especially in the case of crimes against women, makes them deserving
of the worst punishment that could be inflicted for the protection of
society; but for the general run of such comparatively light offences
as petty larceny, etc., beating and branding with hot irons must be
considered barbarous in the extreme, and more after the manner of
savages than Christians. We always thought that the beating of
scholars--a practice once very common in schools--for such trifling
offences as whispering and looking off the book, was a gross outrage,
and the parent knowing and allowing it was in our opinion as guilty
as the schoolmaster. Of course we will not deny that teachers
did, then as now, have a great deal to put up with from saucy,
"good-for-nothing" boys, to whom the rod could not well be spared;
but we do not allude to such cases. We knew a master whose delight,
apparently, was pounding and beating _little_ boys,--he did not touch
the large ones. And yet he was generally considered a first-rate
teacher. Parents upheld him in anything he chose to do with the boys,
and if they complained at home, they were told that it must have been
their fault to be punished at all. This man every morning took the
Bible in one hand and his rattan in the other and walked backward and
forward on the floor in front of the desks while the boys read aloud,
each boy reading two or three verses; and woe be to any boy who made a
mistake, such as mispronouncing a word! Although he might never have
been instructed as to its pronunciation, he was at once pounded on the
head or rapped over the knuckles. Of course he never forgot that
particular word. And this teacher was called only "strict"! If ever a
man deserved the pillory, it was that teacher.

Possibly some of our readers may think that there is another side to
this story; for the benefit of such we give some lines from the "Salem
Gazette," Feb. 6, 1824.