"An example—"
"To be sure—here's a spes-a-example; you see, for instance, I put in the spelling-column, C-r-e-a-m, cream, and here in the explification column, I put the exemplifying illustration—Unctious part of milk!"
We had asked, at our first interview, if our candidate was an algebraist, and his reply was negative; but, "he allowed he could 'qualify' by the time of election, as he was powerful good at figures, and had cyphered clean through every arithmetic he had ever seen, the rule of promiscuous questions and all!" Hence, some weeks after, as I was passing his door, on my way to a squirrel hunt, with a party of friends, Mr. Jimmy, hurrying out with a slate in his hand, begged me to stop a moment, and thus addressed me:
"Well, Mr. Carlton, this algebra is a most powerful thing—ain't it?"
"Indeed it is, Mr. Jimmy—have you been looking into it?"
"Looking into it! I have been all through this here fust part; and by election time, I allow I'll be ready for examination."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, sir! but it is such a pretty thing! Only to think of cyphering by letters! Why, sir, the sums come out, and bring the answers exactly like figures. Jist stop a minute—look here: a stands for 6, and b stands for 8, and c stands for 4, and d stands for figure 10; now if I say a plus b minus c equals d, it is all the same as if I said, 6 is 6 and 8 makes 14, and 4 subtracted, leaves 10! Why, sir, I done a whole slate full of letters and signs; and afterward, when I tried by figures, they every one of them came out right and brung the answer! I mean to cypher by letters altogether."
"Mr. Jimmy, my company is nearly out of sight—if you can get along this way through simple and quadratic equations by our meeting, your chance will not be so bad—good morning, sir."
But our man of "letters" quit cyphering the new way, and returned to plain figures long before reaching equations; and so he could not become our professor. Yet anxious to do us all the good in his power, after our college opened, he waited on me, a leading trustee, with a proposal to board our students, and authorized me to publish—"as how Mr. James Jimmy will take strange students—students not belonging to Woodville—to board, at one dollar a week, and find everything, washing included, and will black their shoes three times a week to boot, and—give them their dog-wood and cherry-bitters every morning into the bargain!"