four, and she can whisper loud enough to be understood in Jericho. But,
not wishing to be unreasonable, still I should like to have her spell
'door' without an 'e.' I've always been used to seein' it spelled that
way and--well, I'm kind of old-fashioned, anyway."

There was a difference of opinion concerning Miss Seabury's successor.
A portion of the townspeople were for hiring a graduate of the State
Normal School, a young woman with modern training. Others, remembering
that Miss Seabury had graduated from that school, were for proved
ability and less up-to-date methods. These latter had selected a
candidate in the person of a Miss Phoebe Dawes, a resident of Wellmouth,
and teacher of the Wellmouth "downstairs" for some years. The arguments
at Simmons's were hot ones.

"What's the use of hirin' somebody from right next door to us, as you
might say?" demanded Alpheus Smalley, clerk at the store. "Don't we want
our teachin' to be abreast of the times, and is Wellmouth abreast of
ANYthing?"

"It's abreast of the bay, that's about all, I will give in," replied Mr.
Tidditt. "But, the way I look at it, we need disCIPline more 'n anything
else, and Phoebe Dawes has had the best disCIPline in her school, that's
been known in these latitudes. Order? Why, say! Eben Salters told me
that when he visited her room over there 'twas so still that he didn't
dast to rub one shoe against t'other, it sounded up so. He had to set
still and bear his chilblains best he could. And POPULAR! Why, when she
hinted that she might leave in May, her scholars more 'n ha'f of 'em,
bust out cryin'. Now you hear me, I--"

"It seems to me," put in Thaddeus Simpson, who ran the barber shop