in the way of chanting it near Barber Fitts's shop, if he were busy shaving a customer; and when the angry barber, razor in hand, ran out to scold the chanters, they breathlessly took to their heels.

Next above the meeting-house, and near the top of the Common, was the Master's schoolhouse, as we have already said. It was a long, low building, once painted yellow, but now browned and faded by time, wind, and storm. At one end of the roof hung the bell, the dreadful bell, that twice a day called unwilling scholars to the school, and to the lessons of the day. Of the interior of the schoolhouse we will talk by and by, but we must remember to say that the schoolhouse bell had a song of its own; it seemed to sing, "Come and get licked! Come and get licked!" At least, that is what the Fairport boys thought it sung. The bell of the court-house, on the other hand, had a slow and deliberate song, which seemed to say:

"Lawyer, lawyer, come to court,

Come and get your bread and pork!"

and so on, over and over again. It was a sad day for the boys of the village when, the county-seat having been moved to another town, that dear old bell, to whose music they had so long listened, was taken down and carried away. Lem, from a convenient perch on top of the Parker house, sat and watched the men, with ropes and blocks, taking

down the bell from the court-house belfry. Once, it was rolled over in its downward course, and it gave forth a muffled note as its iron tongue hit the bronze lips of the bell. It was a sorrowful cry, and Lem, choking down a sob which he felt rising in his throat, shook his small fist at the workmen, and said, "I'd like to lick you!" Lem, in his battles, which were many, did not always take a person of his size. And that, perhaps, was the reason why he often came out of the skirmish second-best.

CHAPTER V

HIS RISE IN LEARNING

BEFORE he was ten years old, he was promoted from Miss Emmeline's private school in Howe's Lane to the public school taught by a schoolma'am in Pleasant Street. There was no such thing as graded schools until long after Lem was ten years old. As we have already said, the younger boys and girls were taught by a woman and the elder boys and girls went to the Master's school. Miss Lavinia Atherton, who taught the boys and girls into whose society Lem was now promoted, was said to be very strict, and as Lem had begun to show a disposition to kick up mischief, it was hoped that her severe rule would calm his bubbling spirit somewhat.

Miss Lavinia's rule took the shape of a ruler pretty often; and then again, it came in the form of a willow switch. The ruler was applied to the hands of the boy under punishment; and the switch took him almost anywhere on his legs, back, shoulders, and on the place where his short trousers were the widest. One day when Lem had been whipped over the shoulders for spilling

ink on his copy-book, he put his face down on his desk and covered his ears with his arms. Miss Lavinia then switched him violently over his head, and Lem, although he was awfully hurt and awfully angry, gritted his teeth and did not whimper; but one of the big girls in the back seats, Nelly Cobb, aged twelve, cried out "Shame !" At this, Miss Lavinia, very red in the face, turned about and asked who it was that had spoken. Nobody answered, and she never found out who it was that had cried "Shame!"

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That sort of discipline in school was then called strict. Other teachers, both masters and mistresses, had means of punishment that were even more strict than this. One mistress used to tie her scholars up by the thumbs, leaving their feet on tiptoe on the floor. Another, a man, kept a small rope in salt brine under his desk, and boys of a very difficult temper were "rope's-ended," or whipped with a rope's-end, on the bare legs, whenever the master thought they needed something very "strict."

It must be admitted that Lem needed something to check his mischievous disposition, whether it was a strict rule, or a little of that kinder treatment that men call moral suasion. But Miss Lavinia was not the sort of person that could believe in any kindness for a boy. To her all boys were a species of wild animal that were to be whipped and curbed into obedience, very much as

by

Master Parker's colt was "broken to harness" his hired man. And as said colt nearly killed that hired man before he was broken, many of the boys of Miss Lavinia's school, Lem among the number, reared and kicked a great deal under her severe rule.

Once, a small and select party of boys, who did not dare to tell any of their doings, rigged a brick under the floor of the schoolhouse in such a way that, right in the midst of the most difficult geography lesson, that brick went thump, thump, thump, against the under side of the floor. In vain Miss Lavinia, very red and very angry, made inquiry of the boys as to the cause of this pounding on the floor. She thought it was done in the schoolhouse; and so it was, for the string that set the brick to thumping was in the hands of a boy sitting in one of the back seats. It was not until one of the girls, a notorious telltale, suggested that somebody was under the floor, that Miss Lavinia sent a boy out to see what was the matter. That boy, Bill Twyford, returned with the brick, from which still hung the twine sling that had held it to the under side of the floor.

Lem thought he could improve upon this. In his father's barn was an ancient string of sleighbells, of the large, open-mouthed kind, as big as a table-bell, that were in fashion sixty years ago. One of these bells he detached from the strap that held it and took it to school one Saturday afternoon,

E