nourishment, though savoring somewhat of the Arab or the
common beggar, I, on the whole, enjoyed. It gave me a much stronger
interest in the children, seeing them thus in their own homes, where was
so much love, so much solicitude for even the dullest of them. Besides
this, I came in contact with all sorts of curious people, found new
faces to study.

Another custom of the place I also fell in with, which was, to keep an
evening-school. All the schoolmasters had kept one from time immemorial.
This evening-school I really enjoyed. Plenty of charming girls, too big
or too busy to waste their daylight upon books, came from great
distances, bringing their brothers and their beaux, all intent upon
having a good time and getting on in their ciphering. Teaching them was
a pleasure, for they felt the need of knowledge. I feel bound to say,
however, that imparting knowledge was not my only pleasure. In intervals
of leisure, before or after school, or at recess, I found much that was
worthy attention. Seated at my desk, wrapped in my dignity, I watched,
with many a sidelong glance, the progress of rustic love-making. I only
mean by this, that from their general movements I constructed such
love-stories as seemed to me probable. I learned who went with whom, who
wished they could go with whom, who could and who couldn't, who did and
who didn't.

Did I not go into the business on my own account? That is by no means an
improper question. In fact, I might have expected it. Some have, no
doubt, considered it a settled thing that I fell in love with the
bright-eyed beauty, before mentioned, or with the pink-cheeked; but I
beg that such fancies may be brushed away, that all may be in readiness
to receive the true queen, who in due time will come to take possession
of her kingdom. For I will be honest with you, and not, like most
story-tellers, try to pull wool over your eyes all the way through. I
will say openly, that I did first see the girl who was afterwards my
wife in that cold little village of Norway. Cold it seems not to me now,
in the light of so many warm, sunshiny memories!

When my evening-school had been in operation a few weeks, I noticed, one
evening, at the end of the back-form on the girls' side a new face. The
owner of this new face was very quietly studying her book, a thin,
blue-covered book, Temple's Arithmetic. She was dressed in black,--not
fine, glossy black, but black that was gray, rusty, and well worn. A
ve