The master weighed himself at the grocer's on a platform balance, some ten days after he began keeping the school.

At the end of a week he weighed himself again.

He had lost two pounds.

At the end of another week he had lost five.

He made a little calculation, based on these data, from which he learned that in a certain number of months, going on at this rate, he should come to weigh precisely nothing at all; and as this was a sum in subtraction he did not care to work out in practice, Master Pigeon took to himself wings and left the school-committee in possession of a letter of resignation and a vacant place to fill once more.
This was the school to which Mr.Bernard Langdon found himself appointed as master.