Hiram Mason was the name of the new teacher whom the pupils found behind the master's desk on the first day of school. He was the son of a minister who had come out from New England with the laudable intention of lending a hand in evangelizing this great strapping West, whose vigorous and rather boisterous youth was ever a source of bewilderment, and even a cause of grief, to the minds of well-regulated Down-easters. The evangelists sent out aimed at the impossible, even at the undesirable, in seeking to reproduce a New England in communities born under a different star. Perhaps it was this peninsular trait of mind that prevented the self-denying missionaries from making any considerable impression on the country south of the belt peopled by the current of migration from New England. The civilization of the broad, wedge-shaped region on the north side of the Ohio River, which was settled by Southern and Middle State people, and which is the great land of the Indian corn, has been evolved out of the healthier elements of its own native constitution. But it was indebted to New England, in the time of its need, for many teachers of arithmetic and grammar, as well as for the less-admirable but never-to-be-forgotten clock-peddlers and tin-peddlers from Connecticut, who also taught the rustics of southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois things they had never dreamed of before, and took high pay for the instruction. Young Mason, though he had mostly grown up in the new country, and would have scorned the name of Yankee, had got from his father that almost superstitious faith in the efficacy of knowledge which, in the North-eastern States, has been handed down from generation to generation, and which has produced much learning and some pedantry. Mason was of middle stature, good breadth of shoulder, prominent, broad forehead, and brows that overhung his eyes, but were rather high above them. He had a well-set chin and a solid jaw; his mouth was too large to be handsome and was firmly closed; his gait was strong, straightforward, resolute, and unhurried. There were little touches of eccentricity in him: he had a way of looking at an interlocutor askance, and his habitual expression was one of mingled shyness and self-contained amusement. The religious enthusiasm of his father had been transmuted in him to a general earnestness of character, which was veiled under a keen perception of the droll side of life, derived from a mother of Southern extraction. His early-and-late diligence in study was the wonder of the country, but the tastes and aspirations that impelled him to so much toil rarely found utterance in any confessions, even to his nearest friends. Reserved as he was, the people could never complain that he held himself above them. A new-country youth, the son of a minister on slender pay, Hiram understood how to extend a helping hand, when occasion required, in any work that might be going on. At school, when the young master saw the