his hair lyin' flat like a wig--and creases across his forehead where he
had been worryin'. And one of his shoulders was kind of humped up and to
one side, and one of his hands had a stiff thumb. He couldn't keep order
in the school at all, because some of the big boys like Charley King and
George Heigold kept somethin' goin' all the time. And these big boys got
the rest of us into things like throwin' chalk and sometimes erasers,
or all together droppin' our geographies of a sudden. Then the professor
would tap the bell and say, "The tap of the bell is the voice of the
teacher--who dropped their geographies, who was it?" Then things would
get worse and there would be a noise like a political meetin'. Pa said
he warn't fit to run a school, but the directors kept him in because he
was related to the president of the board. And most every mornin' for
exercises he would read the 19th psalm, which says, "The law of the Lord
is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple," generally lookin' at me when he said "simple,"
because I couldn't learn very well. Then he would start the song with a
tuning fork, "Too-do" and generally somebody would cough like he had a
awful cold and so start the noise. Then lots would cough and he'd have
to wait before singin' "The Shades of Night Was Falling Fast." Then he
would talk to us about bein' good. And onct when Ella Stephens died over
at Springfield, where she had been for some kind of a operation, you
couldn't find out what, because nobody would say, he got up and said
that God would forgive Ella and all of us should pray for her. Most of
us cried, rememberin' Ella's red cheeks and how she used to laugh when
she came in the schoolroom. She was about 16.

And one mornin' school seemed to go all to pieces. This George Heigold
was studyin' geometry and he came to me and says, before school took up:
"When I go to the blackboard to demonstrate in geometry, I'll wink at
you and then you drop your reader or somethin', Mitch will do the same,
and then I'll get through, I'll show you. For I ain't studied the
lesson." I said "all right."

So when the geometry class was recitin', there was four in it, George
and Charley King, and Bertha Whitney and Mary Pitkin, the girls bein'
awful smart, and always havin' their lessons. The professor turned to
George Heigold and says: "George, you may demonstrate proposition
three." Then the professor gave Bertha proposi