ere always strictly
limited; in a free school the teacher whipped as much and as often as he
liked. For this reason it was much better to go to a pay school; but you
had more fun at a free school, because there were more fellows; you must
balance one thing against another. The boy who philosophized the matter
in this way was a merry, unlucky fellow, who fully tested the advantages
and disadvantages of the free-school system. He was one of the
best-hearted boys in the world, and the kindest to little boys; he was
always gay and always in trouble, and forever laughing, when he was not
crying under that cruel rod. Sometimes he would not cry; but when he was
caught in one of his frequent offences and called up before the
teacher's desk in the face of the whole school, and whipped over his
thinly jacketed shoulders, he would take it without wincing, and go
smiling to his seat, and perhaps be called back and whipped more for
smiling. He was a sort of hero with the boys on this account, but he was
too kind-hearted to be proud, and mingled with the rest on equal terms.
One awful day, just before school took up in the afternoon, he and
another boy went for a bucket of drinking-water; it always took two
boys. They were gone till long after school began, and when they came
back the teacher called them up, and waited for them to arrive slowly at
his desk while he drew his long, lithe rod through his left hand. They
had to own that they had done wrong, and they had no excuse but the one
a boy always has--they forgot. He said he must teach them not to forget,
and their punishment began; surely the most hideous and depraving sight,
except a hanging, that could be offered to children's eyes. One of them
howled and shrieked, and leaped and danced, catching his back, his arms,
his legs, as the strokes rained upon him, imploring, promising, and
getting away at last with a wild effort to rub himself all over all at
once. When it came the hero's turn, he bore it without a murmur, and as
if his fortitude exasperated him, the teacher showered the blows more
swiftly and fiercely upon him than before, till a tear or two did steal
down the boy's cheek. Then he was sent to his seat, and in a few minutes
he was happy with a trap for catching flies which he had contrived in
his desk.

No doubt they were an unruly set of boys, and I do not suppose the
teacher was a hard man, though he led the life of an executioner, and
seldom passed a day without i