146 THE EMIGRANT YOUTH.

been the worst teachers who have most anxiously
settled their preliminaries. I must not conceal that,
on the first evening, about twilight, our young school-
master walked very gravely into the meadows, and
returned with two very smooth birchen rods, the
use of which he never communicated. But; as he
trimmed off the ends of these wands and put them into
his desk, it is said that he smiled. No president of a
college ever felt more weighty responsibilities.

Carl was glad that his pupils were all boys. The
management of little girls would"have given him some
embarrassment. His German accent had not wholly
forsaken him ; but he was at an age when peculiarities
of this sort wear away rapidly; and it is not every one
who would have detected his foreign origin. Now and
then, a stray farmer or labouring-man would look in at
the door, with or without reason ; and this was slightly
embarrassing to the young preceptor: but his mind
was more and more taken up with the responsible
business of teaching. Pens were to be made and
mended. Sums, as the children call all arithmetical
questions, were to be set or examined ; paper-chickens,
fly-traps, and apples were to be seized upon ; untidy
faces and hands were to be sent out to the well. Then
was the common round of reading, spelling, geography,
and grammar; the common adjudication of cases
Tespecting crooked pins and scourging ; and the com-
mon rebukes of idle or quarrelsome children. Not a