Bessie seemed to become calmer after she had looked around the room once
in a hasty, fluttered way, and placing a chair for me, she threw herself
energetically into her philanthropic work.

I never knew before what a serious thing it was to be a Sunday-school
teacher, or how varied the requirements for such duty were. Thirst seemed
to be a prevailing agony among the scholars, and it seized its victims as
an epidemic does--without warning. They would just reach their seats and
drop into them listlessly, or gain them by energetic contest with some
previous intruder, and after an empty stare around them would be taken
with a sudden pang, expressed in writhing, shaking the right hand wildly
and gasping, "Teacher, I want a drink! I want a drink!"

Then they were subject to a terrible vacillation on the subject of their
hats: they would almost consign them to the care of a monitor appointed to
hang them on the pegs made and provided, when a sense of their
preciousness would suddenly present itself to their minds, and they would
rescue them wildly, and throw themselves on the defensive while they sat
upon or otherwise protected the contested article of dress.

There were six windows with broad sills in the room, and every child
seemed beset with a passionate desire to leave its seat and lodge itself
in a surreptitious manner on one of these perches, as if they had been
posts of honor.

Whether bits of bright tin, glass bottle-stoppers, ends of twine, broken
sticks and marbles were accessions to biblical instruction, or were only
so considered by the pupils themselves, did not transpire, but poor Bessie
seemed to find them stumbling-blocks in her path, and Miss Pepper had no