Matt Milliken's Improvements

The teacher of the Riverboro district school sat behind her desk, correcting compositions. The twenty-eight pupils, varying in age from four to fifteen, had departed, and Undine Berry had opened the windows wide in order that the last trace of them should be dispersed. Each separate pupil was a clean, healthy, country girl or boy, but collectively they exhaled an odor of muddy shoes and rubbers, lead and slate pencils, concealed doughnuts or cookies, peppermint lozenges, boxes of angleworms for bait, and other necessary accompaniments to the acquisition of knowledge.

There was room for occasional discouragement on the part of a district school-teacher in a small Maine village. Out of Undine's twenty-eight there were nine to be taught their "letters. " There was a group struggling in arithmetic from fractions to percentage; there were toilers in the labyrinths of grammar, but Undine's task to-day was more than usually exasperating, for the superintendent had put a new plan in operation with a view of obtaining better results in the way of compositions.