rose up--a Nemesis! And such a
thrashing as I received, at her hand, would have made the blackest
villain out of purgatory confess his sins without prevarication!

I had heard my mother say that no one died till their time had come, and
I felt satisfied that my time _had_ come. I vainly endeavored to repeat,

"Now I lay me down to sleep!"

as both fitting and appropriate to the occasion; but Miss Patty thumped
the words out of me, to the tune of the Umbrella Quickstep, in staccato.

Little Cherry-lips came nobly to the rescue.

"For shame! Miss Hanson," she cried, "to beat a little boy at such a
rate! It won't mend your umbrella, nor straighten your calash! And the
perspiration is washing the paint all out of your cheeks!"

My enemy left me to fly at my defender, whose name was Florence Hay. But
Florence was a little too agile for the old lady, whom she speedily
distanced, while I made good my escape into the sheltering foliage of
an apple-tree, where, securely perched on a strong limb, I remained until
school was out, and the girls had all gone home.

After a time, at my urgent entreaties, my parents removed me from the
village-school, and placed me at an institute for boys. I had thought,
previously to the change, that I should be perfectly happy when it was
effected; but I had, somehow, miscalculated. I missed the bewitching
faces of the girls I had fled from, and, for the first time in my life,
I realized that the world would be a terrible humdrum sort of a place if
there were nothing but men here.

To confess the plain truth, I had discovered that, in spite of my
bashfulness, I loved every single girl I had ever seen--not even
excepting good black Bess in my mother's kitchen, who concocted such
admirable turnovers and seedcakes. But at that time, sooner than have
acknowledged such a weakness, I would have been broiled alive.

As I grew toward manhood, my bashfulness got no better. It was confirmed;
it had become a chronic disease, as irremediable as the rheumatism, and a
thousand times more distressing.

I was frequently invited to quiltings, apple parings, huskings, etc.; but
I never dared to go, lest I should be expected to have something to say
to some of the feminine portion of the company.

If my mother sent me on any errand to a house where there were girls, I
used to stand a half hour on the door step, waiting for courage to rap;
and if one of the aforesaid girls happened to answer the summons, it