THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTER.

———

BY C. M. FARMER.

———

Gentle reader! allow me to introduce to your consideration the characters of Mr. Brigs, (soi disant Allen Brigs, Esquire,) and his distinguished lady Mrs. Polly Brigs. Imagine a stout built, corpulent “five footer,” with a very big head, on which there never was hair enough to make a decent pair of whiskers, and on which, consequently, rode a red wig, curled as many different ways as the sunbeams point; with the largest of all large noses, into which he incessantly—or at least fifty times in each day—thrust the raw rappee with no small degree of relish; little pop-eyes, just large enough to see every body in church at one and the same time; a blue silk vest, striped cassimere pantaloons, a leviathian shad-belly coat, and a milk-white cravat tied in a double bow before, and surrounding a collar made partly of very coarse linen, and mostly of very stiff starch, which came up on either side to his ears, sustaining the equilibrium of his head. Of course, his head could only move in two directions—backward and forward—without manifest danger to the implements of hearing thereto attached, all set off by a pair of cork-sole boots six and a quarter inches across the instep when on, the toes of which looked right into the master’s face; and here you have Allen Brigs—alias, Mr. A. Brigs, Esquire.

Mr. Brigs had undoubtedly seen the eclipses of a great many years. According to his own averment, he had “waded through as many snows as there were hairs on his wig;” and as he had repeated this averment so many times, and nobody had ever evinced any inclination to contest the point with him, he had persuaded himself that he was ipso facto, a “very old man.” Be this as it may, Mr. Allen Brigs was not the man to be eschewed for his aged stupidity. He was amusing and buoyant as a boy. He never took the unnecessary trouble to correct himself for errors in language, no matter how gross, but would leave that to be done by any body who chose to “take it up.” If he was asked if it was Jonah who swallowed the whale, he would reply in the affirmative, and when corrected, would invariably answer—“Zooks! it’s all the same in Dutch—just vice versa, as the lawyers say—that’s all!”

In short, Mr. Allen Brigs was a man not to be scared by any “livin’ warmint,” two-legged, or four-legged, male or female—a perfect man of the world in business—“a real out and outer”—crushing all opposition to his own schemes, and believing in his heart that every body was a fool who did not coincide in all things with him, Mr. Allen Brigs.