"Looking into it! I have been all through this here fust part; and by
election time, I allow I'll be ready for examination."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, sir! but it is such a pretty thing! Only to think of cyphering by
letters! Why, sir, the sums come out, and bring the answers exactly like
figures. Jist stop a minute--look here: _a_ stands for 6, and _b_ stands
for 8, and _c_ stands for 4, and _d_ stands for figure 10; now if I say
a plus b minus c equals d, it is all the same as if I said, 6 is 6 and 8
makes 14, and 4 subtracted, leaves 10! Why, sir, I done a whole slate
full of letters and signs; and afterward, when I tried by figures, they
every one of them came out right and brung the answer! I mean to cypher
by letters altogether."

"Mr. Jimmy, my company is nearly out of sight--if you can get along this
way through simple and quadratic equations by our meeting, your chance
will not be so bad--good morning, sir."

But our man of "letters" quit cyphering the new way, and returned to
plain figures long before reaching equations; and so he could not become
our professor. Yet anxious to do us all the good in his power, after our
college opened, he waited on me, a leading trustee, with a proposal to
board our students, and authorized me to publish--"as how Mr. James
Jimmy will take strange students--students not belonging to
Woodville--to board, at one dollar a week, and find everything, washing
included, and will black their _shoes_ three times a week to _boot_,
and--_give them their dog-wood and cherry-bitters every morning into the
bargain!_"