" Now John had never worked so many
as that before and the rest of the class looked amazed. Lily,
remembering yesterday's lecture on cleanliness, washed her slate
three times with her hand and mopped it up with the sleeve of
her dress and yet it was far from clean.
Looking at Johnny now, it would not have taken a physician to
tell that something was seriously wrong with him. He was sick,
without doubt, and yesterday it was a double ailment he had. Any
diagnosis would have revealed spring fever incipient and trout
fever acute. Willie was perhaps thinking of the old saw mills
where cascades fall and the phoebe-bird sings and the high
banks, which the stream had worn deeply because it had some
obstacle to get around. Poor scared Willie! He, too, had an
obstacle to get around, so he said, "I slipped off of the foot
log and got my feet wet and had to go home."
Now, as every teacher knows, wet feet never daunted any boy from
achieving a purpose. The revolving chair swung around once more,
the teacher arose from his comfortable perch and stooped very
low in order to strike the trembling little boy who had heard
the phoebe-bird prophesying spring, and had found the first
hepaticas among the withered leaves and listened to the rippling
song of the brook.
Could the one in the revolving chair have known what he did
toward crushing the love of the true and the beautiful out of
the life before him, the chair would not have been at once
reoccupied.
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