Hoppy O’Halloran is the only master in Leamy’s National School who ever sits. That’s because he’s the headmaster or because he has to rest himself from the twisting walk that comes from the short leg.The other masters walk back and forth in the front of the room or up and down the aisles and you never know when you’ll get a whack of a cane or a slap of a strap for giving the wrong answer or writing something sloppy. If Hoppy wants to do anything to you he calls you to the front of the room to punish you before three classes. There are good days when he sits at the desk and talks about Amer- ica. He says, My boys, from the frozen wastes of North Dakota to the fragrant orange groves of Florida,Americans enjoy all climates. He talks about American  history,  If  the American  farmer,  with  flintlock  and musket, could wrest from the English a continent, surely we, warriors ever, can recover our island. If we don’t want him tormenting us with algebra or Irish grammar all we have to do is ask him a question about America and that gets him so excited he might go on for the whole day. He sits at his desk and recites the tribes and chiefs he loves.Arapaho, Cheyenne, Chippewa, Sioux,Apache, Iroquois. Poetry, my boys, poetry. And listen to the chiefs, Kicking Bear, Rain-in-the-Face, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and the genius, Geronimo. In seventh class he hands out a small book, a poem that goes on for pages and pages, The Deserted Village, by Oliver Goldsmith. He says that this seems to be a poem about England but it is a lament for the poet’s native land, our own native land, Ireland. We are to get this poem by heart, twenty lines a night to be recited every morning. Six boys are called to the front of the room for reciting and if you miss a line you are slapped twice on each hand. He tells us put the books under the desks and  the  whole  class  chants  the  passage  on  the  schoolmaster  in  the village. Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, With blossomed furze unprofitably gay, There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule The village master taught his little school. A man severe he was and stern to view, I knew him well, and every truant knew. Full well the boding tremblers learned to trace The day’s disaster in his morning face. 287