“There is one,” said I, “of a girl whom always in my mind I called The Shad, for that she was so bland, and so flat, and so silent,--and she had a bad habit of asking me to write her Latin exercises, which perhaps was not so much like a shad as like a person; and there is one of a girl who spent the long hours of the day in writing long, long letters to her love, but knew painfully little about the lessons in the class-rooms; and there is one of a girl who brought to school every day a small flask of whiskey to cheer her benighted hours,--she was daily called back and down by the French teacher on account of her excessively bad French, and life had looked dull for her were it not for the flask’s pungent contents; there is one of a strange-looking, tawny-headed girl who sat across the narrow aisle from me in the assembly-room during my last year in school, who kept her desk neatly piled with the works (she called them works) of Albert Ross--and after she had read them, very kindly she would lean over and repeat the stories, with quotations verbatim, for my benefit;--her standing in her classes was not brilliant, but in Albert Ross she was thorough; there is one of a clever, pretty girl who was malicious--exquisitely malicious in all her ways and deeds, and seemingly no thought entered her head that was not fraught with it,--she was malicious in algebra, malicious in literature, malicious in ancient history, malicious in physical culture, malicious in the writing of short themes--and when it so chanced that I made a failure in a recitation, or was stupid, she would look up at me and smile very sweetly and maliciously; and there is one of a girl whose quaint and voluble profanity haunts me still. And especially there is in my memory a picture of all these on our graduating day, receiving each a fine white diploma rolled up and neatly tied with the class colors--a picture of these and the others,--we were fifty-nine in all. And the diplomas stated tacitly, in heavily engrossed letters, that we had all been good for four years and had fulfilled every requirement of the Butte High School. So we had, doubtless--but how much some of us had done for which in our diplomas we were not given credit! In truth, nothing was stated in them, in engrossed lettering, about courses in love-letters, or profanity, or malice, and Albert Ross was not in the curriculum. “And the president of the school board doled out those diplomas, with a short, set speech for each, one wet June day--but he was not aware how insignificant they were.