LITMIR.BIZ

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at Peter Wynne. Peter had sighed.

      "Over and over," said the Professor, "I have told you that they were not your property or mine, but the property of the people whose representative I am. Yet here I find you marring their tops with jack-knives, carving great, sprawling letters – "

      "But, sir, at Rug – "

      "Great, ugly letters, I say, sprawling and slashed so deeply that the polished surface can never be restored."

      "At Rug – "

      "What will visitors say? What will your parents say if they come, as parents should, to see the property for which they pay a tribute to the state?"

      "But, sir, at Rug – "

      "Bertram, I am grieved. I am grieved, Peter, that boys reared to care for the neatness of their persons should prove so slovenly in the matter of the property a great republic intrusts to their use and care."

      "But, sir, at Rug – "

      "I am astonished."

      "At Rug – "

      "I am astounded."

      "At Rug – "

      "Astounded, I repeat."

      "At Rugby, sir – "

      "Rugby!" thundered the Professor. "Rugby! And what of Rugby?"

      "Why, at Rugby, sir – "

      "And what, pray, has Rugby, or a thousand Rugbys, to do with your wilful disobedience?"

      "They cut, sir – "

      "Cut, sir!" repeated the Professor. "Cut, sir!"

      "Yes, sir – their desks, sir."

      "And if they do – what then?"

      "Well, sir, you said, you know – ".

      "Said? What did I say? I asked you to imitate the manliness of Rugby cricketers. I did not ask you to carve your desks like the totem-poles of savage tribes!"

      His face was pale, his eyes dark, his words ground fine.

      "Young gentlemen, I will have you know that rules must be obeyed. I will have you know that I am here not only as a teacher, but as a guardian of the public property intrusted to my care. Under the rules which I am placed here to enforce, I can suspend you both – dismiss you from the privileges of the school. This once I will act with lenience. This once, young gentlemen, you may think yourselves lucky to escape with demerit marks, but if I hear again of conduct so unbecoming, so disgraceful, of vandalism so ruthless and absurd, I shall punish you as you deserve. Now go."

      Softly they shut the office door behind them. Arm in arm they went together, tiptoe, down the empty hall.

      "Well?"

      The gloom of a great disappointment was in their voices.

      "He's not an Arnold, after all," they said.

      III

      A POET OF GRASSY FORD

      The lesser Primrose was a poet. It was believed in Grassy Ford, though the grounds seem vague enough now that I come to think of them, that he published widely in the literary journals of the day. Letitia was seen to post large envelopes, and anon to draw large envelopes from the post-office and hasten home with them. The former were supposed to contain poems; the latter, checks. Be that as it may, I never saw the Primrose name in print save in our Grassy Ford Weekly Gazette. There, when gossip lagged, you would find it frequently in a quiet upper corner, set "solid," under the caption "Gems" – a terse distinction from the other bright matters with which our journal shone, and further emphasized by the Gothic capitals set in a scroll of stars. Thus modestly, I believe, were published for the first time – and I fear the last – David Buckleton Primrose's "Agamemnon," "Ode to Jupiter," "Ulysses's Farewell," "Lines on Rereading Dante," "November: an Elegy Written in the Autumn of Life," as well as those stirring bugle-calls, "To Arms!" "John Brown," and "The Guns of Sumter," and those souvenirs of more playful tender moods, "To a Lady," "When I was a Rugby Lad," "Thanksgiving Pies," and "Lines Written in a Young Lady's Album on her Fifteenth Birthday." Now that young lady was Letitia, I chance to know, for I have seen the verses in her school-girl album, a little leathern Christmas thing stamped with forget-me-nots now faded, and there they stand just opposite some school-mate's doggerel of "roses red and violets blue" signed Johnny Gray. The lines begin, I remember:

"Virtue is in thy modest glance, sweet child,"

      and they are written in a flourished, old-fashioned hand. These and every other line her father dreamed there in his chair Letitia treasures in a yellow scrap-book made of an odd volume of Rhode Island statutes for 18 – . There, one by one, as he wrote them, or cut them with trembling fingers from the fresh, ink-scented Gazette– "Gems," scroll and all, and with date attached – she set them neatly in with home-made paste, pressing flat each precious flower of his muse with her loving fingers.

      Editor Butters used to tell me of the soft-eyed girl, "with virtue in her modest glance," slipping suddenly into his print-shop, preferably after dusk had fallen, and of the well-known envelope rising from some sacred folds, he never quite knew where, to be laid tremblingly upon his desk.

      "Something from father, sir."

      It was a faint voice, often a little husky, and then a smile, a bow, and she had fled.

      Editor Nathaniel Butters had a weakness of the heart for all tender things – a weakness "under oath," however, as he once replied when I charged him with it, and as I knew, for I myself heard him one summer afternoon, as he sat, shirt-sleeved and pipe in mouth, perched on a stool, and setting type hard by a window where I stood beneath fishing with a dogwood wand.

      "The-oc-ri-tus! Humpf! Now, who in thunder cares a tinker's damn for Theocritus, in Grassy Ford? Some old Greek god, I suppose, who died and went to the devil; and here's a parson – a Christian parson who ought to know better – writing an ode to him, for Hank Myers to read, and Jim Gowdy, and Old Man Flynn. And I don't get a cent for it, not a blank cent, Sam – well, he doesn't either, for that matter – but it's all tommy-rot, and here I've got to sweat, putting in capitals where they don't belong and hopping down to the darned old dictionary every five minutes to see if he's right – Sam [turning to his printer] there's some folks think it's just heaven to be a country editor, but I'll be – "

      He was a rough, white-bearded, little, round, fat man, who showed me type-lice, I remember (the first and only time I ever saw the vermin), and roared when I wiped my eyes, though I've forgiven him. He was good to Letitia in an hour of need.

      Dr. Primrose, it seems, had written his masterpiece, a solemn, Dr. Johnsonian thing which he named "Jerusalem," and reaching, so old man Butters told me once, chuckling, "from Friday evening to Saturday night." The muse had granted him a longer candle than it was her wont to lend, and Letitia trembled for that sacred fire.

      "Print it, child? Of course he'll print it. It's the finest thing I ever did!"

      "True, father, but its length – "

      "Not longer than Milton's 'Lycidas,' my dear."

      "I know, but – he's so – he looks so fierce, father." She laughed nervously.

      "Who? Butters?"

      "Yes."

      "Tut! Butters has brains enough – "

      "It isn't his brains," replied Letitia. "It's his whiskers, father."

      "Whiskers?"

      "Yes; they bristle so."

      "Don't be foolish, child. Butters has brains enough to know it is worth the printing. Worth the printing!" he cried, with irony. "Yes, even though it isn't dialect."

      Dialect was then in vogue; no Grassy Ford, however small, in those days, but had its Rhyming Robin who fondly imagined that he might be another Burns.

      "Dialect!" the doctor repeated, scornfully, his eyes roving to the shabby ancients on his shelves. "Bring me Horace – that's a good girl. No – yes." His hand lingered over hers that offered him the book. "Child," he said, looking her keenly in the eyes, "do you find it so hard to brave that

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