ef mental discomfiture, with a half-pitying
smile.

The day after Mr. 'Lihu's death, I looked down from my desk in school to
see the infant Sophronia weeping bitterly.

"What is the matter, Sophronia?" I said.

"Carietta's been to see the cops twice," she sobbed; "and I ain't been
any."

I only gathered from this that Carietta was somehow implicated as being
the cause of the infant Sophronia's sufferings.

"Now," said I gravely; "tell me what you mean?"

"She means the cops!" cried Carietta, her small face distorted with a
leer of the most horrid satisfaction, "'Lihu's cops. 'Phrony means
the----"

"That will do," I said. "I understand you perfectly. I understand you
only too well. This is about as bad," I reflected; "as anything in my
experience."

After admonishing my pupils with that sincere emotion to which the
occasion had given rise, that they should speak always respectfully of
their elders, but especially in the most tender and solemn tones of the
dead; after pointing out to them the perniciousness of a low and vulgar
curiosity, and expatiating on the vastness and superiority of the
spiritual life, compared with the earthly and carnal, I paused, only to
give, further on, a fuller illustration to my words, and said:--

"Now, Sophronia, you have an immortal soul?"

There was evidence of some faint hankering in Sophronia's face as she
mentally ran over the list of her possessions.

"No'm," said she; "I hain't--but I've got a cornycopia!"

I think it was then and there that my hopes for the elevation of juvenile
Wallencamp received their deathblow, and my labors, which had before been
cheered by a dream of partially satisfying success, at least, took on
an utterly goal-less and prosaical form.

These children, I was forced to admit, regarded the day of Mr. 'Lihu's
funeral as a holiday of rare and special interest, mysteriously bestowed
by Heaven.

Aunt Rhoda had previously informed me that it was expected I would have
no school that afternoon.

The West Wallen minister officiated on the occasion with an aspect
neither more nor less funereal than he had worn at Lovell's wedding. He
spoke in such a labored, trumpet-like tone of voice that the
Wallencampers seemed, at first, inspired with a lively hope, expecting
momentarily that his breath would give out, but in this they were doomed
to ever-increasing disappointment.

At length, Captain Sartell drew a bucketful of fresh water from the well,
and