A little above Woodburn Grange, and nearer to Rockville, lies the village of Woodburn. It is not very large, and chiefly built round a spacious green, on which the young men in summer evenings enjoy their games of cricket, ninepins, bowls, and quoits. At the corner where the road enters the green from Rockville, and, of course, from Castleborough, stands the blacksmith’s shop, where frequently two or three farm-horses stand waiting to be shod; and a number of ploughs and harrows lie expecting repairs. There the sturdy smith, Job Latter, is generally found working and perspiring, and conversing with a number of village-lads and young men hanging about, whom he contrives to disperse when they incommode him, by rubbing his hot iron in his heap of sand, and thus sending a storm of burning stars in every direction, that makes a sudden scamper. Not far thence, a congregation of dilapidated carts, waggons, and disabled wheels, mark the shop of Will Spokeshave, the wainwright. In the centre of the south side of the green, rises a somewhat large old house with porch and tall gabled roof, which is the village school, frequented, more particularly in winter, by the farmers’ and labourers’ sons of the neighbourhood. This school has now for master a worthy half-Welshman, named Howell Crusoe (after his mother and father), a man noted far around as “a great scollard”—a very great, long-headed “scollard.” He has written a book to teach boys good manners, and a genuine curiosity it is in its way; and his profound acquaintance with the customs of polite society may be at once discerned by the following rules in this his “Book of Etiquette for Boys”—a work now become very rare, yet of which an odd, and it must be admitted, a _very_ odd copy, may now and then be met with on the shelves of the bookworms of Castleborough:—“When a gentleman or lady speaks to you”—thus teaches Howell Crusoe boy-etiquette—“immediately touch your forehead with the back of your right hand; then place three fingers of the same hand between the buttons of the centre of your waistcoat, and expect the observations of your superior in an attitude of easy but respectful attention. At any remark of the respected lady or gentleman, incline your head with a graceful dignity, and scrape backward with your left foot. Whenever you are asked to sit down in company, place one leg over the other; rest your elbow on the elevated knee, repose your chin on the hand of the same arm, with two fingers extended upright between your cheek and your ear. In an attitude at once so easy and so graceful, await the wisdom which is sure to fall from beauty, learning, and experience, and hoard up the precious results for the future occasions of life, as the busy bee hoards up the honey of spring for the winter of age.” A company of boys educated by Crusoe, or on Crusoe’s plan, seated round a room in his most approved attitude, must have been a pleasing sight!