I supposed he would, for Poodles was the son of a very wealthy and aristocratic merchant in the city of New York, while I belonged to what the principal regarded as an inferior order of society. At least twenty boys in the Parkville Liberal Institute came upon the recommendation of Poodle's father, while not a single one had been lured into these classic shades by the influence of my family-if I could be said to belong to any family.[14] Besides, I was but a day scholar, and my uncle paid only tuition bills for me, while most of the pupils were boarders at the Institute.I am writing of events which took place years ago, but I have seen no reason to change the opinion then formed, that Mr. Parasyte, the principal, was a "toady" of the first water; that he was a narrow-minded, partial man, in whom the principle of justice had never been developed. He was a good teacher, an excellent teacher; by which I mean only to say that he had a rare skill and tact for imparting knowledge, the mere dry bones of art, science, and philosophy. He was a capital scholar himself, and a capital teacher; but that is the most that can be said of him.I have no hesitation in saying that his influence upon the boys was bad, as that of every narrow-minded, partial, and unjust man must be; and if I had any boys to send away to a boarding school, they should go to a good and true man, even if I knew him to be, intellectually, an inferior teacher, rather than to such a person as Mr. Parasyte. He "toadied" to the rich boys, and oppressed the poorer[15] ones. Poodles was the most important boy in the school, and he was never punished for his faults, which were not few, nor compelled to learn his lessons, as other boys were. But I think Poodles hated the magnate of the Parkville Liberal Institute as much as any other boy.Parkville is situated on Lake Adieno, a beautiful sheet of water, twenty miles in length, in the very heart of the State of New York. The town was a thriving place of four thousand inhabitants, at which a steamboat stopped twice every day in her trip around the lake. The academy was located at the western verge of the town, while my home was about a mile beyond the eastern line of the village.I lived with my uncle, Amos Thornton. His residence was a vine-clad cottage, built in the Swiss style, on the border of the lake, the lawn in front of it extending down to the water's edge. My uncle was a strange man. He had erected this cottage ten years before the time at which my story opens, when I was a mere child. He had employed in the beginning, before the house was completed, [16] a man and his wife as gardener and housekeeper, and they had been residents in the cottage ever since.I said that my uncle was a strange man; and so he was. He hardly ever spoke a word to any one, and never unless it was absolutely necessary to do so. He was not one of the talking kind; and old Jerry, the gardener, and old Betsey, the housekeeper, seemed to have been cast in the same mould. I never heard them talking to each other, and they certainly never spoke to me unless I asked them a question, and then only in the briefest manner