,

"Come one, come all! This rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I."

The tragedy was never acted. There may have been some trouble about the
hayloft; for the boy whose father owned the stable was to have got the
use of it without his father's knowing it; and the poet found that the
boys themselves scarcely entered into the spirit of his work. But after
that there came a real tragedy, which most of them had part in without
realizing it, and that was their persecution of a teacher until he had
to give up the school. He must have come next after that usurper, but at
any rate the word had been passed round, even before school took up the
first morning he began, that he was to be resisted to the death. He
could not have had any notion of what was in the air, for in that
opening speech to the school which a new teacher always used to make, he
talked to the boys in the friendliest manner, and with more sense and
reason than they could feel, though I hope they felt some secret shame
for the way they meant to behave. He took up some old, dry rods, which
he had lying on his desk, and which he said he had found in it, and he
told them he hoped never to use such a thing as a rod in that school,
and never to strike any boy a blow. He broke the rods into small pieces
and put them into the stove, and called the school to order for the
studies before it. But the school never came to order, either then or
afterwards. As soon as the teacher took his seat, the whispering and
giggling, the scuffling and pushing began. The boys passed notes to the
girls and held up their slates with things written on them to make the
girls laugh; and they threw chewed-paper balls at one another. They
asked to go out, and they stayed out as long as they pleased, and came
back with an easy air, as if they had done nothing. They would not
study; they did not care how much they missed in the class, and they
laughed when they had to go to the foot. They made faces at the teacher
and mocked him when his back was turned; they even threw paper wads at
him.

It went on day after day till the school became a babel. The teacher
tried reasoning, and such mild punishment as standing up in the middle
of the floor, and keeping in after school. One big boy whom he stood up
winked at the girls and made everybody titter; another whom he bade stay
after school grabbed his hat and ran out of the room. The fellows played
hookey as much as they