" I don't know if you ever played
it. It was a survival, pure and simple, from the Old Red
School-house. There was where it really lived. There was where it
flourished as a gladiatorial spectacle. The crack spellers of
District Number 34 would challenge the crack spellers of the Sinking
Spring School. The whole countryside came to the school-house in
wagons at early candle-lighting time, and watched them fight it out.
The interest grew as the contest narrowed down, until at last there
were the two captains left - big John Rice for District Number 34,
and that wiry, nervous, black-haired girl of 'Lias Hoover's, Polly
Ann. She married a man by the name of Brubaker. I guess you didn't
know him. His folks moved here from Clarke County. Polly Ann's
eyes glittered like a snake's, and she kept putting her knuckles up
to the red spots in her cheeks that burned like fire. Old John,
he didn't seem to care a cent. And what do you think Polly Ann
missed on? "Feoffment." A simple little word like "feoffment!"
She hadn't got further than pheph -- " when she knew that she
was wrong, but Teacher had said "Next!" and big John took it and
spelled it right. She had a fit of nervous crying, and some were
for giving her the victory, after all, because she was a lady. But
big John said: "She missed, didn't she? Well.
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