CHAPTER XVI.

THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS.


In the old brown school-house, overshadowed by apple-trees and
sheltered on the west by a long steep hill, where the acorns and wild
grapes grew, Mary Howard taught her little flock of twenty-five,
coaxing some, urging others, and teaching them all by her kind words
and winsome ways to love her as they had never before loved an
instructor.

When first she was proposed as a teacher in Rice Corner, Widow
Perkins, and a few others who had no children to send, held up their
hands in amazement, wondering "what the world was comin' to, and if
the committee man, Mr. Knight, s'posed they was goin' to be rid over
rough-shod by a town pauper; but she couldn't get a _stifficut_, for
the Orthodox minister wouldn't give her one; and if he did, the
Unitarian minister wouldn't!"

Accordingly, when it was known that the ordeal had been passed, and
that Mary had in her possession a piece of paper about three inches
square, authorizing her to teach a common district school, this worthy
conclave concluded that "either every body had lost their senses, or
else Miss Mason, who was present at the examination, had sat by and
whispered in her ear the answers to all hard questions." "In all my
born days I never seen any thing like it," said the widow, as she
distributed her green tea, sweetened with brown sugar, to a party of