"What do you learn in?" said Johnny Bell.
"Why, in little German Readers: what else would they be?"
"Does it read like stories and verses?"
"I don't know. He keeps hitting the books with a little switch, and screamin' out as if the house was afire."
"Come, say over some Dutch; woon't you, Horace?"
So the little boy repeated some German poetry, while his schoolmates looked up at him in wonder and admiration. This was just what Horace enjoyed; and he continued, with sparkling eyes,—
"I s'pose you can't any of you count Dutch?"
The boys confessed that they could not.
"It's just as easy," said Horace, telling over the numbers up to twenty, as fast as he could speak.
"You can't any of you write Dutch; can you? You give me a slate now, and I'll write it all over so you couldn't read a word of it."