a key to the acquirement of the alphabet with the amused superiority of “grown-ups” watching infant antics with pencil and paper.  Meanwhile her fear of the class increased in proportion as her ability to hold its attention diminished.  The backbone of the school was plainly wilting.  The little scholars, armed to the teeth, no longer sat up straight as tenpins.  After twenty-five minutes of educational experience, satiety bowled them over.

A single glance had convinced Ben that the alphabet was beneath contempt.  He yawned automatically at regular intervals—­long, dismal yawns that threatened to terminate in a howl, the unchecked, primitive type of yawn that one hears in the cages of the zoological gardens on a dull day.  Miss Carmichael raised interrogatory eyebrows, but she might as well have looked reproof at a Bengal tiger.

The class was rapidly promoted to c-a-t, cat; but these dizzy intellectual heights left them cold and dull.  Ben began to clean his revolver, and on being asked why he did not pay attention to his lessons, answered, briefly: 

“It’s all d——­d foolishness.”

Cacta and Clem were pulling each other’s hair.  Mary affected not to see this sisterly exchange of torture.  Ned whittled a stick; and, in chorus, when their teacher told them that d-o-g spelled dog, they shouted derision, and affirmed that they had no difficulty in compelling the obedience of Stump even without this particular bit of erudition.  Though Mary had always abhorred corporal punishment, she began to see arguments in its favor.

With the handleless tub as an elbow-rest the teacher took counsel with herself.  Strategy must be employed with the intellectual conquest of the Brobdingnags.  Summoning all the pedagogical dignity of which she was capable, she asked: 

“Boys, don’t you want to know how to read?”

“Noap,” responded the head of the class.

“Don’t you want to know how to write?”

“Noap.”

“But, my dear boy, what would you do if you left here and went out into the world, where every one knows these things and your ignorance would be evident at every turn.  What would you do?”

“Slug the whole blamed outfit!”

Mary looked at her watch.  School had lasted just forty-five minutes.  Had time become petrified?

XIV

Judith Adjusts The Situation