In school I was a dutiful little girl of the goody-good sort, but from about thirteen onward my badness cropped out and I became a little terror. My mates were equally unmanageable. In the senior department we could keep a teacher only a short time because of our “insubordination and irregularities,” as one dignified principal said when he came in to chastise us. And I, though demure in appearance, was one of the chief offenders among the girls. How fertile we were in devising ways to annoy the teacher! We would agree to hum a tune in an undertone, so arranging it that when the teacher would steal up to the desks whence the humming issued, pupils in another part of the room would take up the tune, and the baffled teacher would wander from desk to desk trying in vain to “spot” the offenders. The very diligence with which we were studying at such times should have enlightened her. One day the whole roomfull broke out in paroxysms of sneezing. The ring-leaders when discovered were made to promise never to bring snuff to school again. I kept my word but sought to get a similar effect some other way: An arbor-vitæ tree grew near the school-yard, and somehow, I found that by irritating the nostrils with those rough sprigs, we could induce sneezing. It worked, though less successfully than the snuff. I had my triumph when the teacher accused me of having broken my word. Flatly and indignantly I denied it; we had had no snuff, I declared emphatically. No, and no pepper, either. Nevertheless, she kept me after school, whipped my hands, then, taking me on her lap, wept and talked religion to me. Her leniency should have melted me, but it did not. I was unregenerate indeed. I remember the casuistry I used, which she herself must have repeated, for one of the students in the academic department rallied me on the way I had defended myself for sneezing in school. I had put a hypothetical question to her: If the Lord made something grow that tickled the lining of my nose, was I to blame that I could not control the sneeze? The youth would get that off with variations till it teased me so that I was fairly punished for my naughtiness. We also brought soda biscuit to school and ate them fast, inducing hiccough. And the boys would strike matches, then report that they _thought_ they smelled something burning--all sorts of schemes were devised to annoy the poor teacher. Finally the Board of Education sent one of their members to sit in the schoolroom and keep order. He was a great fat man I had known from childhood. When I was little he had called me “Sis Arnold,” and I had called him “Piggie Hanford.” Mother used to remonstrate with me, but it was not so disrespectful as it sounded; we understood each other. He always had a Jackson ball to give me when we met on the street, but first he would pretend to bite my hand. Once, I remember, he did bite hard enough for the print of his teeth to show at the base of my thumb. But he didn’t hurt--just