_Cade._ O monstrous! _Smith._ We took him setting of boys' copies. _Cade._ Here's a villain! _Smith._ H'as a book in his pocket with red letters in't. _Cade._ Nay, then, he's a conjuror. * * * * * _Cade._ Dost thou use to write thy name? or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest man? _Clerk._ Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up that I can write my name."--_Shakspeare._ "Hail, wedded love"--"and all that sort of thing." _Milton and Matthews._ It may well be imagined that the appearance of such a flourishing literary manifesto as that set forth in the preceding chapter, created an uncommon sensation in the village. The ladies admired the distiches of poetry with which the pompous proclamation was so plentifully sprinkled, and the gentlemen, not being conversant with those convenient _helps_, the "_Elegant Extracts_," supposed of course that the advertisers must be persons of considerable erudition. Indeed, the thing took wonderfully, and nothing was thought of, or talked of, by ambitious mothers, and those opening rose-buds, their daughters, for the full period of nine days, but the new "Institute," or "Seminary"--the old-fashioned word "school" never being once mentioned. Nor were the lords of creation unmindful of the good fortune in which they were so soon to rejoice. Various situations were proposed and discussed, for the site of a new edifice which would doubtless be required within a twelve-month, and real estate rose exorbitantly in every vicinity thus designated. A charter from the Legislature was of course to be applied for, and several meetings of those who were to form the Board of Trustees, were held to adjust the details. The privileges of a college were to be obtained, with the power of conferring the same degrees upon female students, as upon males--forgetting, in their ardor, that the constitution of _female_ Bachelors and Masters of Arts would be a misnomer in any other country than Ireland. In one word, there was to be no other classical institution, in this country or any other, comparable with it--and to it the nuns of Canada, the Moravians of Bethlehem, and the azure-hosed professors of modern Ilium, would forever thereafter be compelled to send for instructers.