How many did she then have?" There
were the four apples in a row, and the two apples, and you that
had worried over meadows so long and so wide, and men mowing them
in so many days and a half, had to think how many apples Ann
really did have. Some of the fellows with forked hairs on their
chins and uncertain voices - the big fellows in the back seats,
where the apple-cores and the spit-balls come from knew every
example in the book by heart.
And there is yet another reason why the country school has brought
forth men of whom we do well to be proud. At the county-seat,
every so often, the school commissioners held an examination.
Thither resorted many, for the most part anxious to determine if
they really knew as much as they thought they did. If you took
that examination and got a "stiff kit" for eighteen months, you
had good cause to hold your head up and step as high as a blind
horse. A "stiff kit" for eighteen months is no small thing, let
me tell you. I don't know if there is anything corresponding
to a doctor's hood for such as win a certificate to teach school
for two years hand-running; but there ought to be. A fellow ought
not to be obliged to resort to such tactics as taking out a folded
paper and perusing it in the hope that some one will ask him:
"What you got there, Calvin?" so as to give you a chance to say,
carelessly, "Oh, jist a 'stiff-kit' for two years.
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