Only one labourer in this temple of Minerva, however, was known to get so far as to attempt a translation of Virgil. He, indeed, appeared at the annual exhibition, to the prodigious exultation of all his relatives, a farmer's family in the vicinity, and repeated the whole of the first eclogue from memory, observing the intonations of the dialogue with much judgment and effect. The sounds, as they proceeded from his mouth, of
"Titty-ree too patty-lee ree-coo-bans sub teg-mi nee faa-gy
Syl-ves trem ten-oo-i moo-sam med-i taa-ris aa-ve-ny"
were the last that had been heard in that building, as probably they were the first that had ever been heard, in the same language, there or any where else. For by this time the trustees had discovered, that they had anticipated the age, and the instructor, or principal, was superseded by a master, who went on to teach the more humble lesson of "the more haste the worse speed," in good, plain English.
From this time, until the date of our incidents, the Academy was a common country school; and the great room of the building was sometimes used as a court-room, on extraordinary trials; sometimes for conferences of the religious, and the morally disposed in the evening; at others for a ball in the afternoon, given under the auspices of Richard; and on Sundays, invariably, as a place of public worship.
When an itinerant priest, of the persuasion of the Methodists, Baptists, Universalists, or of the more numerous sect of the Presbyterians, was accidentally in the neighbourhood, he was ordinarily invited to officiate, and was commonly rewarded for his services by a collection in a hat, before the congregation separated. When no such regular minister offered, a kind of colloquial prayer
