The fact that our teachers tried so hard to make us learn was no doubt one of the chief reasons why we looked on them as our natural enemies. We seldom had the same teacher for two terms of school, and we always wondered whether the new one would be worse or better than the old. We always started in prepared to find her worse; and the first kind words we ever had for our teacher were spoken after she was gone and we compared her with the new one in her place. Our teachers seemed to treat us pretty well for the first few days. They were then very kind and sweet; they hardly ever brought switches to the school until the second week, but we were always sure that they would be called into service early in the term. No old-time teacher would have dreamed that she could get through a term of school without a whip, any more than a judge would believe that society could get along without a jail. The methods that were used to make us learn, and the things we were taught, seem very absurd as I look back upon them now; and still, I presume, they were not different from the means employed to-day. Most of us boys could learn arithmetic fairly well,—in this, indeed, we always beat the girls. Still, some parts of arithmetic were harder than the rest. I remember that I mastered the multiplication-table up to “twelve times twelve,” backwards and forwards and every other way, at a very early age, and I fancy that this knowledge has clung to me through life; but I cannot forget the many weary hours I spent trying to learn the tables of weights and measures, and how much vexation of spirit I endured before my task was done. However, after weary weeks and months I learned them so well that I could say them with the greatest ease. This was many, many years ago; since that time I have found my place in the world of active life, but I cannot now remember that even once have I had occasion to know or care about the difference between “Troy weight” and “Apothecaries’ weight,” if, in fact, there was any difference at all. And one day, last week I think it was, for the first time in all these endless years I wished to know how many square rods made an acre, and I tried to call back the table that I learned so long ago at school; but as to this my mind was an utter blank, and all that I could do was to see the little girl with the golden locks sitting at her desk—and, by the way, I wonder where she is to-day. But I took a dictionary from the shelf, and there I found it plain and straight, and I made no effort to keep it in my mind, knowing that if perchance in the uncertain years that may be yet to come I may need to know again, I shall find it there in the dictionary safe and sound.