flour and potatoes, beef and pork, and other nutritive staples, the
amount of which required for such an establishment was enough to frighten
a quartermaster. Mrs. Peckham was from the West, raised on Indian corn
and pork, which give a fuller outline and a more humid temperament, but
may perhaps be thought to render people a little coarse-fibred. Her
specialty was to look after the feathering, cackling, roosting, rising,
and general behavior of these hundred chicks. An honest, ignorant woman,
she could not have passed an examination in the youngest class. So this
distinguished institution was under the charge of a commissary and a
housekeeper, and its real business was making money by taking young girls
in as boarders.

Connected with this, however, was the incidental fact, which the public
took for the principal one, namely, the business of instruction. Mr.
Peckham knew well enough that it was just as well to have good
instructors as bad ones, so far as cost was concerned, and a great deal
better for the reputation of his feeding-establishment. He tried to get
the best he could without paying too much, and, having got them, to screw
all the work out of them that could possibly be extracted.

There was a master for the English branches, with a young lady assistant.
There was another young lady who taught French, of the ahvaung and
baundahng style, which does not exactly smack of the asphalt of the
Boulevards. There was also a German teacher of music, who sometimes
helped in French of the ahfaung and bauntaung style,--so that, between
the two, the young ladies could hardly have been mistaken for Parisians,
by a Committee of the French Academy. The German teacher also taught a
Latin class after his fashion,--benna, a ben, gahboot, ahead, and so
forth.