Blodgett came next, and here my story properly begins. Blodgett--who, having once seen him, could ever forget Blodgett? Not I. He was too marked a man to ever wholly fade from memory. He was, as I have said, a perfect type of his kind, and his kind was such as should not be sneered at. He was one of the humble pioneers of American letters. He was a character of which our national history must take account. He was one of the vital forces of our earlier national growth. He was in love with learning. He considered the matter of imparting knowledge a mere question of effort, in which the physical element preponderated. If he couldn't talk or read it into one he took a stick and mauled it into him. This mauling method, though somewhat distasteful to the subject, always had a charming result--red eyes, a few blubbers and a good lesson. The technical name of this method was "_Warming the Jacket_." It always seemed to me that the peewee birds sang very dolefully after I had had my jacket warmed. I recollect my floggings at school with so much aversion that I do think, if a teacher should whale one of my little ruddy-faced boys, I'd spread his (the teacher's) nose over his face as thin as a rabbit skin! I'd run both his eyes into one and chew his ears off close to his head, sir! Forgive my earnestness, but I can't stand flogging in schools. It's brutal. From the first day that Blodgett came circulating his school "articles" among us, we took to him by common consent as a wonderfully learned man. I think his strong, wise looking face, and reserved, pompous manners, had much to do with making this impression. We believed in him fully, and for a long time gave him unfaltering loyalty. As for me, I never have wholly withdrawn my allegiance. I look back, even now, and admire him. I sigh, thinking of the merry days when he flourished. I solemnly avow my faith in progress. I know the world advances every day, still I doubt if men and women are more worthy now than they were in the time of the pedagogues. I don't know but what, after all, I am somewhat of a fogy. Any how, I will not, for the sake of pleasing your literary _swallows_--your eclectics of to-day--turn in and berate my dear old Blodgett. In his day men could not and did not skim the surface of things like swallows on a mill pond. They _dived_, and got what they did get from the bottom, and by honest labor. Whenever one of your silk-winged swallows skims past me and whispers progress, I cannot help thinking of Heyne, Jean Paul and--Blodgett. Somehow genius and poverty are great cronies. It used to be more so than it is now. Blodgett was a genius, and, consequently, poor. He was virtuous, and, of course, happy. He was a Democrat and a Hard Shell Baptist, and he might never have swerved from the path of rectitude, even to the extent of a hair's breadth, if it had not been for the coming of a not over scrupulous rival into the neighboring village. But I must not hasten. A little more