view of them. This constant cheating of his vision, this deferring of
his hope, in time made his heart sick, and he gradually relapsed into
his old hatred of books and schools and school teachers and all that
pertained thereto.

There was prim Miss Spinacher, thin as a lath and bony, with hands that
you could almost see through and fingers that rattled against each
other when she shook one threateningly at a boy or girl. She had a
hobby of keeping her pupils perpetually front face, and of having them
sit up straight all the time, with folded arms, so that her school room
always had the appearance of a deal board stuck full of stiff pegs, all
in rows, every one as tight in its place as a wedge and never to be
moved on any account whatever.

Right opposite to the school house where this woman taught was a rich
man's residence, in the front yard of which there stood a marble
statue, a bronze deer, a cast-iron dog and a stone rabbit. "Dodd" used
to look over to these when he was very tired from sitting up so
straight so long, and wish that Miss Spinacher had a roomful of such
for pupils. It would have been as well for her and "Dodd" and the rest
of the school if she had. Perhaps it would have been better! Yet you
all know Miss Spinacher, don't you, ladies and gentlemen?

Again, he fell into the hands of Mr. Sliman, whose sole end and aim in
life as a school teacher was the extermination of whispering. For this
purpose he had devised a set of rules, which he had printed in full and
sent all over town to every patron of the school.

The "self-reporting" system was the hobby of this man. "Dodd" told the
truth to him for a few evenings, at roll-call, acknowledging that he