ment of pain was gently taken from its elevation. The master spoke: "You promise, do you?" "Yis, sir,-oh! yis, sir." The tight grasp was withdrawn from the collar. "Put on your frock and jacket, and go to your seat. The rest of you may open your books again." The school breathed again. Paper rustled, feet were carefully moved, the seats slightly cracked, and all things went stilly on as before. Abijah kept his promise. He became an altered boy; obedient, peaceable, studious. This long and slow process of preparing for the punishment was artfully designed by the master, gradually to work up the boy's terrors and agonizing expectations to the highest pitch, until he should yield like a babe to the intensity of his emotions. His stubborn nature, which had been like an oak on the hills which no storm could prostrate, was whittled away and demolished, as it were, sliver by sliver.

Not Abijah Wilkins only, but the whole school were subdued to the most humble and habitual obedience by the scene I have described. The terror of it seemed to abide in their hearts. The school improved much this winter, that is, according to the ideas of improvement then prevailing. Lessons were well gotten, and well said, although the why and the wherefore of them were not asked or given.

Mr. Johnson was employed the next winter also, and it was the prevailing wish that he should be engaged for the third time; but he could not be

obtained. His reputation as a teacher had secured for him a school at twenty dollars per month for the year round, in a distant village; so we were never more to sit "as still as mice," in his most magisterial presence. For years the saying in the district, in respect to him was, "He was the best master I ever went to; he kept such good order, and punished so little."

CHAPTER XV.

GOING OUT-MAKING

BOWS-BOYS COMING IN-GIRLS

GOING OUT AND COMING IN.

THE young are proverbially ignorant of the value of time. There is one portion of it, however, which they well know how to appreciate. They feel it to be a wealth both to body and soul. Its few moments are truly golden ones, forming a glittering spot amid the drossy dullness of in-school duration. I refer to the forenoon and afternoon recess for

going out." Consider that we came from all the freedom of the farm, where we had the sweep of acres-hills, valleys, woods, and waters, and were crowded, I may say packed, into the district box. Each one had scarcely more space than would allow him to shift his head from an inclination to one shoulder to an inclination to the other, or from leaning on the right elbow, to leaning on the left. There we were, the blood of health bouncing through our veins, feeding our strength, swelling our dimensions; and there we must stay, three hours on a stretch, with the exception of the aforementioned recess. No wonder that we should prize this brief period high, and rush tumultuously out doors to enjoy it.

There is one circumstance in going out which so much amuses my recollection, that I will venture to describe it to my readers. It is the making of our bows, or manners, as it is called. If one wishes to see variety in the doing of a single act, let him look at school-boys, leaving their bows at the door. Tell me not of the diversities and characteristics, of the gentilities and the awkwardnesses in the civility of shaking hands. The bow is as diversified and characteristic, as awkward or genteel, as any movement many-motioned man is called on to make. Especially in a country school, where fashion and politeness have not altered the tendencies of nature by forming the manners of all after one model of propriety. Besides, the bow was before the shake, both in the history of the world, and in that of every individual man. No doubt the world's first gentleman, nature-taught, declined his head in some sort, in saluting for the first time the world's first lady, in primitive Eden. And no doubt every little boy has been instructed to make a "nice bow," from chubby Cain, Abel and Seth, down to the mannered younglings of the present day.

Well, then, it is near half-past ten, A. M., but seemingly eleven to the impatient youngters; anticipation rather than reflection, being the faculty most in action just now. At last the master takes out his watch, and gives a hasty glance at the index of the hour. Or, if this premonitory symptom does not appear, watching eyes can discern the signs of the time in the face relaxing itself from

severe duty, and in the moving lips just assuming that precise form necessary to pronounce the sentence of liberation. Then, make ready, take aim, is at once the order of every idler. "The boys may go out." The little white heads on the little seat, as it is called, are the foremost, having nothing in front to impede a straight-forward sally. One little nimble-foot is at the door in an instant; and, as he lifts the latch, he tosses off a bow over his left shoulder, and is out in a twinkling. The next perhaps squares himself towards the master with more precision, not having his attention divided between opening the door and leaving his manners. Next comes the very least of the little, just in front of the big-boy rush behind him, tap-tapping and tottering along the floor, with his finger in his nose; but, in wheeling from his bow, he blunders head first through the door, in his anxiety to get out of the way of the impending throng of fists and knees behind, in avoiding which he is prostrated under the tramp of cowhide.

Now come the Bigs from behind the writing benches. Some of them make a bow with a jerk of the head and snap of the neck possible only to giddy-brained, oily-jointed boyhood. Some, whose mothers are of the precise cast, or who have had their manners stiffened at a dancing-school, will wait till the throng is a little thinned; and then they will strut out with their arms as straight at their sides as if there were no such things as elbows, and will let their upper person bend upon the middle