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Time and again, when some credulous one had lifted his voice in honest support of a silly superstition, I had jeered him into a grumbled, shamefaced disavowal. Once I sat in the graveyard at midnight, in the full of the moon, just to convince Ira Spoonholler that his grandfather was keeping close to his proper plot.
It's just as true to-day as when Henery Holmes tackled old Gilbert Spoonholler, as when Isaac Bolum yander argyed with Luke Lampson that five times eleven was forty-five; as when you refused to admit to the same kind teacher that Harrisburg was the capital of Pennsylwany." "And as to-day when William Belkis " Theophilus Jones was acting strangely. He was bowing politely at me. I was mystified.
"I can't just fetch my memory back to that particular incident, Henery," said Josiah, "but my recollection is that Gil Spoonholler held the school-house agin all comers, and that's sayin' a good deal, for we was tough as hickory when we was young." "The modern boys is soft," Aaron Kallaberger declared. "They regards the teacher in a friendlier light than they used to.
"You give me to understand that the teacher was dead now," returned Elmer severely. "He is," cried Henry. "And you claim you done it." "I done it," shouted Mr. Holmes, pounding the floor with his cane. "I done it! You think I'm a murderer? Why, old Gilbert Spoonholler was ninety-seven year old when he went away. He was only forty when him and me had it out." "That's different," said Elmer calmly.
His voice broke from the smothered conference tone and the school heard it and tittered. He recovered himself and poked me in the chest. "Oh!" he said, "Widow Spoonholler I seen you last Sunday singin' often the same book I seen you. Hurry, Mark, hurry; and luck to you! You've done me most a mighty good turn." Mary sat knitting. Beware of a woman who knits.
"I understood from your original account that he died in battle." "I tho't so too, Henery," put in Isaac Bolum. "You misled me, complete. 'Here, says I, 'at last I have met a man who has licked the teacher. And all the time you was tellin' about it, we was admirin' you Joe Nummler and me and now we finds Gil Spoonholler lived fifty-seven year after that terrible struggle."
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