" If you dropped a book, he would instantly cry, "Pick up
that book and fetch it to me!" Then, when you came forward, he would
say, "Take it in your right hand. Face the school. Hold it out straight,
full stretch, and keep it there till I tell you to lower it."
Oh, how heavy that book soon got to be! And when Czar Brench calmly went
on hearing lessons and apparently forgot you there, the discomfort soon
became torture. Your arm would droop lower and lower, until Czar
Brench's eye would fall on you, and he would say quietly, "Straight out,
there!"
There were many terribly tired arms at our school that winter!
But holding books at arm's length was a far milder penalty than "sitting
on nothing," which was Czar Brench's specially devised punishment for
those who shuffled uneasily on those hard old benches during study
hours.
"Aha, there, my boy!" he would cry. "If you cannot sit still on that
bench, come right out here and sit on nothing."
Setting a stool against the wall, he would order the pupil to sit down
on it with his back pressing against the wall. Then he would remove the
stool, leaving the offender in a sitting posture, with his back to the
wall and his knees flexed.
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