Page:Letters of Life.djvu/220

208 greatest number of credit-marks. These were the test of scholarship, one being given for every correct answer in any recitation which was rendered in a distinct elocution. A list of these credit-marks was kept by the monitress on her slate, and copied by me nightly into a book for this purpose. Infraction of the rules was attended with the loss of an allotted number of credit-marks, or lowering the place in the class. The highest penalty ever inflicted during my five years of administration, was to go to the bottom of the class. This was a very rare occurrence, as our rules were framed on the principle that strictness prevents severity. The monitress, and the credit-mark premium, toward which earnest effort was directed throughout the whole term, consisted of a single volume, of no great pecuniary value, but coveted and prized for its written testimony of merit, and having usually the name of its fortunate possessor in gold letters upon the cover.

These rewards, it will be perceived, bore directly upon scholarship and exemplary deportment. Yet I desired also to encourage those amiable dispositions which are so essential to the true womanly character. I believed that some who were unable to take the highest rank as students, or who might even by inadvertence have fallen short in some of our minuter points of discipline, might still possess that lovely temperament which, more than either, sheds happiness on the domestic sphere. I wished to distinguish this