AIKENSIDE
Mr. Hodges, who pitched so high that few could
follow him; while Mrs. Captain Simpson-whose
daughter, the organist, had been snubbed at the
last choir meeting by Mr. Hodges' daughter, the
alto singer-rolled up her eyes at her next neigh-
bor, or fanned herself furiously in token of her
disgust.
Latterly, however, there had come up a new
cause of quarrel, before which every other cause
sank into insignificance. Now, though the vil-
lage of Devonshire could boast but one public
schoolhouse, said house being divided into two
departments, the upper and lower divisions, there
were in the town several district schools; and for
the last few years a committee of three had been
annually appointed to examine and decide upon
the merits of the various candidates for teaching,
giving to each, if the decision were favorable,
a little slip of paper certifying their qualifications
to teach a common school. Strange that over
such an office so fierce a feud should have arisen;
but when Mr. Tiverton, Squire Lamb, and Law-
yer Whittemore, in the full conviction that they
were doing right, refused a certificate of scholar-
ship to Laura Tisdale, niece of Mrs. Judge Tis-
dale, and awarded it to one whose earnings in a
factory had procured for her a thorough English
education, the villagers, to use a vulgar phrase,
were at once set by the ears, the aristocracy abus-
ing, and the democracy upholding the dismayed
2