There was so much simplicity and honest effort in the boy that the master made a kind effort to relieve his pupil. “Why, boy, cannot ye mind th’em? They ar’ _Mister Shaderack, Mes-hack, and Abed-ye-go_. Now ye mought go on with y’r lesson; and don’t ye miss ’em agin.” Spelling, reading, writing and the mere elements of simple arithmetic were all that these and many others pretended to teach. The difficulties encountered in obtaining a small amount of education by children in Illinois, from the earliest American settlements to the close of the last century were greater, and books more difficult to be procured than when Mr. Clark taught in Kentucky. The price of a single copy of “Dilworth’s New Guide to the English Tongue,” as the title page read, was one dollar. And none but old copies of the coarsest paper, the refuse of old stores and printing offices, sold at auction, were brought to this remote frontier. No classes were organized, nor could there be any uniformity of books. The masters ruled, not with “a rod of iron,” but a wand of hickory, four feet long. The teachers were turned out at Christmas, when the king of misrule took the chair, and lawlessness prevailed. Not only were the scenes enacted, we described in chapter ninth, in Kentucky, but even more lamentable and ludicrous ones. A few years later, one of the whiskey-loving sons of Erin attempted to teach in a settlement known to the writer, who received the tale from one of the employers. Our informant, who loved his dram, despised all meanness and selfishness, and he regarded a man who would “suck a jug” in secret, as about the meanest of the race. Hence he “abominated” the schoolmaster, and gloried in the tricks some of the youngsters played him. The master was observed by the shrewd young men under his charge, to retire from the cabin to a thicket during the hours for lessons, and in proportion to these occasions of retirement, his eyes grew dull, his tongue wagged heavily, and his natural jabbering as an Irish pedagogue, became more unintelligible. A search warrant in a verbal form was issued and served on the thicket by two smart young men; the whiskey bottle was found, and in quite a private way received a full allowance of tartar-emetic, and then carefully deposited in its accustomed hiding place. Next day the master was seized suddenly with an alarming illness. It would have been called cholera, but that disease was unknown on these frontiers at that period. But, as our informant expressed it, “he was orfully skeered, and glad enough to have us let him off from his article.”