“The Good Book,” said George Washington Ug, “says that it is wicked to fight; and, anyhow, why don’t you take somebody your own size?”
Then, not without a show of dignity, Ug turned his back on young Curly Bear and retired from the scene. The teacher felt the warming flush of pride.
“Score one for civilization,” he said.
As he walked toward his home that evening the teacher was decidedly in a self-congratulatory mood; overnight, almost, it seemed that Ug had begun to respond to the efforts of the teacher. With such gratifying thoughts in his brain, the teacher passed a grove of live oaks, a secluded spot. To his ears came sounds. He stopped. Louder grew the sounds, and stranger; they appeared to issue from the grove. Now he heard a wail, shrill and laden with some emotion akin to anger; then he heard a chant, weird, almost frenzied. The teacher cautiously pushed aside some underbrush and peered into the grove. An unpedagogical expression leaped to his lips, for he saw the person from whom the sounds came, and he knew their import.
The chanting lips were the lips of his pupil, George Washington Ug. As Ug chanted he danced—a wild, abandoned dance full of twists, turns, bends and wriggles. Gone were Ug’s pants; they hung on a stump; and so did his derby hat. In his black hair stood feathers, plainly the tail feathers of a recently despoiled rooster. In his hand gleamed the blade of a jackknife, and he made menacing gestures at what the teacher thought at first was a bit of red string but which closer scrutiny revealed to be an adult earthworm of the night-crawler variety. A concentrated and bloodthirsty scowl was on the face of Ug as he twisted in the dance, and chanted:
“Koopeekis koopeekis
Bobbochee cheebobo
Toowanda bonda bonda bonda
Bopokum kobokum.”
At this point Ug dispatched the earthworm by biting off its head. Chagrin and horror overwhelmed the watching teacher, for he knew that the chant meant: