sent them the best he
had for that money, but it was of so poor a quality that it could ill
stand the strain put upon it by the wrangling and angered patrons of
"deestrick four," and it broke down before the school had run a month.

This year they had tried the same thing again, and the examiner, in
sheer despair, gave them their way, as perhaps the lesser of two evils.

If any one thinks this an unnatural picture, please address, stamp
enclosed, any one of the one hundred and two county superintendents of
schools in Illinois, and if you don't get what you want to know, then
try Iowa, or Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or even the old Bay State. The
quality is largely distributed, and specimens can be picked up in
almost any locality where it is made possible by the system that
permits such a condition.

This was the teacher to whom "Dodd" came on an October morning, just
preceding his ninth birthday. Amos had heard much of Elder Weaver and
had boasted not a little of how he would "out argy" him the first
"lick" he got at him, and he gazed on these small scions of so notable
a stock with a feeling that the contest had already begun. He put the
children into their seats somewhat gruffly when they appeared, as if
resolved to paralyze his antagonist from the first.

"Dodd" had learned to read by this time, in spite of the hindrance
imposed by Miss Stone in the chart class. Indeed, the only redeeming
feature in his career as a pupil up to date, was his natural love for
reading. The child had a fondness for this art, a genius for it, if
you will, which triumphed over all obstacles, and asserted itself in
spite of all attempts to cripple it, or to bring it down to the level
of his more limited attainments, or to raise these lesser powers to a
line with his special gift.

And in this respect, too, "Dodd" was like other children, or other
children are like "Dodd." Most of these individualities have special
things that they can do ever so much better than they can do some other
things. Why not put them at the things that they can do best, and help
them on in this direction, instead of striving to press them down from
the line of their special genius, and up from the line of their
mediocrity, so as to have them on one common level, as some would fain
have all the world?

As said, "Dodd" had a special genius for reading. When he began to go
to school to Amos this fact appeared at once, and it speedily became a
casus belli b