The Best American Humorous Short Stories by Unknown
page 56 of 393 (14%)
page 56 of 393 (14%)
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I had fallen from the balloon. My head groveled in the ashes of an
extinguished fire, while my feet reposed upon the wreck of a small table, overthrown, and amid the fragments of a miscellaneous dessert, intermingled with a newspaper, some broken glasses and shattered bottles, and an empty jug of the Schiedam Kirschenwässer. Thus revenged himself the Angel of the Odd. THE SCHOOLMASTER'S PROGRESS By Caroline M.S. Kirkland (1801-1864) [From _The Gift_ for 1845, published late in 1844. Republished in the volume, _Western Clearings_ (1845), by Caroline M.S. Kirkland.] Master William Horner came to our village to school when he was about eighteen years old: tall, lank, straight-sided, and straight-haired, with a mouth of the most puckered and solemn kind. His figure and movements were those of a puppet cut out of shingle and jerked by a string; and his address corresponded very well with his appearance. Never did that prim mouth give way before a laugh. A faint and misty smile was the widest departure from its propriety, and this unaccustomed disturbance made wrinkles in the flat, skinny cheeks like those in the surface of a lake, after the intrusion of a stone. Master Horner knew well what belonged to the pedagogical character, and that facial solemnity stood high on the list of indispensable qualifications. He had made up his mind before he left his father's house how he would look during the term. He had not planned any smiles (knowing that he must "board round"), and it was not for ordinary |
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