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.

By the time the victim had been there ten minutes, he wished never to repeat the experience.

I know whereof I speak, for I "sat on nothing" three times that winter.
Czar Brench's most picturesque, not to say bizarre, punishment was for buzzing lips.