his merciless blows, and remember that Milesian malignity of face,
with its toad-like nose, with the same vividness with which it
presents itself to me to-day. Yes, I remember it, and have cause. When
scarcely ten years of age, in his little log school-house, the
aforesaid resemblance forced itself upon me with such _vim_ that
involuntarily I laughed. For this outbreak against the tyrant's rules
I was called to his frowning presence.

"What are you laughing at, you whelp?" was the rude inquiry.

Tremblingly I replied: "You will whip me if I tell you."

"And you little devil, I will whip you if you don't," was his
rejoinder, as he reached for his well-trimmed hickory, one of many
conspicuously displayed upon his table. With truthful sincerity I
answered:

"Father Duffy, I was laughing to think how much your nose is like a
frog."

It was just after play-time, and I was compelled to stand by him and
at intervals of ten minutes receive a dozen lashes, laid on with
brawny Irish strength, until discharged with the school at night.
To-day I bear the marks of that whipping upon my shoulders and in my
heart. But Duffy was not alone in the strictness and severity of his
rules and his punishments. Children were taught to believe that there
could be no discipline in a school of boys and girls without the
savage brutality of the lash, and the teacher who met his pupils with
a caressing smile was considered unworthy his vocation. Learning must
be thrashed into the tender mind; nothing was such a stimulus to the