s back a moment and Tom pulled a
boy's hair in the next bench, and was absorbed in his book when the boy
turned around; stuck a pin in another boy, presently, in order to hear
him say "Ouch!" and got a new reprimand from his teacher. Tom's whole
class were of a pattern--restless, noisy, and troublesome. When they
came to recite their lessons, not one of them knew his verses
perfectly, but had to be prompted all along. However, they worried
through, and each got his reward--in small blue tickets, each with a
passage of Scripture on it; each blue ticket was pay for two verses of
the recitation. Ten blue tickets equalled a red one, and could be
exchanged for it; ten red tickets equalled a yellow one; for ten yellow
tickets the superintendent gave a very plainly bound Bible (worth forty
cents in those easy times) to the pupil. How many of my readers would
have the industry and application to memorize two thousand verses, even
for a Dore Bible? And yet Mary had acquired two Bibles in this way--it
was the patient work of two years--and a boy of German parentage had
won four or five. He once recited three thousand verses without
stopping; but the strain upon his mental faculties was too great, and
he was little better than an idiot from that day forth--a grievous
misfortune for the school, for on great occasions, before company, the
superintendent (as Tom expressed it) had always made this boy come out
and "spread himself." Only the older pupils managed to keep their
tickets and stick to their tedious work long enough to get a Bible, and
so the delivery of one of these prizes was a rare and noteworthy
circumstance; the successful pupil was so great and conspicuous for
that day that on the spot every scholar's heart was fired with a fresh
ambition that often lasted a couple of weeks. It is possible that Tom's
mental stomach had never really hungered for one of those prizes, but
unquestionably his entire being had for many a day longed for the glory
and the eclat that came with it.

In due course the superintendent stood up in front of the pulpit, with
a closed hymn-book in his hand and his forefinger inserted between its
leaves, and commanded attention. When a Sunday-school superintendent
makes his customary little speech, a hymn-book in the hand is as
necessary as is the inevitable sheet of music in the hand of a singer
who stands forward on the platform and sings a solo at a concert
--though why, is a mystery: for neither the