t of
custom), had charge of the school that fall. He had been hired for six
months, beginning the last week in August. School was begun thus early
for the sake of getting an extra week of vacation during the Indian
summer days of November, when the school would close for a while to
give the boys and girls a chance to "help through corn-shucking," and
still get in days enough in the school year to be sure to draw school
money.

Amos had but one reason for being a school teacher, and that was, he
was a cripple. Like the uncouth Richard, he had been sent into the
world but half made up, and a club foot, of immense proportions,
rendered locomotion so great a task that he was compelled, per force,
to choose some occupation by which he could earn a living without the
use of his legs.

He had been endowed by nature with what is commonly known as "a good
flow of language." He learned to talk when very young and his tongue
once started, its periods of rest had been few. From a youth he was
noted for his ability to "argy." He was the hero of the rural debating
society and would argue any side of any question with any man on a
moment's notice. If the question happened to be one of which he had
never heard and concerning which he knew nothing, such a condition did
not embarrass him in the least; he would begin to talk and talk
fluently by the hour, if need be, till his opponent would succumb
through sheer exhaustion.

He had been to school but little, and had not profited much by what
instruction he had received while there. It was an idea early adopted
by him that a "self-made man" was the highest type of the race, and to
him a self-made man was one who worked like the original Creator--made
everything out of nothing and called it all very good.

So it was that, being ignorant, despising both books and teachers, and
yet being able to talk glibly, he came to the conclusion that words
were wisdom, and a rattling tongue identical with a well-stored mind--a
not uncommon error in the genus under the glass just now.

I am sure I shall be pardoned, too, if I still further probe in this
direction, and unfold a little more the nature of the circumstances
that had to do with the evolution of "Dodd" while he went to school to
Amos Waughops, in "deestrick four." As the plot unfolds, and it shall
appear what kind of a pupil-carpenter Amos really was, you may wonder
how it happened that such a blunderer ever got into that worksho