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256 Old-time Schools and School-books
parently carried it in his pocket all day, for the text says: —
That afternoon, when it was about time to dismiss the school, the boys put away their books, and the master read a few verses in the Bible and then offered a prayer, in which he asked God to forgive all the sins any of them had committed that day, and to take care of them during the night. After this he took his handkerchief out of his pocket, and put his hand into his pocket again, and took out the chestnut burr, and all the boys looked at it.
Then the master, through questions and explanations, satisfied the scholars that prickly burs are the only proper and safe covering for chestnuts.
In a lesson farther on, entitled "The Listener," are recounted the tribulations of Charlotte Walden, who " had a constant desire to hear what everybody was saying," and who if sent out of the room when her father and mother did not wish her to hear their conversation, stopped outside the door " with her ear close to the key-hole."
One of her curls once got entangled in the key, and when her father suddenly opened the door, she fell forward into the room, and hurt her nose so that it bled.
When she knew that her mother had visitors in the parlor, or that her father had gentlemen there with him on business, she would quit her lessons or her playthings, and come softly down stairs and listen at the door; or would slip into the garden and crouch down under the open window, that she might hear what they were saying.
Once when she was stooping, half double, under the parlor window, her father, not knowing that she was therey |
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