“Actual wickedness was severely punished by Mr. Gunn, sometimes in the good, old-fashioned way; but his motive in inflicting for minor faults the odd penalties here alluded to seemed to be to take cognizance of the error in a manner that would sufficiently incommode the culprit without hurting his self-respect or leaving an angry smart. The boy appreciated the fact that ‘he stood corrected’; but he also appreciated the humorous side of the penalty. Those who revisited Washington after leaving school sought no familiar haunt with more interest than the shrines to which they had made penitential pilgrimages under orders--Kirby Corners, a gentle jog around the square; the old sawmill in the hollow, which, visited at night, was weird and ghostly enough to sober the wildest urchin; Moody Barn, as redolent of pleasant memories as of new-mown hay; and, for more serious faults, distant ‘Judd’s Bridge.’ * * * * * “He insisted on neatness and order, and often a family meeting was called and made a court of inquiry over a bit of paper found on the lawn, or a peanut-shuck on the stairs. Once there was a question as to the history of several pieces of orange-peel in the grass in front of the house. The forty boys were summoned and made to stand in a row on the long piazza. Mr. Gunn called upon each one to state what he knew about the orange-peel, and at the end of the investigation he formed the dozen or more culprits into file, the tallest at the head, and made them march in solemn procession about the yard until they had picked up all the offending scraps, and then to the pig-sty to deposit them in their proper place.” There is a delightful paragraph in a letter which Gibson wrote home to his brothers, in which he tells in a boy’s quaint way of one of these ingenious penalties which was visited on himself. “One day I and two other boys eat some walnuts in church in the meeting time. Mr. Gunn found it out. He made us three boys take the rest of our walnuts up to the minister. We did so and the minister gave us his thanks for the walnuts, and asked us if we would not have some supper, for it was supper time. We refused and left. He told us not to eat any more.” But Mr. Gunn could administer as sharp reprimands to parents and older folk as he could to the boys who were his pupils. There is a plaintive letter from Gibson to his father, growing yellow now, with age, in which the heart of the little boy is uncovered, and his longing for letters from home is touchingly revealed. And the fatherly, warm-hearted teacher had evidently read it, and his soul burned within him. So he wrote upon the back page of the little note the following admonitory words, which must have elicited a letter by return mail: