whaling-ground. An auger had been added to the meager outfit, and long
after the sea had leaked through the hole bored through her bottom,
and swallowed her, and the insurance had been paid, the truth leaked
out that the captain had received instructions, which had been
fulfilled. Whereupon two Insurance Companies went to law with him, and
a suit ensued, which ended in their paying costs, in addition to what
they had before paid Squire Alden, who winked in a derisive manner at
the Board of Directors when he received its check.

There were others who belonged in the category of Decayed Families,
as exclusive as they were shabby. There were parvenus, which included
myself. When I entered the school it was divided into clans, each
with its spites, jealousies, and emulations. Its _esprit de corps_,
however, was developed by my arrival; the girls united against me, and
though I perceived, when I compared myself with them, that they were
partly right in their opinions, their ridicule stupefied and crushed
me. They were trained, intelligent, and adroit; I uncouth, ignorant,
and without tact. It was impossible for Miss Black not to be affected
by the general feeling in regard to me. Her pupils knew sooner than I
that she sympathized with them. She embarrassed me, when I should have
despised her. At first her regimen surprised, then filled me with a
dumb, clouded anger, which made me appear apathetic.

Miss Emily Black was a young woman, and, I thought, a handsome one.
She had crenelated black hair, large black eyes, a Roman nose,
and long white teeth. She bit her nails when annoyed, and when her
superiority made her perceive the mental darkness of others she often
laughed. Being pious, she conducted her school after the theologic
pattern of the Nipswich Seminary, at which she had been educated.
She opened the school each day with a religious exercise, reading