“A dollar a week is the most we can give her,” returned Mr. Randall, “and if you’ll take up with that, mebby we’ll try her. New beginners sometimes do the best.” So it was arranged that I was to teach fifteen weeks for four dollars per month and _board round_ at that! Boarding round! How many reminiscences do these two words recall to those who, like myself, have tried it, and who know that it has a variety of significations. That sometimes it is only another name for sleeping with every child in the family where your home for one week may chance to be—for how can you be insensible to the oft-repeated whisper, “_I_ shall sleep with her to-night—ma said I might;” and of “ma’s” audible answer, “Perhaps, _sis_, she don’t want you to.” If “sis” is a clean, chubby-looking little creature, you _do_ want her; but if, as it not unfrequently happens, she is just the opposite,——I draw a blank which almost every country teacher in the land can fill, merely saying that there is no alternative. We have got the district to please and we must do it some way or other. Again, “boarding round” means a quiet, cozy spot, where everything is so pleasant and cheerful, where the words are so kind and the smile of welcome so sweet, that you feel at once at home, and wish, oh, how you do wish, you could stay there all the summer long; but it cannot be;—the time of your allotted sojourn passes away, and then with a sigh, if indeed you can repress a tear, you gather up your combs, brushes, and little piece of embroidery, to which some spiteful woman has said “you devote more time than to your school,” and putting them in your sachel, depart for another home, sometimes as pleasant as the one you are leaving, sometimes not. But of these annoyances I knew nothing, and when Mr. Randall came to see me, calling me _Miss Lee_, and when I was really engaged, my happiness was complete. In a country neighborhood every item of news, however slight, spreads rapidly, and the fact that I was to teach soon became generally known, creating quite a sensation, and operating differently upon different natures. One old gentleman, who, times innumerable, had held me on his knee, feeding my vanity with flattery, and my stomach with sweetmeats, was quite as much delighted as I, declaring, “he always knew I was destined to make something great.” Dear old man! When the snows of last winter were high piled upon the earth, they dug for him a grave in the frozen ground, and in the world where now he lives, he will not know, perhaps, that I shall never fulfill his prophecy. Aunt Sally Wright, who, besides managing her own affairs, kept an eye on her neighbors’, and who looked upon me as a “pert, forward piece,” gave her opinion freely. “What! That young one keep school! Is Deacon Lee crazy? Ain’t Rose stuck up enough now? But never mind. You’ll see she won’t keep out more’n half her time, if she does that.”