Page:Tea, a poem.pdf/17

17 on some little, tough, wrong-headed broad-skirted, Dutch urchin, who skulked, and swelled, and grew dogged, and sullen, beneath the birch. All this he called "doing his duty by their parents;" and he never inflicted a chastisement, without following it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that "he would remember it and thank him for it the longest day he had to live."

When school hours were over he was even the companion and playmate of the larger boys; and on holiday afternoons' would convoy some of the smaller ones home, who happened so have pretty sisters, or good housewives for mothers, noted for the comforts of the cupboard. Indeed it behoved him to keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arrising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and though lank had the dilating powers of an Anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to the country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers, whose children he instructed. with these he lived successively a week at a time; thus going the rounds