It is an unnatural combination to have the propensities of a Columbus or Robinson Crusoe united with a habit of trembling at stray dogs in the daytime, and covering one's head with the bedclothes at night. I had longed to be afloat for some time past; but now, that I was fairly out of sight of land, I shuddered at the immensity of the fathomless sea that stretched before me. Whither bound? To the 'Peppersville Academy,' in a town on the border of a lake familiar to me in my geography days at school, but which seemed, practically, to have no more connection with New York than if it had been in Kamtchatka. To this temple of learning I was going as assistant teacher; and the daring nature of the undertaking suddenly flashed upon me. Suppose that, when weighed in the examining balances, I should be found wanting? Suppose that some horridly sharp boy should 'stump' me with 'Davies' Arithmetic?' That was my weak point, and I realized it acutely. Figures never would arrange themselves in my brain in proper order; I am by no means sound even on the multiplication table; and the only dates that ever fixed themselves in my memory are 1492 and 1776. The very sight of a slate and pencil gave me a nervous headache, and as I had lately been told that _idiots_ always failed in calculation, I considered myself but a few removes from idiocy. My answering that advertisement was a proof of it; and here I was, hundreds of miles from any familiar sight, going to teach pupils who probably knew more than I did! I had my music and French, to be sure, and that was _some_ foundation--but not half so solid as a substantial base of figures. In a sort of frantic desperation, I began, to ply myself with impossible sums in mental arithmetic, until I nearly got a brain fever; and the cars stopped, and the dreaded station was shouted in my ears, while I was in the midst of a desperate encounter with a group of stubborn fractions. How I dreaded the sight of the personage who had twice subscribed himself my 'obedient servant, Elihu Summers'! My 'obedient servant,' indeed! More likely my inexorable taskmaster, with figures in his eye and compound fractions at his tongue's end. I painted his portrait: tall, wiry, with compressed lips, and a general air of seeing through one at a glance. Now, when one is painfully conscious of being deficient in several important points, this sort of person is particularly exasperating; and I immediately began to hate Mr. Summers with all my might.