much aS a whisper.

One of the memories of that first morning that still lingers is the constant clatter of pencils against slates, which began after the teacher had assigned their tasks to the upper grades. It was, for some strange reason, intriguing to my ears as it rose to a crescendo followed by a brief lull, only to rise to.new heights of stridency on the next cycle. From time to time, the teacher rapped her desk, with a sharp command of "Quiet!" which, however, brought little lasting diminution of the racket.

About mid-forenoon, she summoned Clarence and me to the platform and. quizzed us as to what, if any, knowledge we already possessed. When, to her evident surprise, she discovered that we were thoroughly familiar not only with the alphabet but also with a sizeable assortment of numbers she at Once placed us in the First Primer class. This in some degree compensated us for our unfortunate experience of the morning. It might be mentioned here that, during the ten or more years that Clarence and I attended New Haven school, the Skirmish of our initial day was never repeated.

The school had two departments: the primary, or "Little Room," and the secondary or "Big Room," as they were termed locally. On a portion of the north wall of the Little Room a blackboard was painted on the plaster. Below it was a platform on which stood the teacher's desk -- a somewhat battered, flat-topped, table-shaped piece of furniture. Several maps occupied the space between the windows on the east and south walls. Mast of the west wall was taken up by a pair of folding doors that opened into the Big Room. A half-dozen rows of combination desk-seats and a cast iron box-ehaped Stovg completed the appointments of the room.

‘on the teacher's desk, in plain view of the "scholars" as the pupils were called, lay a birch rod about three feet in length. Having, in pre- school days, had some contact with similar objects, I ventured to ask the

teacher what its purpose was. She told me that it was used to locate