The first week of the month I was boarded in the family of our patriarch, whose grandsons furnished a number of the pupils, and the life they led me was not one to make me regret the termination of the engagement. I was awaked while it was still night to join in family prayers, which were of a severity of which I had never dreamed. First a long selection of Psalms was read, then another long one sung, and then a prayer which, as I noticed by the clock, varied from ten to twelve minutes, through which, being still drowsy, I slept, being awakened by the family rising from their knees. This was the invariable routine gone through twice a day. As in our own family, with the exception of the Saturday morning family service, the devotions were always those of the closet, this tedium of godliness was a serious infliction. I was waked out of sound sleep, and bored through, before breakfast, by vain repetitions lasting on an average half an hour, after having endured the same for another half-hour before being allowed to go to bed. No escape was permitted even to the ill-willing, and it may easily be imagined that this addendum to the annoyances of my school hours made the position of the district schoolmaster one for which sixteen dollars a month was no compensation. The conflicts in the school, if they gave me less tedium, were all the more acute. My Latin scholar was a lad who meant to profit by his opportunities and devoted himself to his studies, and, naturally, had a most cordial collaboration on my part, while the son of the rival citizen was both lazy and refractory, so that, with my system of inflicting no corporal punishments, he got none of the weekly prizes, and got such milder punishments as could be inflicted. To tell the truth, the pupils who were refractory to my system were few in proportion, and the school was a pleasanter place than if the rod had been always in hand, as in the days of my boyhood. But the month of trial did not elapse without signs of a storm brewing in the valley. My novel system of sparing the rod and spoiling the children could not fail to provoke the disapproval of the orthodox, and the head of the conspiracy was the father of my lazy schoolboy.