supposed to have, in his hands a little penny book, the alphabet,
printed on gray paper. It began, on the cover, with a pigeon, or
something like it. Next came a cross, followed by the letters in
their order. When we turned over, our eyes encountered the
terrible ba, be, bi, bo, bu, the stumbling block of most of us.
When we had mastered that formidable page, we were considered to
know how to read and were admitted among the big ones. But, if the
little book was to be of any use, the least that was required was
that the master should interest himself in us to some extent and
show us how to set about things. For this, the worthy man, too
much taken up with the big ones, had not the time. The famous
alphabet with the pigeon was thrust upon us only to give us the air
of scholars. We were to contemplate it on our bench, to decipher
it with the help of our next neighbor, in case he might know one or
two of the letters. Our contemplation came to nothing, being every
moment disturbed by a visit to the potatoes in the stew pots, a
quarrel among playmates about a marble, the grunting invasion of
the porkers or the arrival of the chicks. With the aid of these
distractions, we would wait patiently until it was time for us to
go home. That was our most serious work.

The big ones used to write. They had the benefit of the small
amount of light in the room, by the narrow window where the
Wandering Jew and ruthless Golo faced each other, and of the large
and only table with its circle of seats. The school supplied
nothing, not even a drop of ink; every one had to come with a full
set of utensils. The inkhorn of those days, a relic of the ancient
pen case of which Rabelais speaks, was a long cardboard box divided
into two stages. The upper compartment held the pens, made of
goose or turkey quills trimmed with a penknife; the lower