Connecticut western news., 1878-06-27
A Romance.

girls. Everybody comedies that he is 8 good man, but he has always been be- ieved to be as impervious to romance as is rhinoceros in travelling menagerie.
 Last winter this remarkable man was to teach the Harlansv1lle dis trict school. He did not know a soul in the village, but the School Trustees, knowing that he had conducted the male department of 8 Frankfort school with eminent success, engaged him at large salary. The Harlansville scholars, in- cluding the youth of both sexes, and were, for the most part, orderly and in- dustrious. There was,~ however, one girl lip the school who was probably the most mischievous and reckless of her sex. There is no doubt that Miss Alice, | asI she was generally called, was very pretty girl, and no one claimed that she was guilty of any serious crimes. Still, | she was never out of mischief, and would plan and execute enterprises from which the average boy would shrink in terror. When it is added that she was fifteen years old, and unusually large for her age, it will be perceived that she was well adapted to render the life of school teacher unspeakably wretched.
 :. When Miss Alice first saw the now teacher she at once perceived that he was admirably adapted to be leased. His manifest bashfulness and the inno- cent, unsophisticated expression. of his kindly, but far from handsome. face stimulated her mischievous propensities to the utmost. She began her persecu- tion without delay, and carried it on with immense success. Time and space would fail were it attempted to catalogue the various de0ees by which she plagued the patient teacher. It was not long, however, before he discovered that the demure Miss Alice was at the bottom of all the mischief in school, though she was too astute to permit herself to be detected in any overt act. One of her favorite methods of harassing the good teacher was to pretend to an ardent, ad- nairation for him. She would constantly go to his desk on the pretext of asking his help in her lessons, and while he was laboriously explaining how this sum should be done, or how that verb should be parsed, she would stand by his side gazing at him with an air of hopeless and passionate attachment which filled the scholars with the widest delight. Then, too, she would constantly manage to touch, with apparent unconscious ness, the teachers hand or shoulder, or would lean over him so that her breath would fan his sparse and delicate hair. The uneasiness betrayed by the innocent man in these circumstances was exces-
 sively ludicrous, and delighted the naughty girl and her fellow-pupils un- speakably.
 | The day came, however, when Miss
 Alice, grown careless by long impunity, was detected in the act of firing at an-
 other girl with 8 bean-shooter. This was
 8 crime for which the memorable penal | ty was " rulering." The teacher would
 have given much to avoid the necessity l of rulering" girl, but if he suffered
 Miss Alice's ofense to pass without pun I ishment he knew that he would be &C.,
 cused of unfairness, and that the dis
 cipline of the school would be destroyed.
 With 8 heavy heart he called her up for l punishment, and ordered her to hold out
 her hand. She held it out smilingly and l unhinchingly, and when the punishment
 was ended she deliberately threw her
 arms around the teachers neck and
 kissed him. "I always return a kiss for
 g blow," she explained, as soon as the
 teacher recovered breath and conscious
 ness for mother always taught me to
 do so.' Having said this, she went calm.
 ly back to her seat, and the teacher,
 wishing that the earth would open and
 hide him, tried to calm his beating heart l by studying history from spelling book I held upside down. @5 " , L
 l The cup of his misery was by no means
 full. There was rule in school that 1 whoever climbed the fence into the next | yard and stole apples from Deacon Wat.
 kins' apple-tree should be fogged. The
 teacher, in order to check the growth ot
 this terrible vice, had distinctly an
 nouned that this rule would be inexora | bly enforced, no matter who might be
 the culprit or what defense might be
 offered. Of course, it was never for {
 moment imagined that any girl could
 cline fence and an apple-tree, anG
 hence the teacher was mortified to dis
 cover, as he approached the school-hous
 one morning, Miss Alice perched on g
 limb of the apple-tree and tossing apples to the rest of the scholars. When he reflected that he was pledged to infie
 upon her the severest punishment know1 to the school code, his knees smote to gether and he felt that death would be sweet and welcome. ..r..-.....r
 It was the custom to fog culprits a the morning recess, and when the teacher notified Miss Alice that she would remain
 in the .school-room during recess, tho other scholars chuckled with glee, anc
 the girl herself was seen to blush. Whe1 recess came, and the guilty girl was lef
 alone with the teacher, the excitemen l in the play ground was immense, and large boys bet immense quantities O
 tops and slate-pencils in favor of o7
 against the probability that Miss Alic.
 would be-in fact, punished. One
 enterprising boy climbed the lightning
 rod and looked in at the window. It ii on his evidence that the remainder of tn,
 story rests.