school inspector, whose business it was to examine the teachers with regard to their qualifications.  With his old time notions, he had some very old-time questions, which with others, he always propounded.  As a test of scholarship they were ridiculous; but he was Col.  Crompton, and the people shrugged their shoulders and laughed at what they called the Crompton formula.  Here are a few of the questions:  First, What is logic?  Second, Why does the wind usually stop blowing when the sun goes down?  I don’t know; do you? and we are both Harvarders.  The third introduces a man in old Colburn’s Arithmetic, driving his sheep or geese to market.  The fourth is a scorcher, and has to do with the diameter of a grindstone, after a certain number of inches have been ground from it.  Then comes what I call the piece de resistance, but which my uncle called ‘killing two birds with one stone.’  He has a fad on writing and spelling, and required his victims to put on paper the following: 

“‘Mr. Wright has a right To write the rites of the church.’

“Blamed if I didn’t get stuck on that last rite when he gave it to me!  If the teachers got safely through with the sheep, or geese, and the grindstone, and Mr. Wright, and the rest of them, he gave them a certificate declaring them qualified to teach a district school.  In these days of methods, and analysis, and different ways of looking at things, all that is exploded, and the Crompton people have dropped my uncle, who is furious, and charges it to young blood, and the normal schools which have sprung up, and in which he does not believe.  ’No matter how many diplomas a girl may have,’ he says, ’proving that she has stood up in a white gown, and read an esay nobody within four feet of the rostrum could hear, or care to hear, if they could, she ought to pass a good solid examination to see if she were rooted and grounded in the fundamentals,’ and when he heard that a normal graduate was engaged for District No. 5, he swore a blue streak at the girl, the trustee who hired her, and the attack of gout which keeps him a prisoner in the house, and will prevent his interviewing Miss Smith, as he certainly would if he were able.  I tried to quiet him by offering to interview her myself.  Think of me in a district school-house, talking to the teacher about the diameter of a grindstone!  The absurdity must have struck my uncle.  You should have seen the look he gave me over his spectacles, as he said, ’You, who know nothing, except ball games, and boat races, and raising the devil generally, interview a girl with a diploma!  You would probably end by making love to her, but I won’t have it; mind, I won’t have it!  Remember, you are a Crompton, and no Crompton ever married beneath him!’ Here he stopped suddenly, and turned so white that I was alarmed, and asked what ailed him.

“‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘nothing but a twinge.  I had an awful one.’

“I suppose he referred to his foot, which was pretty bad that day.  After a little, quite to my surprise, he said, ’If you knew anything yourself, you might manage to see if this Smith girl knows anything.  Amy can coach you.  She is rooted and grounded.  She was taught in the old school-house, which I would never have given the town but for her.’