"Twenty pounds of Confederate bonds make one shilling, twenty shillings make one penny, six pennies one drink."
"That's right, my pretty little cherubs," says the master. "Now go and take your seats, and study your bowie-knife exercises. Class in Geography, stand up."
The class in geography consisted of one small Southern Confederacy, my boy, with a taste for tobacco.
"Master Wise," says the master, confidently, "can you tell us where Africa is?"
Master Wise sniffed intelligently, and says he:
"Africa is situated at the corner of Spruce and Nassau streets, and is bounded on the north by Greeley, on the south by Slavery, on the east by Sumner, and on the west by Lovejoy."
"Very true, my bright little fellow," says the master; "now go back to your chawing."
"You see, friend Hessian," says the master, turning to me, "how much superior Southerners are, even as children, to the depraved Yankees. In my teaching experience, I have known scholars only six years old to play poker like old members of the church, and a pupil of mine euchred me once in ten minutes."
I thanked him for his courtesy, and was proceeding to the door, when I observed four boys in one corner, with their mouths so distorted that they seemed to have subsisted upon a diet of persimmons all their lives.
"Venerable pundit," says I, in astonishment, "how came the faces of those offspring so deformed?"