“I called in to tell you that I can’t vote for appinting you to this school next term.  Fact is the ladies are dead against you; don’t see you at meeting on the Sabbath; say you go to the Catholic Church with the Irish and Dutch.  I a’n’t a word to say agen you myself.  This is a free country; every man can go, for aught I care, whichever way he darn chooses—­to heaven, or hell, or any other place.  But I want to be peaceable, and I can’t get no peace about voting for you next term, so I thought I’d let you know, that you mightn’t be disappointed.”

In that way Mr. Rogers washed his hands of me.  I said I was sorry I did not please the ladies, but I liked to hear a man who spoke his mind freely.

Soon afterwards the Germans brought me word that the Yankees were calling a meeting about me.  I was aware by this time that when a special gathering of citizens takes place to discuss the demerits of any individual, it is advisable for that individual to be absent if possible; but curiosity was strong within me; hitherto I had never been honoured with any public notice whatever, and I attended the meeting uninvited.

The Yankees are excellent orators; they are born without bashfulness; they are taught to speak pieces in school from their childhood; they pronounce each word distinctly; they use correctly the rising inflection and the falling inflection.  Moreover, they are always in deadly earnest; there is another miserable world awaiting their arrival.  Their humorists are the most unhappy of men.  You may smile when you read their jokes, but when you see the jokers you are more inclined to weep.  With pain and sorrow they grind, like Samson, at the jokers’ mill all the days of their lives.

The meeting was held in the new two-storey school-house.

Deacon Beaumont took the chair—­my chair—­and Mr Curtis was appointed secretary.  I began to hate Deacon Beaumont, as also Mr. Curtis, who was the only other teacher present; it was evident they were going to put him in my place.

Each speaker on rising put his left hand in the side pocket of his pants.  I was not mentioned by name, but nevertheless I was given clearly to understand that I had been reared in a land whose people are under the dominion of a tyrannical monarch and a bloated aristocracy; that therefore I had never breathed the pure air of freedom, and was unfitted to teach the children of the Great Republic.

Mr. Tucker, an influential citizen, moved finally that the school managers be instructed to engage a Mr. Sellars, of Dresden, as teacher at the West Joliet School.  He said Mr. Sellars was a young man from New England who had been teaching for a term at Dresden, and had given great satisfaction.  He had the best testimony to the character and ability of the young man from his own daughter, Miss Priscilla Tucker, who had been school marm in the same school, and was now home on a visit.  She could give, from her own personal knowledge, any information the managers might require.