cipline, and with the hope that removal from
his town associates may work good. But within a fortnight after the
change is made, Grandfather Handby drives across the country in his
wagon, with Reuben seated beside him with a comic gravity on his face;
and the old gentleman, pleading the infirmities of age, and giving the
boy a farewell tap on the cheek, (for he loves him, though he has
whipped him almost daily,) restores him to the paternal roof.

At this crisis, Squire Elderkin--who, to tell truth, has a little fear
of the wayward propensities of the parson's son in misleading
Phil--recommends trial of the discipline of a certain Parson Brummem,
who fills the parish-pulpit upon Bolton Hill. This dignitary was a tall,
lank, leathern-faced man, of incorruptible zeal and stately gravity, who
held under his stern dominion a little flock of two hundred souls, and
who, eking out a narrow parochial stipend by the week-day office of
teaching, had gained large repute for his subjugation of refractory
boys.

A feeble little invalid wife cringed beside him along the journey of
life; and it would be pitiful to think that she had not long ago
entered, in way of remuneration, upon paths of pleasantness beyond the
grave.

Parson Brummem received Brother Johns, when he drove with Reuben to the
parsonage-door, on that wild waste of Bolton Hill, with all the unction
of manner that belonged to him; but it was so grave an unction as to
chill poor Reuben to the marrow of his bones. A week's experience only
dispersed the chill when the tingle of the parson's big rod wrought a
glow in him that was almost madness. Yet Reuben chafed not so much at
the whippings--to which he was well used--as at the dreariness of the
new home, the melancholy waste of common over which March winds blew all
the year, the pinched faces that met him without other recognition than,
"One o' Parson Brummem's b'ys." Nor indoors was the aspect more
inviting: a big red table, around which sat six fellow-martyrs with
their slates and geographies; a tall desk, at which Brummem indited his
sermons; and from time to time a little side-door opening timidly,
through which came a weary woman's voice, "Ezekiel, dear, one minute!"
at which the great man strides thither, and lends, his great ear to the
family council.

Ah, the long, weary mornings, when the sun, pouring through the
curtainless south windows a great blaze upon the oaken floor, lights up
for Reuben only the cob