If you want to go around whittling up our educational institutions you
can do so; but you will have to purchase them afterward yourself. I
don't propose to buy any more damaged furniture. You probably grasp my
meaning, do you not? I send you to school to acquire an education, not
to acquire liabilities, so that you can come around and make an
assessment on me. I feel a great interest in you, Willie, but I do not
feel as though it should be an assessable interest. I want to go on of
course and improve the property, but when I pay my dues on it, I want to
know that it goes toward development work. I don't want my assessments
to go toward the purchase of a school-desk with American hieroglyphics
carved on it. I hope you will bear this in mind, my son, and beware. It
will be greatly to your interest to beware. If I were in your place I
would put in a large portion of my time in the beware business."

The boy took the dollar and went thoughtfully away to school and no more
was ever said about the matter until Mr. Taylor learned casually several
months later that the Spartan youth had received the walloping and filed
away the $1 for future reference. The boy was afterward heard to say
that he favored a much higher fine in cases of that kind. One whipping
was sufficient, he said, but he favored a fine of $5. It ought to be
severe enough to make it an object.

HOW BILL NYE FAILED TO MAKE THE AMENDE HONORABLE--A PATHETIC INCIDENT.

It is rather interesting to watch the manner by which old customs have
been slightly changed and handed down from age to age. Peculiarities of
old traditions still linger among us, and are forked over to posterity
like a wappy-jawed tea-pot or a long-time mortgage. No one can explain
it, but the fact still remains patent that some of the oddities of our
ancestors continue to appear from time to time clothed in the changing
costumes of the prevailing fashions.

Along with these choice antiquities and carrying the nut-brown flavor of
the dead and relentless original amende in which the offender appeared
in public clothed only in a cotton flannel shirt and with a rope around
his neck as an evidence of a former recantation down to this day when
(sometimes) the pale editor in a stickfull of type admits that "his
informant was in error," the amende honorable has marched along with the
easy tread of time. The blue-eyed moulder of public opinion, with one
suspender hanging down at his side and writi