of a sort to give the little boy an immediate and permanent distaste for
school. He informed his mother when he went home at noon that he did not
care for school; that he had no desire to be a great man; that he
preferred to be a pirate or an Indian and scalp or drown such people as
Miss Horr. Down in her heart his mother was sorry for him, but what she
said was that she was glad there was somebody at last who could take him
in hand.

He returned to school, but he never learned to like it. Each morning he
went with reluctance and remained with loathing--the loathing which he
always had for anything resembling bondage and tyranny or even the
smallest curtailment of liberty. A School was ruled with a rod in those
days, a busy and efficient rod, as the Scripture recommended. Of the
smaller boys Little Sam's back was sore as often as the next, and he
dreamed mainly of a day when, grown big and fierce, he would descend with
his band and capture Miss Horr and probably drag her by the hair, as he
had seen Indians and pirates do in the pictures. When the days of early
summer came again; when from his desk he could see the sunshine lighting
the soft green of Holliday's Hill, with the purple distance beyond, and
the glint of the river, it seemed to him that to be shut up with a
Webster's spelling-book and a cross old maid was more than human nature
could bear. Among the records preserved from that far-off day there
remains a yellow slip, whereon in neat old-fashioned penmanship is
inscribed:

MISS PAMELA CLEMENS

Has won the love of her teacher and schoolmates by her amiable
deportment and faithful application to her various studies.
E. Horr, Teacher.