Sonny’s the only child I ever see in my life thet could take young chimbly-swallers after their fall an’ make ’em live. But he does it reg’lar. They ain’t a week passes sca’cely but he fetches in some hurted critter an’ works with it. Dicey says thet half the time she’s afeered to step around her cookstove less’n she’ll step on some critter thet’s crawled back to life where he’s put it under the stove to hatch or thaw out, which she bein’ bare-feeted, I don’t wonder at. An’ he has did the same way at school purty much. It got so for a-while at one school thet not a child in school could be hired to put his hand in the wood-box, not knowin’ ef any piece o’ bark or old wood in it would turn out to be a young alligator or toad-frog thawin’ out. Teacher hisself picked up a chip, reckless, one day, an’ it hopped up, and knocked off his spectacles. Of co’se it wasn’t no chip. Hopper-toad frog an’ wood-bark chips, why, they favors consider’ble—lay ’em same side up. It was on account o’ her takin’ a interest in all his little beasts an’ varmints thet he first took sech a notion to Miss Phœbe Kellog’s school. Where any other teacher would scold about sech things ez he’d fetch in, why, she’d encourage him to bring ’em to her; an’ she’d fix a place for ’em, an’ maybe git out some book tellin’ all about ’em, an’ showin’ pictures of ’em. She’s had squir’l-books, an’ bird-books, an’ books on nearly every sort o’ wild critter you’d think too mean to _put_ into a book, at that school, an’ give the child’en readin’-lessons on ’em an’ drawin’-lessons an’ clay-moldin’ lessons. Why, Sonny has did his alligator so nach’l in clay thet you’d most expec’ to see it creep away. An’ you’d think mo’ of alligators forever afterward, too. An’ ez to readin’, he never did take no interest in learnin’ how to read out ’n them school-readers, which he declares don’t no more ’n git a person interested in one thing befo’ they start on another, an’ maybe start _that_ in the middle. The other teachers, they makes a heap o’ fun o’ Miss Phœbe’s way o’ school-teachin’, ’cause she lets the child’en ask all sorts of outlandish questions, an’ make pictures in school hours, an’ she don’t requi’ ’em to fold their arms in school, neither. Maybe she is foolin’ their time away. I can’t say ez I exac’ly see how she’s a workin’ it to edjercate ’em that a-way. I had to set with my arms folded eight hours a day in school when I was a boy, to learn the little I know, an’ wife she got her edjercation the same way. An’ we went clean thoo f’om the _a-b abs_ an’ _e-b ebs_ clair to the end o’ the blue-back speller.