e charms of society. The Honorable
John Smith, formerly a member of the State Senate, was a native of this
town."

That is the way they all talk. After all, it is probably pretty much
like other inland New England towns in point of "salubrity,"--that is,
gives people their choice of dysentery or fever every autumn, with a
season-ticket for consumption, good all the year round. And so of the
other pretences. "Pigwacket audience," forsooth! Was there ever an
audience anywhere, though there wasn't a pair of eyes in it brighter than
pickled oysters, that did n't think it was "distinguished for
intelligence"?--"The preached word"! That means the Rev. Jabez Grubb's
sermons. "Temperance society"! "Excellent schools"! Ah, that is just
what we were talking about.

The truth was, that District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre, had had a good deal
of trouble of late with its schoolmasters. The committee had done their
best, but there were a number of well-grown and pretty rough young
fellows who had got the upper-hand of the masters, and meant to keep it.
Two dynasties had fallen before the uprising of this fierce democracy.
This was a thing that used to be not very uncommon; but in so
"intelligent" a community as that of Pigwacket Centre, in an era of
public libraries and lyceum-lectures, it was portentous and alarming.

The rebellion began under the ferule of Master Weeks, a slender youth
from a country college, underfed, thin-blooded, sloping-shouldered,
knock-kneed, straight-haired, weak-bearded, pale-eyed, wide-pupilled,
half-colored; a common type enough in in-door races, not rich enough to
pick and choose in their alliances. Nature kills off a good many of this
sort in the first teething-time, a few in later childhood, a good many
again in early adolescence; but every now and then one runs the gauntlet
of her various diseases, or rather forms of one disease, and grows up, as
Master Weeks had done.

It was a very foolish thing for him to try to inflict personal punishment
on such a lusty young fellow as Abner Briggs, Junior, one of the "hardest
customers" in the way of a rough-and-tumble fight that there were
anywhere round. No doubt he had been insolent, but it would have been
better to overlook it. It pains me to report the events which took place
when the master made his rash attempt to maintain his authority. Abner
Briggs, Junior, was a great, hulking fellow, who had been bred to
butchering, but urged by his par