"Why, Jimmie!" exclaimed the master, removing the doughy mixture from
the little lad's face, "what on earth are you trying to do? What is
wrong, Aleck?"

"He ate my pie," said Aleck, defiantly.

"Ate it? Well, apparently not. But never mind, Aleck, we shall get you
another pie."

"There isn't any more," said Aleck, mournfully; "that was the last
piece."

"Oh, well, we shall find something else just as good," said the master,
going off after one of the big girls; and returning with a doughnut
and a peculiarly deadly looking piece of fruit cake, he succeeded in
comforting the disappointed and still indignant Aleck.

The afternoon was given to the more serious part of the school
work--writing, arithmetic, and spelling, while, for those whose
ambitions extended beyond the limits of the public school, the master
had begun a Euclid class, which was at once his despair and his
pride. In the Twentieth school of that date there was no waste of the
children's time in foolish and fantastic branches of study, in showy
exercises and accomplishments, whose display was at once ruinous to
the nerves of the visitors, and to the self-respect and modesty of
the children. The ideal of the school was to fit the children for the
struggle into which their lives would thrust them, so that the boy who
could spell and read and cipher was supposed to be ready for his life
work. Those whose ambition led them into the subtleties of Euclid's