Mr Graham never used bodily punishment: he ruled chiefly by the aid of a system of individual titles, of the mingled characters of pet-name and nickname. As soon as the individuality of a boy had attained to signs of blossoming--that is, had become such that he could predict not only an upright but a characteristic behaviour in given circumstances, he would take him aside and whisper in his ear that henceforth, so long as he deserved it, he would call him by a certain name--one generally derived from some object in the animal or vegetable world, and pointing to a resemblance which was not often patent to any eye but the master’s own. He had given the name of _Poochy_, for instance to William Wilson, because, like the kangaroo, he sought his object in a succession of awkward, yet not the less availing leaps--gulping his knowledge and pocketing his conquered marble after a like fashion. _Mappy_, the name which thus belonged to a certain flaxen haired, soft-eyed girl, corresponds to the English _bunny_. _Sheltie_ is the small Scotch mountain-pony, active and strong. _Peery_ means _pegtop_. But not above a quarter of the children had pet names. To gain one was to reach the highest honour of the school; the withdrawal of it was the severest of punishments, and the restoring of it the sign of perfect reconciliation. The master permitted no one else to use it, and was seldom known to forget himself so far as to utter it while its owner was in disgrace. The hope of gaining such a name, or the fear of losing it, was in the pupil the strongest ally of the master, the most powerful enforcement of his influences. It was a scheme of government by aspiration. But it owed all its operative power to the character of the man who had adopted rather than invented it--for the scheme had been suggested by a certain passage in the book of the Revelation. Without having read a word of Swedenborg, he was a believer in the absolute correspondence of the inward and outward; and, thus long before the younger Darwin arose, had suspected a close relationship --remote identity, indeed, in nature and history--between the animal and human worlds. But photographs from a good many different points would be necessary to afford anything like a complete notion of the character of this country schoolmaster.