Bessie dare not look up for a few minutes;--it is all very odd and strange, and if she were not so frightened she would cry aloud. By-and-by she gains a little courage, and peeps out from beneath her drooping eye-lashes. Her little pinafore neighbor gives her a sweet smile--it makes her little heart so happy, that she throws her little dimpled arms about her neck and says, (out loud) “I love you!” Poor, affectionate little Bessie! she didn’t know that that was a “misdemeanor;” nor had she ever seen that bug-bear, a “School Committe.” Miss Prim had;--and Miss Prim never wasted her lungs talking; so, she leisurely untied her black silk apron from her virgin waist, and proceeded to make an African of little Bessie, by pinning it tightly over her face and head--an invention which herself and “the Committe” considered the _ne plus ultra_ of discipline. Bessie struggled, and said she “never would kiss anybody again--never--never;” but Miss Prim was inexorable, and, as her victim continued to utter smothered cries, Miss Prim told her “that she would keep her after the other children had gone home.” One class after another recited; Bessie’s sobs became less loud and frequent, and Miss Prim flattered herself, now that they had ceased altogether, that she was quite subdued, and congratulated herself complacently upon her extraordinary talent for “breaking in new beginners.” And now, school being done, the children gone, her bonnet and India rubbers being put on, and all her spinster “fixings” settled to her mind, visions of hot tea and buttered toast began to float temptingly through her brain, and suggest the propriety of Bessie’s release. “Bessie!”--no answer. “Bessie!”--no reply. Miss Prim laid the ferule across the little fat shoulders. Bessie didn’t wince. Miss Prim unpinned the apron to confront the face that was bold enough to defy her and “the Committee.” Little Bessie was _dead_! Well; there was a pauper funeral, and a report about that a child had been “frightened to death at school;” but Bessie’s mother was a poor woman, consequently the righteous Committee “didn’t feel called upon to interfere with such idle reports.” THE DELIGHTS OF VISITING.