and about as sharp, tough, juiceless, and biting to deal with as the other is to the taste.  Silas Peckham kept a young ladies’ school exactly as he would have kept a hundred head of cattle,—­for the simple, unadorned purpose of making just as much money in just as few years as could be safely done.  Mr. Peckham gave very little personal attention to the department of instruction, but was always busy with contracts for flour and potatoes, beef and pork, and other nutritive staples, the amount of which required for such an establishment was enough to frighten a quartermaster.  Mrs. Peckham was from the West, raised on Indian corn and pork, which give a fuller outline and a more humid temperament, but may perhaps be thought to render people a little coarse-fibred.  Her specialty was to look after the feathering, cackling, roosting, rising, and general behavior of these hundred chicks.  An honest, ignorant woman, she could not have passed an examination in the youngest class.  So this distinguished institution was under the charge of a commissary and a housekeeper, and its real business was making money by taking young girls in as boarders.

Connected with this, however, was the incidental fact, which the public took for the principal one, namely, the business of instruction.  Mr. Peckham knew well enough that it was just as well to have good instructors as bad ones, so far as cost was concerned, and a great deal better for the reputation of his feeding-establishment.  He tried to get the best he could without paying too much, and, having got them, to screw all the work out of them that could possibly be extracted.

There was a master for the English branches, with a young lady assistant.  There was another young lady who taught French, of the ahvaung and baundahng style, which does not exactly smack of the asphalt of the Boulevards.  There was also a German teacher of music, who sometimes helped in French of the ahfaung and bauntaung style,—­so that, between the two, the young ladies could hardly have been mistaken for Parisians, by a Committee of the French Academy.  The German teacher also taught a Latin class after his fashion,—­benna, a ben, gahboot, ahead, and so forth.

The master for the English branches had lately left the school for private reasons, which need not be here mentioned,—­but he had gone, at any rate, and it was his place which had been offered to Mr. Bernard Langdon.  The offer came just in season,—­as, for various causes, he was willing to leave the place where he had begun his new experience.

It was on a fine morning that Mr. Bernard, ushered in by Mr. Peckham, made his appearance in the great schoolroom of the Apollinean Institute.  A general rustle ran all round the seats when the handsome young man was introduced.  The principal carried him to the desk of the young lady English assistant, Miss Darley by name, and introduced him to her.