In a fork of the roads, opposite the school-house, stood a house with a red door. It was loaded, in summer, with honeysuckle vines. Aunt Lobelia sat always at the window. Sometimes she had the asthma and sometimes she sang. This morning her favorite refrain from the Moody and Sankey Hymnal was wafted in loud accents up the lane:-- "Dar' to be a Danyell! Dar' to be a Danyell! Dar' to make it known!" As I entered the school-house, the inspiring strains still followed me. There was a large Franklin stove within, which exhibited the most enormous draught power, emitting sparks and roaring in a manner frightful to contemplate. Aunt Patty, who acted the part of janitress of the school-house at night and morning, had written on the blackboard in a large admonitory hand, "No spitting on this floor, you ninnies!" The bench, containing the water-pail, occupied the most central position in the room. At one side of the bench hung a long-handled tin dipper; on the other, another tin instrument, resembling an ear-trumpet, profoundly exaggerated in size. "That's what you've got to blow to call us in," exclaimed a small child, with anticipative enlivenment. I went to the door with the instrument. "Dar' to be a Danyell! Dar' to make it known." The stirring measures came across from Aunt Lobelia's window. Then the singer paused. There were other faces at other windows. The countenances of the boys and girls gathered about the door were ominously expressive. I lifted the horn to my lips. I blew upon it what was intended for a cheerful and exuberant call to duty, but to my chagrin it emitted no sound whatever. I attempted a gentle, soul-stirring strain; it was as silent as the grave. I seized it with both hands, and, oblivious to the hopeful derision Gathering on the faces of those about me, I breathed into it all the despair and anguish of my expiring breath. It gave forth a hollow, soulless, and lugubrious squeak, utterly out of proportion to the vital force expended, yet I felt that I had triumphed, and detected a new expression of awe and admiration on the faces of my flock. "I don't see how she done it," I heard one freckled-faced boy exclaim, confidingly to another; "with a hull button in thar'!" "Who put the button in the horn?" I inquired of the youngster afterwards, quite in a pleasant tone, and with a smile on which I had learned to depend for a particularly delusive effect; at the same time I put up my glasses to impress him with a sense of awe. "Simmy B.," he answered. "And which is Simmy B.?" I questioned, glancing about the school-room. "Oh, he ain't comin' in," gasped my informer; "he run over cross-lots with Emily's clo's on." I had planned not to confine my pupils to the ordinary method of imbibing knowledge through the medium of text-books, but by means of lectures, which should be interspersed with lively anecdotes and rich with the fruitful products of my own experience, to teach them.