VIII--DESESPOIR!!

The despair of all concerned would draw tears from the dryest eye.
Only one person wears a serene expression, and that is the G. L.
M., who is evidently thinking: "Perhaps they will listen to me the
next time."

IX--LA FIN!

The charred remains of LE PETIT Paul are being carried to the
cemetery. The G. L. M. heads the procession in a white veil. In a
prominent place among the mourners is "LE PAUVRE PETIT Charles," so
bowed with grief and remorse that he can scarcely be recognized.


It was a telling sermon! If I had been a child I should never have
looked at a match again; and old as I was, I could not, for days
afterwards, regard a box of them without a shudder. I thought that
probably Yverdon had been visited in the olden time by a series of
disastrous holocausts, all set by small boys, and that this was the
powerful antidote presented; so I asked the teacher whether
incendiarism was a popular failing in that vicinity and whether the
chart was one of a series inculcating various moral lessons. I
don't know whether she understood me or not, but she said no, it
was "la methode de Pestalozzi."

Just at this juncture she left the room, apparently to give the
pupils a brief study-period, and simultaneously the concierge was
called downstairs by a crying baby. A bright idea occurred to me
and I went hurriedly into the corridor where my friend was taking