he denies
the first letter in the alphabet, and insists upon it that the letter A
is not A, but half-a-bushel."

"Dost thou, in thine ignorance, pretend to teach when thou comest here
to learn, Jacob Faithful?"

"Father always told me that that thing there meant half-a-bushel."

"Thy father might, perhaps, have used that letter to signify the measure
which thou speakest of, in the same way as I, in my mathematics, use
divers letters for known and unknown quantities; but thou must forget
that which thy father taught thee, and commence _de novo_. Dost thou
understand?"

"No, I don't."

"Then, little Jacob, that represents the letter A, and whatever else Mr
Knapps may tell thee, thou wilt believe. Return, Jacob, and be docile."

CHAPTER FOUR.

SLEIGHT-OF-HAND AT THE EXPENSE OF MY FEET--FILLING A MAN'S POCKETS AS
GREAT AN OFFENCE AS PICKING THEM, AND PUNISHED ACCORDINGLY--A TURN OUT,
A TURN UP, AND A TURN IN--EARLY IMPRESSIONS REMOVED, AND REDUNDANCY OF
FEELING CORRECTED BY A SPELL OF THE RATTAN.

I did not quit Mr Knapps until I had run through the alphabet, and then
returned to my place, that I might con it over at my leisure, puzzling
myself with the strange complexity of forms of which the alphabet was
composed. I felt heated and annoyed by the constraint of my shoes,
always an object of aversion from the time I had put them on. I drew my
foot out of one, then out of the other, and thought no more of them for
some time. In the meanwhile the boys next me had passed them on with
their feet to the others, and thus were they shuffled along until they
were right up to the master's desk. I missed them, and perceiving that
there was mirth at my expense, I narrowly and quietly watched up and
down till I perceived one of the head boys of the school, who sat
nearest the Dominie, catch up one of my shoes, and the Dominie being
then in an absent fit, drop it into his coat-pocket. A short time
afterwards he got up, went to Mr Knapps, put a question to him, and
while it was being answered, he dropped the other into the pocket of the
usher, and tittering to the other boys, returned to his seat. I said
nothing; but when the hours of school were over, the Dominie looked at
his watch, blew his nose, which made the whole of the boys pop up their
heads, like the clansmen of Roderick Dhu, when summoned by his horn,
folded up his large pocket-hankerchief slowly and reverently, as if it
were a banner, put it into his poc