After dinner he escorted my father, leading me by the hand, down to the academy, which was on the outskirts of the town, at the other end of it from Mr. Kenny’s. The buzz, which the usher had not the power to control in the absence of Mr. Sears, hushed instantly in his presence, and as he entered with my father, the pupils all arose, and remained standing until he ordered them to be seated. Giving my father a seat, and placing me in the one which he designed for me in the school, Mr. Sears called several of his most proficient scholars in the different classes, from Homer down to the elements of English, and examined them. When a boy blundered, he darted at him a look which made him shake in his shoes, and when another boy gave a correct answer and took his fellow’s place, and glanced up for Mr. Sears’ smile, it was a picture which my friend Beard, of Cincinnati, would delight to draw. The blunderer looked like one caught in the act of sheep-stealing, while the successful pupil took his place with an air that would have marked one of Napoleon’s doubtful soldiers, when the Emperor had witnessed an act of daring on his part. As for Mr. Sears, he thought Napoleon a common creature to himself. To kill men, he used to say, was much more easy than to instruct them, he felt himself to be like one of the philosophers of old in his academy; and he considered Doctor Parr and Doctor Busby, who boasted that they had whipped every distinguished man in the country, much greater than he of Pharsalia or he of Austerlitz. When the rehearsal of several classes had given my father a due impression of Mr. Sears’ great gifts as an instructor, and of his scholars’ proficiency, he took my father to Mr. Hall’s, to introduce us to my future host.