Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: J wilds of barbarism will they wander, into what pits of ignorance fall, without the aid of the Only Sure tJuide to the English tongue. CHAPTER IV. FIRST WINTER AT SCHOOL. How I longed for the winter school to begin, to which I looked forward as a relief from my do-nothing days, and as a renewal, in part at least, of the soft and glowing pleasures of the past summer. But the schoolmaster, the thought of him was a fearful looking for of frowns and ferulings. Had I not heard our Ben toll of the direful punishments of the winter school; of the tingling hand, black and blue with twenty strokes, and not to be closed for a fortnight from soreness? Did not the minister and the schoolmaster of the preceding winter visit together at our house, one evening, and did I not think the schoolmaster far the more awful man of the two? The minister took me in his lap, gave me a kiss, and told me about his own little Charles at home, whom I must come and see ; and he set me down with the impression that he was not half so terrible as I had thought him. But the schoolmaster condescended tono words with me. He was as stiff and unstooping as the long kitchen fire-shovel, and as solemn of face as a cloudy fast-day. A trifling incident hap. pened which increased my dread, and darkened my remembrance of him by another shade. I had slily crept to the table on which stood the hats of our visitors, and in childish curiosity had first got hold of a glove, then a letter, which reposed in the crown of the magisterial head-covering. The owner's eye suddenly caught me at the mischief, and he gave mo a look and a shake of his upper extremity, so full of "let it alone or I will flog you" in their meaning, that I was struck motionless for an hour with fright, and had hard work to dam up, with all the ...