One of the scholars was required to retire, and then to re-enter the room as a polite gentleman is supposed to enter a drawing-room.

He was received at the door by another scholar and conducted from bench to bench until he had been introduced to all the young ladies and gentlemen in the room.

Lincoln went through the ordeal countless times.

If he took a serious view of the performance it must have put him to exquisite torture, for he was conscious that he was not a perfect type of manly beauty.

If, however, it struck him as at all funny, it must have filled him with unspeakable mirth to be thus gravely led about, angular and gawky, under the eyes of the precise Crawford, to be introduced to the boys and girls of his acquaintance.
While in Crawford's school the lad wrote his first compositions.