CZAR BRENCH The loss of Master Joel Pierson as our teacher at the district school the following winter, was the greatest disappointment of the year.

We had anticipated all along that he was coming back, and I think he had intended to do so; but an offer of seventy-five dollars a month--more than double what our small district could pay--to teach a village school in an adjoining county, robbed us of his invaluable services; for Pierson was at that time working his way through college and could not afford to lose so good an opportunity to add to his resources during the winter vacation.
We did not learn this till the week before school was to begin; and when his letter to Addison reached us, explaining why he could not come, there were heart-felt lamentations at the old Squire's and at the Edwards farm.
I really think that the old Squire would have made up the difference in wages to Master Pierson from his own purse; but the offer to go to the larger school had already been accepted.
As several of the older boys of our own district school had become somewhat unruly--including Newman Darnley, Alf Batchelder and, I grieve to say, our cousin Halstead--the impression prevailed that the school needed a "straightener." Looking about therefore at such short notice, the school agent was led to hire a master, widely noted as a disciplinarian, named Nathaniel Brench, who for years had borne the nickname of "Czar" Brench, owing to his autocratic and cruel methods of school government.
I remember vividly that morning in November, the first day of school, when Czar Brench walked into the old schoolhouse, glanced smilingly round, and laid his package of books and his ruler, a heavy one, on the master's desk; then, coming forward to the box stove in the middle of the floor, he warmed his hands at the stovepipe.

Such a big man! Six feet three in his socks, bony, broad-shouldered, with long arms and big hands.
He wore a rather high-crowned, buff-colored felt hat.

Light buff, indeed, seemed to be his chosen color, for he wore a buff coat, buff vest and buff trousers.

Moreover, his hair, his bushy eyebrows and his short, thin moustache were sandy.
Beaming on us with his smiling blue eyes, he rubbed his hands gently as he warmed them.
"I hope we are going to have a pleasant term of school together," he said, in a tone as soft as silk.