MEMOIRS OF MY NAMESAKE. 127 



It was not a "hedge school," but it was two half-naked rooms on 

 the secoud floor of a tenement house. Two tables and a dozen 

 benches, or forms, were the furniture of the school proper. The 

 fuel was contributed, a contribution consisting of a sod or two of 

 turf (peat) from each pupil, and he who brought most sat nearest the 

 fire. The pedagogue was a man of gigantic stature, with a foot so 

 large as to promptly suggest the quotation — if any one had known it 

 — of Ex pede Ilerculem. I see him now, with his large Avhite face and 

 mild blue eye, his hands behind him, the left grasping the right 

 upper arm, as, dressed in frieze coat, corduroys and glazed military 

 cap he walks the floor, and strikes, rhythmically, one heel against 

 the other. He addressed every woman as "Misthress," and his pro- 

 nunciation of words (well remembered by me) was so barbarous that, 

 what between his teaching and that of some of his successors, it has 

 cost me to unlearn what was taught me an amount of time and study 

 which, if emplo} r ed in progress, would have given me an education 

 which I have missed and mourned. "Antitrinitarians," big words 

 meant learning, you know — he compelled his advanced pupils to 

 pronounce "Antherntahr'yans" with the primary accent on his third 

 syllable, for he made only four of the word. "Constantinople" was 

 spelled thus: C-o-n— con — and that's the con, s-t-a-n — stan — and 

 that's the stan, and that's the constan, t-i — ti — and that's the ti, and 

 that's the constanti, n-o — no — and that's the no, and that's the Con- 

 stantino, p-l-e — pull — and that's the pull, and that's the Constanti- 

 nople. This may seem to be a wanton exaggeration or worse, but in 

 the case of my special mentor, I can prove positively, by living wit- 

 nesses, that it is the truth. In doing so, moreover, I should take 

 occasion to castigate the legislators of England, who by setting a 

 price on the heads of schoolmasters and wolves alike, banished com- 

 petent teachers from the land and thus made imperative the employ- 

 ment, by a learning-loving people, of such wretched makeshifts, self- 

 mistaught as the poor friend I have described. Again, I would 

 claim for Mr. Brady and others of that ilk, the proud distinction of 

 having been, in their crude idea of memorizing by association, the 

 founders of that method of memories which is one of the glories of 

 our admirable school system of the present day. 



So true it is that, even as the bee extracts honey from the poi- 

 soned rose, so the providence of God from evil bringeth good! 



