:??■ 
 
 Class Ll 
 Book 
 
 ' f 
 
 
 Copyiight^I^. 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 
 
 % 
 
 ^m 
 
 ' Be 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 rl'i'. 
 
 Sr 
 
 ^r^ 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^;*- 
 
 r^ttyt 
 
 ;^^ 
 
 
 >l^^ 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 re 
 
LIBRARY FOR 
 YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 A COLLECTION OF THE BEST READING 
 
 FOR BOYS AND GIRLS , 
 
 WALTE R CAM P 
 
 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, ASSISTED BY THE FOLLOWING EDITORIAL STAFF 
 
 CHARLES WELSH 
 ARTHUR T. HADLEY 
 BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER 
 SIR EDWIN ARNOLD 
 ANSON PHELPS STOKES. JR. 
 BUSS CARMAN 
 CYNTHIA WESTOVER ALDEN 
 HOWARD PYLE 
 EDWIN KIRK RAWSON 
 
 RICHARD H. DANA 
 
 LIEUTENANT ROBERT E. PEARY 
 
 EDWARD BROOKS 
 
 PROFESSOR W. P. TRENT 
 
 C. G. D. ROBERTS 
 
 HENRY S. PRITCHETT 
 
 OPIE READ 
 
 ABBIE FARWELL BROWN 
 
 NATHAN H. DOLE 
 
 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 WITH A GENERAL INTRODUCTION BY MELVIL DEWEY 
 
 ARRANGED BY PHILIP P. WELLS OF THE YALE 
 LAW UBRARY, AND HARRY T. CLINTON 
 
 ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR AND BLACK AND WHITE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 P. F. COLLIER 6f SON 
 
 MCMIII 
 
BOARD OF EDITORS 
 
 WALTER CAMP, Editor-in-Chief. 
 
 MELVIL DEWEY, Director of New York State Library. 
 
 PHILIP P. WELLS, Librarian Yale Law School. 
 
 C. G. D. ROBERTS, Editor and Historian. 
 
 CHARLES WELSH, Author, Lecturer, Managing Editor "Young 
 Folks' Library." 
 
 ARTHUR T. HADLEY, President Yale University. 
 
 BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER, President University of California. 
 
 SIR EDWIN ARNOLD, Author, Traveller, and Poet. Author of 
 "The Light of Asia," etc. 
 
 ANSON PHELPS STOKES, Jr., Author and Educator. Secretary 
 Yale University. 
 
 CYNTHIA WESTOVER ALDEN, Author, Editor. Founder Interna- 
 tional Sunshine Society. 
 
 HOWARD PYLE, Artist-Author. Author and Illustrator of "The 
 Merry Adventures of Robin Hood." 
 
 EDWARD KIRK RAWSON, Author. Superintendent Naval War 
 Records. 
 
 BLISS CARMAN, Journalist and Poet. 
 
 HENRY S. PRITCHETT, President Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
 nology. 
 
 RICHARD HENRY DANA, Lawyer, Author and Lecturer. 
 
 ROBERT E. PEARY, Lieutenant and Civil Engineer, U. S. N. Arctic 
 Explorer, Author and Inventor. 
 
 W. P. TRENT, Professor of English Literature, Columbia University. 
 
 ABBIE FARWELL BROWN, Author of Children's Stories. 
 
 EDWARD BROOKS, Author, Superintendent Public Schools of Phila- 
 delphia. 
 
 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, Author. 
 
 OPIE READ, Journalist and Author. 
 
 NATHAN H. DOLE, Writer and Translator. 
 
/ 
 
2)avt^ Copperflelb 
 
 "The new boy,* seiid the Mafter." 
 
 — Vol. XV, p. 22. 
 
Xibrar'g for Igounp people 
 
 SCHOOL DAYS AND 
 COLLEGE LIFE 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 RICHARD H. DANA 
 
 IL LUSTRA TED B Y 
 
 E . M . ASHE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 P. F. COLLIER ^ SON 
 
 1903 
 
THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 CONGRESS, 
 
 Two Copies Reeeiveti 
 
 JUL 29 1903 
 
 Copyiight Entry 
 
 CUK%i O-y XXc. No. 
 
 6> G c'io 
 
 COPY B. 
 
 y 
 
 L,^ 
 
 l^S"^ 
 
 Copyright 1903 
 By p. F. collier & SON 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 HAVE spoken in public on numerous oc- 
 casions and before many dififerent kinds of 
 audiences, but no audience has inspired 
 me so much, nor have I felt so much in sympathy 
 with my hearers, nor have I spoken so well as when 
 addressing large bodies of boys or young men. Just 
 why this is so may not be easy to explain, but one 
 thing is clear to me, and that is that the faces of the 
 boys and young men show more earnestness of pur- 
 pose, more unselfishness and more trustfulness than 
 the average faces of older persons. It is dishearten- 
 ing to think that every one of the older faces that are 
 less inspiring belongs to one who was once young. 
 What has caused the change? To answer this ques- 
 tion fully would involve the explanation of all the 
 mysteries of life, mind, body and spirit; but you will 
 agree with me that much of the failure can be laid at 
 the door of school and college. 
 
 As you turn over the pages of this book, you will 
 
 Vol. IS— I 
 
Introduction 
 
 come to Dickens' account of David Copperfield at 
 Salem School — how Mr. Creakle, the head master, 
 as an introduction to David, pinched his ear, hov^ 
 "half the establishment was writhing and groaning 
 before the day's work began," and how "an unhappy 
 culprit, found guilty of imperfect exercises, ap- 
 proaches at his (Creakle's) command. The culprit 
 falters and professes a determination to do better to- 
 morrow. Mr. Creakle cuts a joke before he beats 
 him, and we laugh at it." And again, "Poor Trad- 
 dies — .... He was always being caned — I think 
 he was caned every day that half year, except one 
 holiday Monday, when he was only rulered on both 
 hands." 
 
 This was not a wholly exceptional state of affairs 
 in the schools of that day. Dickens wrote much of 
 his best work with a purpose, and the purpose of this 
 part of David Copperfield was to expose the methods 
 of school discipline, only too frequent, with a view 
 to having such methods corrected. In any audience 
 can be seen many grown-up persons taught in schools 
 very much of that kind, if not as bad in degree. 
 
 My father in his journal describes a school to 
 which he went before entering college, near Boston. 
 The head master was a man far superior to Creakle 
 
 ii 
 
Introduction 
 
 in education, family and character, yet what follows 
 is the description of this school, in which not only 
 boys of his day, but many of the succeeding genera- 
 tion, now only a little over middle life, were edu- 
 cated. 
 
 "This school consisted of about thirty boys, of 
 whom all but about half a dozen were boarders, and 
 either sons of men of property in Boston, or of South- 
 ern gentlemen and sent to his care. . . . The school- 
 room was the only room in which the boys could be, 
 except when in bed, by day or night, and in which 
 they must do all their reading, writing, thinking, 
 conversing, and in which their characters and habits 
 were formed. This room was oblong, rather small 
 for the number of boys it was to accommodate, with a 
 stove in the middle, and but one light in the evening 
 for all the boys, and that a lamp fastened to the wall 
 higher than the boys' heads, and of such a kind and 
 so placed that but two or three boys could read by it 
 at the same time. Indeed, what with the noise of so 
 many boys in one room, the necessity of going away 
 from the stove, and the poor accommodations under 
 this lamp, very little reading was done. . . . They 
 (the boys) were inferior also in the sports and ath- 
 letic exercises of boys. For in this school there were 
 
 iii 
 
Introduction 
 
 bounds beyond which the scholars were never per- 
 mitted to go. These bounds included the yard about 
 the house and a play-ground adjoining; but none of 
 the favorite games of foot-ball, hand-ball, base or 
 cricket, could be played in the grounds with any sat- 
 isfaction, for the ball would be constantly flying over 
 the fence, beyond which the boys could not go with- 
 out asking special leave. This was a damper upon 
 the more ranging and athletic exercises. Flying kite, 
 too, was of course out of the question, as that requires 
 a long run to raise the kite and sometimes a chase af- 
 ter it if the string should break. Hardly a boy in the 
 school knew how to swim, except the day scholars and 
 those Boston boys who went to the swimming school 
 in vacation. 
 
 "The only punishment known in this school was 
 flogging. The master always had a rattan either in 
 hand or lying on his desk; and if any disorder was 
 observed, or a boy had not his lesson prepared, the 
 master sprang up, and down went the rattan upon 
 the boy's back. There were about half a dozen boys 
 who were flogged regularly every day, and who de- 
 tested the sight of school-room, master, and books. 
 There was never a half-day without a good deal of 
 flogging. The boys in the upper class, who were to 
 
 iv 
 
Introduction 
 
 enter college within the year, were rarely if ever 
 flogged. I do not remember a boy in my class being 
 flogged while I was in the school. But the smaller 
 boys suffered from it. Those who were slow to learn, 
 and needed encouragement, became disheartened and 
 made but little progress; and the smart boys trans- 
 gressed as much as they could and avoid punishment. 
 I remember very well two or three boys, in particu- 
 lar, who became almost stultified over their books. 
 One of them was weeks and weeks upon a few pages 
 of his Latin grammar, which he had blotted with 
 tears and blackened with his fingers, until they were 
 hardly legible. That boy generally cried from a 
 quarter to a half hour every half-day over his les- 
 sons." 
 
 I well remember the first school which I went to. 
 It was a so-called "Dame's School." The teacher 
 was by no means harsh or cruel, yet the black ebony 
 ruler was the essential, the sine qua non of discipline. 
 I had learned my letters at home, but had not reached 
 the point of putting them together into words. Be- 
 ing found in that stage of progress, I was given a 
 chair near a side window which I well recollect, the 
 speller was put into my hands, with short words, such 
 as "cat," "dog," and the like, and I was told to study 
 
Introduction 
 
 the first dozen words. To study! I had never been 
 taught how to do so. I sat for a half hour, perhaps an 
 hour, looking at the book, at some of the words in it, 
 perhaps all of them, then at the other children, at the 
 
 furniture and out of the window. At last, Mrs. 
 
 asked me if I had learned my lesson. I supposed I 
 had, and said what I supposed to be true; but when 
 I was asked to spell the words, I utterly failed. I was 
 then told to hold out my hand, and down came the 
 black ebony ruler with a blow that seemed to me as 
 if it must have broken every bone in my hand. This 
 was followed by several more blows, the first set 
 
 because, as Mrs. said, I had idled away my 
 
 time, and the second because I had told a falsehood. 
 I was still left without any more definite idea than I 
 had had before as to how to go to work to study. As 
 far as the official teacher went, I should have been 
 left in Egyptian darkness, and would have had the 
 reputation of a dunce and a liar. With such bad 
 names clinging to me, I fear I should soon have 
 come to deserve them. Fortunately for me and for 
 my after life, one of the scholars, a girl two or three 
 years my senior, with the instincts of a born teacher, 
 
 asked Mrs. if she might not take me in hand 
 
 and teach me how to study. She had seen my real 
 
 vi 
 
Introduction 
 
 need. She sat down beside me. She told me how I 
 should read each word over and over, then spell the 
 words to myself, each over and over, until, covering 
 each with my hand, I could repeat them, and after- 
 ward go over the whole again. By this simple act 
 of insight and kindness, I was saved from a career of 
 despair and degradation. 
 
 In all the schools of my day, it was generally be- 
 lieved, with very rare exceptions, that order could 
 only be maintained by whipping. "Spare the rod 
 and spoil the child" was believed not only to be of 
 Divine origin, but a maxim founded on past and pres- 
 ent experience. I w^as whipped both by rod and by 
 ruler many a time at school, sometimes wholly un- 
 justly, sometimes deservedly, according to the notions 
 of the times. In the schools where I was a pupil for 
 from five to fourteen years of age, whipping of some 
 one or more boys was a daily occurrence, and not in- 
 frequently girls had to submit to the same treatment. 
 I have seen boys made angry, stubborn, discouraged 
 and set against the teacher, against school and against 
 all that resembles school, and made to detest intel- 
 lectual effort; not that the physical pain was of itself 
 anything that a manly boy could not bear — most of us 
 took pride in not giving in or showing that we were 
 
 vii 
 
Introduction 
 
 hurt. No! The learning how to stand a good knock- 
 ing about, and how to take it in good part, is no small 
 portion of a man's education. Take the fight of John 
 Ridd, at Blundell School, described in the pages fol- 
 lowing. How much better able Ridd would be when 
 a man to take rebuffs, and apparent defeat and to 
 overcome in spite of them, for having won out in an 
 apparently hopeless fight when a boy at school. 
 
 Some twenty odd years ago, when much engrossed 
 in philanthropic work and hearing a deal about 
 cruelty to animals and cruelty to children carried by 
 some good people to a point of extreme, sensitive re- 
 finement, I attended one of the indoor athletic 
 "meets" at the Harvard gymnasium. I there saw 
 some boxing matches in which the young men took 
 the blow!' as they came in good, man-fashion. It did 
 me good, made me feel like standing straighter, to see 
 one in particular with whose manliness and courage I 
 was particularly struck. I inquired his name and 
 was told it was Theodore Roosevelt. I came to know 
 him later, and still later very many people have come 
 to know him, as you, dear reader, are very well 
 aware. 
 
 No, it is not the physical pain of the whipping to 
 which I object. I object to the system because so 
 
 viii 
 
Introduction 
 
 much of the whipping was done in anger, so much 
 was without any regard to justice, that its effect on 
 both teacher and student and their relations to each 
 other was wholly bad. The attitude of the teacher 
 was one of distrust, of the scholars of war, in which 
 almost anything was fair in the way of getting the 
 better of the common enemy, even though it were 
 to the great loss of the students themselves in the 
 process. 
 
 But it must not be supposed that all the schools 
 were like Salem House. In the Longfellow family 
 is a very interesting journal, written by Gen. Peleg 
 Wadsworth, grandfather of the poet, Henry Wads- 
 worth Longfellow. In this journal General Wads- 
 worth describes how he taught school in Plymouth, 
 Mass., before the Revolutionary War, how he man- 
 aged without any whipping, how he gained the con- 
 fidence of the pupils, and how, when he left the 
 school, in order to earn enough with which to get 
 married on, the scholars actually wept at the thought 
 of losing him. In his family, too, he maintained order 
 by mutual respect, in place of the cow-hide or birch 
 rod. Doubtless there were more instances of this 
 kind, but they were great exceptions. Then, too, it 
 must be remembered there were many masters who, 
 
 ix 
 
Introduction 
 
 following the accepted idea of the times, used the 
 rod, used it as a last resort only, and by their char- 
 acter, fairness and sympathy, had a good influence. 
 
 It is not enough, however, to abolish whipping, or 
 even to make school easy and pleasant. To bring out 
 the best in boys, we must have teachers who believe in 
 them and care for them, and who are men capable of 
 success in what are called the higher walks of life, 
 but who, believing that the education of boys is 
 really a higher calling than almost any other in the 
 world, devote themselves mind, heart, and soul to 
 their work. Dr. Blimber is held up by Dickens in 
 the story of Paul's Education in Dombey and Son, 
 not as an example of cruel whipping, but of the more 
 refined and wholly unintended cruelty that comes 
 from want of sympathy with pupils, whom, in his 
 blind ambition to have them succeed, he forced in 
 their studies, with no regard to their need of recre- 
 ation, rest, and amusement. He did not seem to care 
 for the boys as human beings, but only sought to grind 
 so much learning out of them as if they were mill- 
 stones incapable of feeling or fatigue, till "one" boy 
 "sat looking at his desk in stony stupefaction and de- 
 spair"; all had the natural spirit taken out of them, 
 and how Paul — well, you must read the pathetic 
 
 X 
 
Introduction 
 
 story of that loving little boy to see what became of 
 him there. 
 
 In Tolstoi's stories of his education in Russia, he 
 does not tell us of any cruelty, though cruelty is com- 
 mon enough in that country, but the general impres- 
 sion left on me by these tales was one of sadness and 
 depression ; there was so much stony cynicism and in- 
 justice, and so little sympathy and appreciation on the 
 part of most of the professors, which, unlike a reign 
 of whipping terror, seems to take away fellow feeling 
 among the pupils. It was not a case of war, or even 
 armed neutrality, but a mere modus mvendi. Fortu- 
 nately, in America, at St. Paul's, and at Groton, and 
 at St. Mark's, and in many other schools, we have 
 many teachers of the best sort. Not only do they 
 make the relations between the boys and their mas- 
 ters better, and inspire a love for truth, courage, man- 
 liness and intellectual pursuit, but they send out boys 
 who have a trust in each other, and who, when grown 
 up, will have that distinguishing mark which, more 
 than anything else, divides the "cad" from the true 
 man. May the day come when, in all American life, 
 with young and old, such a spirit shall more largely 
 prevail. 
 
 Richard H. Dana. 
 
 xi 
 
SCHOOL DAYS AND COLLEGE LIFE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 david copperfield ii 
 
 tiverton school 63 
 
 Paul's education 82 
 
 education of johann wolfgang goethe 155 
 
 school-time 243 
 
 the education of john ruskin 318 
 
 a hoosier school 389 
 
 the education of benjamin franklin 432 
 
 the barring out, or party spirit 460 
 
 muscular christianity 523 
 
 school days of charles darwin 574 
 
 the plot against bullam 583 
 
 CHUMS o „ 595 
 
SCHOOL DAYS AND COLLEGE LIFE 
 
 DAVID COPPERFIELD 
 
 '^//E had started from Yarmouth at three o'clock 
 ^^ in the afternoon, and we were due in London 
 about eight next morning. It was midsummer 
 weather, and the evening was very pleasant. When 
 we passed through a village, I pictured to myself 
 what the insides of the houses were like, and what the 
 inhabitants were about; and vv^hen boys came running 
 after us, and got up behind and swung there for a lit- 
 tle way, I wondered whether their fathers were alive, 
 and whether they were happy at home. I had plenty 
 to think of, therefore, besides my mind running con- 
 tinually on the kind of place I was going to — which 
 was an awful speculation. Sometimes, I remember, 
 I resigned myself to thoughts of home and Peggotty; 
 and to endeavoring, in a confused blind way, to recall 
 how I had felt, and what sort of boy I used to be, be- 
 fore I bit Mr. Murdstone: which I couldn't satisfy 
 myself about by any means, I seemed to have bitten 
 him in such a remote antiquity. 
 
 The night was not so pleasant as the evening, for 
 
 II 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 it got chilly; and being put between two gentlemen 
 (the rough-faced one and another) to prevent my 
 tumbling off the coach, I was nearly smothered by 
 their falling asleep, and completely blocking me up. 
 They squeezed me so hard sometimes, that I could 
 not help crying out, "Oh, if you please!" — which 
 they didn't like at all, because it woke them. Oppo- 
 site me was an elderly lady in a great fur cloak, who 
 looked in the dark more like a haystack than a lady, 
 she was wrapped up to such a degree. This lady had 
 a basket with her, and she hadn't known what to do 
 with it, for a long time, until she found that, on ac- 
 count of my legs being short, it could go underneath 
 me. It cramped and hurt me so that it made me per- 
 fectly miserable; but if I moved in the least, and 
 made a glass that was in the basket rattle against 
 something else (as it was sure to do), she gave me 
 the cruellest poke with her foot, and said, "Come, 
 don't you fidget. Your bones are young enough I'm 
 sure!" 
 
 At last the sun rose, and then my companions 
 seemed to sleep easier. The difficulties under which 
 they had labored all night, and which had found ut- 
 terance in the most terrific gasps and snorts, are not to 
 be conceived. As the sun got higher, their sleep be- 
 came lighter, and so they gradually one by one awoke. 
 I recollect being very much surprised by the feint 
 everybody made, then, of not having been to sleep at 
 all, and by the uncommon indignation with which 
 
 12 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 every one repelled the charge. I labor under the 
 same kind of astonishment to this day, having in- 
 variably observed that of all human weaknesses, the 
 one to which our common nature is the least disposed 
 to confess (I cannot imagine why) is the weakness of 
 having gone to sleep in a coach. 
 
 What an amazing place London was to me when 
 I saw it in the distance, and how I believed all the 
 adventures of all my favorite heroes to be constantly 
 enacting and re-enacting there, and how I vaguely 
 made it out in my own mind to be fuller of wonders 
 and wickedness than all the cities of the earth, I need 
 not stop here to relate. We approached it by de- 
 grees, and got, in due time, to the inn in White- 
 chapel district for which we were bound. I forget 
 whether it was the Blue Bull, or the Blue Boar; but 
 I know it was the Blue Something, and that its like- 
 ness was painted upon the back of the coach. 
 
 The guard's eye lighted on me as he was getting 
 down, and he said at the booking-office door: 
 
 "Is there anybody here for a youngster booked in 
 the name of Murdstone, from Bloonderstone, Soof- 
 folk, to be left till called for?" 
 
 Nobody answered. 
 
 "Try Copperfield, if you please, sir," said I, look- 
 ing helplessly down. 
 
 "Is there anybody here for a youngster, booked in 
 the name of Murdstone, from Bloonderstone, Soof- 
 folk, but owning to the name of Copperfield, to be 
 
 13 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 left till called for?" said the guard. "Come! 7^ there 
 anybody?" 
 
 No. There was nobody. I looked anxiously 
 around; but the inquiry made no impression on any 
 of the bystanders, if I except a man in gaiters, with 
 one eye, who suggested that they had better put a 
 brass collar round my neck, and tie me up in the 
 stable. 
 
 A ladder was brought, and I got down after the 
 lady who was like a haystack: not daring to stir, 
 until her basket was removed. The coach was clear 
 of passengers by that time, the luggage was very soon 
 cleared out, the horses had been taken out before the 
 luggage, and now the coach itself was wheeled and 
 backed off by some hostlers, out of the way. Still, 
 nobody appeared to claim the dusty youngster from 
 Blunderstone, Suffolk. 
 
 More solitary than Robinson Crusoe, who had 
 nobody to look at him and see that he was solitary, I 
 went into the booking-office, and, by invitation of the 
 clerk on duty, passed behind the counter, and sat 
 down on the scale at which they weighed the lug- 
 gage. Here, as I sat looking at the parcels, pack- 
 ages, and books, and inhaling the smell of stables 
 (ever since associated with that morning), a proces- 
 sion of most tremendous considerations began to 
 march through my mind. Supposing nobody should 
 ever fetch me, how long would they consent to keep 
 me there? Would they keep me long enough to 
 
 14 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 spend seven shillings? Should I sleep at night in 
 one of those wooden bins, with the other luggage, 
 and wash myself at the pump in the yard in the morn- 
 ing; or should I be turned out every night, and ex- 
 pected to come again to be left till called for, when 
 the office opened next day? Supposing there was 
 no mistake in the case, and Mr. Murdstone had de- 
 vised this plan to get rid of me, what should I do? 
 If they allowed me to remain there until my seven 
 shillings were spent, I couldn't hope to remain there 
 when I began to starve. That would obviously be in- 
 convenient and unpleasant to the customers, besides 
 entailing on the Blue Whatever-it-was, the risk of fu- 
 neral expenses. If I started ofif at once, and tried to 
 walk back home, how could I ever find my way, how 
 could I ever hope to walk so far, how could I make 
 sure of any one but Peggotty, even if I got back? If 
 I found out the nearest proper authorities, and of- 
 fered myself to go for a soldier, or a sailor, I was 
 such a little fellow that it was most likely they 
 wouldn't take me in. These thoughts, and a hun- 
 dred other such thoughts, turned me burning hot, 
 and made me giddy with apprehension and dismay. 
 I was in the height of my fever when a man entered 
 and whispered to the clerk, who presently slanted 
 me off the scale, and pushed me over to him, as if I 
 were weighed, bought, delivered, and paid for. 
 
 As I went out of the office hand-in-hand with this 
 new acquaintance, I stole a look at him. He was a 
 
 15 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 gaunt, sallow young man, with hollow cheeks, and a 
 chin almost as black as Mr. Murdstone's ; but there 
 the likeness ended, for his whiskers were shaved ofif, 
 and his hair, instead of being glossy, was rusty and 
 dry. He was dressed in a suit of black clothes which 
 were rather rusty and dry too, and rather short in the 
 sleeves and legs; and he had a white neckerchief 
 on, that was not over-clean. I did not, and do not, 
 suppose that this neckerchief was all the linen he 
 wore, but it was all he showed or gave any hint of. 
 
 "You're the new boy?" he said. 
 
 "Yes, sir," I said. 
 
 I supposed I was. I didn't know. 
 
 "I'm one of the masters at Salem House," he said. 
 
 I made him a bow and felt very much overawed. 
 I was so ashamed to allude to a commonplace thing 
 like my box, to a scholar and a master at Salem 
 House, that we had gone some little distance from 
 the yard before I had the hardihood to mention it. 
 We turned back, on my humbly insinuating that it 
 might be useful to me hereafter; and he told the 
 clerk that the carrier had instructions to call for it 
 at noon. 
 
 "If you please, sir," I said, when we had accom- 
 plished about the same distance as before, "is it far?" 
 
 "It's down by Blackheath," he said. 
 
 "Is that far, sir?" I diffidently asked. 
 
 "It's a good step," he said. "We shall go by the 
 stage-coach. It's about six miles." 
 
 i6 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 I was so faint and tired that the idea of holding 
 out for six miles more was too much for me. I took 
 heart to tell him that I had had nothing all night, and 
 that if he would allow me to buy something to eat I 
 should be very much obliged to him. He appeared 
 surprised at this — I see him stop and look at me now 
 — and after considering for a few moments said he 
 wanted to call on an old person who lived not far 
 off, and that the best way would be for me to buy 
 some bread, or whatever I liked best that was whole- 
 some, and make my breakfast at her house, where we 
 could get some milk. 
 
 Accordingly we looked in at a baker's window, 
 and after I had made a series of proposals to buy 
 everything that was bilious in the shop, and he had 
 rejected them one by one, we decided in favor of a 
 nice little loaf of brown bread, which cost me three- 
 pence. Then, at a grocer's shop, we bought an egg 
 and a slice of streaky bacon; which still left what I 
 thought a good deal of change, out of the second of 
 the bright shillings, and made me consider London 
 a very cheap place. These provisions laid in, we 
 went on through a great noise and uproar that con- 
 fused my weary head beyond description, and over 
 a bridge which, no doubt, was London Bridge (in- 
 deed I think he told me so, but I was half asleep), 
 until we came to the poor person's house, which was 
 a part of some almshouses, as I knew by their look, 
 and by an inscription on a stone over the gate, which 
 
 17 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 said they were established for twenty-five poor 
 women. 
 
 The Master at Salem House lifted the latch of 
 one of a number of little black doors that were all 
 alike, and had each a little diamond-paned window 
 on one side, and another little diamond-paned win- 
 dow above ; and we went into the little house of one 
 of these poor old women, who was blowing a fire to 
 make a little saucepan boil. On seeing the Master 
 enter, the old woman stopped with the bellows on 
 her knee, and said something that I thought sounded 
 like "My Charley!" but on seeing me come in too, 
 she got up, and rubbing her hands made a confused 
 sort of half-curtsey. 
 
 "Can you cook this young gentleman's breakfast 
 for him, if you please?" said the Master at Salem 
 House. 
 
 "Can I?" said the old woman. "Yes, can I, sure!" 
 
 "How's Mrs. Fibbitson to-day?" said the Master, 
 looking at another old woman in a large chair by the 
 fire, who was such a bundle of clothes that I feel 
 grateful to this hour for not having sat upon her by 
 mistake. 
 
 "Ah, she's poorly," said the first old woman. "It's 
 one of her bad days. If the fire was to go out, 
 through any accident, I verily believe she'd go out 
 too, and never come to life again." 
 
 As they looked at her, I looked at her also. Al- 
 though it was a warm day, she seemed to think of 
 
 i8 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 nothing but the fire. I fancied she was jealous even 
 of the saucepan on it; and I have reason to know that 
 she took its impressment into the service of boiling 
 my egg and broiling my bacon, in dudgeon; for I 
 saw her, with my own discomfited eyes, shake her 
 fist at me once, when those culinary operations were 
 going on, and no one else was looking. The sun 
 streamed in at the little window, but she sat with her 
 own back and the back of the large chair toward it, 
 screening the fire as if she were sedulously keeping 
 it warm, instead of it keeping her warm, and watch- 
 ing it in a most distrustful manner. The comple- 
 tion of the preparations for my breakfast, by reliev- 
 ing the fire, gave her such extreme joy that she 
 laughed aloud — and a very unmelodious laugh she 
 had, I must say. 
 
 I sat down to my brown loaf, my egg, and my 
 rasher of bacon, with a basin of milk besides, and 
 made a most delicious meal. While I was yet in 
 the full enjoyment of it, the old woman of the house 
 said to the Master: 
 
 "Have you got your flute with you?" 
 
 "Yes," he returned. 
 
 "Have a blow at it," said the old woman, coax- 
 ingly. "Do!" 
 
 The Master, upon this, put his hand underneath 
 the skirts of his coat, and brought out his flute in 
 three pieces, which he screwed together, and began 
 immediately to play. My impression is, after many 
 
 19 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 years of consideration, that there never can have been 
 anybody in the world who played worse. He made 
 the most dismal sounds I have ever heard produced 
 by any means, natural or artificial. I don't know 
 what the tunes were — if there were such things in 
 the performance at all, which I doubt — but the in- 
 fluence of the strain upon me was, first, to make me 
 think of all my sorrows until I could hardly keep my 
 tears back; then to take away my appetite; and 
 lastly, to make me so sleepy that I couldn't keep my 
 eyes open. They begin to close again, and I begin 
 to nod, as the recollection rises fresh upon me. Once 
 more the little room, with its open corner cupboard, 
 and its square-backed chairs, and its angular little 
 staircase leading to the room above, and its three 
 peacock's feathers displayed over the mantelpiece — 
 I remember wondering when I first went in what 
 that peacock would have thought if he had known 
 what his finery was doomed to come to — fades from 
 before me, and I nod, and sleep. The flute becomes 
 inaudible, the wheels of the coach are heard instead, 
 and I am on my journey. The coach jolts, I wake 
 with a start, and the flute has come back again, and 
 the Master at Salem House is sitting with his legs 
 crossed, playing it dolefully, while the old woman 
 of the house looks on delighted. She fades in her 
 turn, and he fades, and all fades, and there is no 
 flute, no Master, no Salem House, no David Cop- 
 perfield, no anything but heavy sleep. 
 
 20 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 I dreamed, I thought, that once while he was 
 blowing into this dismal flute, the old woman of 
 the house, who had gone nearer and nearer to him 
 in her ecstatic admiration, leaned over the back of 
 his chair and gave him an affectionate squeeze round 
 the neck, which stopped his playing for a moment. 
 I was in the middle state between sleeping and wak- 
 ing, either then or immediately afterward ; for, as 
 he resumed- — it was a real fact that he had stopped 
 playing — I saw and heard the same old woman ask 
 Mrs. Fibbitson if it wasn't delicious (meaning the 
 flute), to which Mrs. Fibbitson replied, "Ay, ay! 
 yes!" and nodded at the fire: to which, I am per- 
 suaded, she gave the credit of the whole perform- 
 ance. 
 
 When I seemed to have been dozing a long while, 
 the Master at Salem House unscrewed his flute into 
 the three pieces, put them up as before, and took me 
 away. We found the coach very near at hand, and 
 got upon the roof; but I was so dead sleepy that 
 when we stopped on the road to take up somebody 
 else, they put me inside where there were no passen- 
 gers, and where I slept profoundly, until I found the 
 coach going at a footpace up a steep hill among green 
 leaves. Presently it stopped, and had come to its 
 destination. 
 
 A short walk brought us — I mean the Master and 
 me — to Salem House, which wasi inclosed with a 
 high brick wall, and looked very dull. Over a door 
 
 21 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 in this wall was a board with Salem HOUSE upon it; 
 and through a grating in this door we were surveyed, 
 when we rang the bell, by a surly face, which I found, 
 on the door being opened, belonged to a stout man 
 with a bull-neck, a wooden leg, overhanging tem- 
 ples, and his hair cut close all round his head. 
 "The new boy," said the Master. 
 The man with the wooden leg eyed me all over 
 — it didn't take long, for there was not much of me 
 — and locked the gate behind us, and took out the 
 key. We were going up to the house, among some 
 dark heavy trees, when he called after my con- 
 ductor. 
 
 "Hallo!" 
 
 We looked back, and he was standing at the door 
 of a little lodge, where he lived, with a pair of boots 
 in his hand. 
 
 "Here! The cobbler's been," he said, "since 
 you've been out, Mr. Mell, and he says he can't mend 
 'em any more. He says there an't a bit of the origi- 
 nal boot left, and he wonders you expect it." 
 
 With these words he threw the boots toward Mr. 
 Mell, who went back a few paces to pick them up, 
 and looked at them (very disconsolately, I was 
 afraid) as we went on together. I observed then, 
 for the first time, that the boots he had on were a 
 good deal the worse for wear, and that his stocking 
 was just breaking out in one place, like a bud. 
 
 Salem House was a square brick building with 
 
 22 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 wings; of a bare and unfurnished appearance. All 
 about it was so very quiet, that I said to Mr. Mell I 
 supposed the boys were out; but he seemed surprised 
 at my not knowing that it was holiday-time. That 
 all the boys were at their several homes. That Mr. 
 Creakle, the proprietor, was down by the sea-side 
 with Mrs. and Miss Creakle; and that I was sent in 
 holiday-time as a punishment for my misdoing, all 
 of which he explained to me as we went along. 
 
 I gazed upon the schoolroom into w^hich he took 
 me as the most forlorn and desolate place I had ever 
 seen. I see it now. A long room, with three long 
 rows of desks, and six of forms, and bristling all 
 round with pegs for hats and slates. Scraps of old 
 copybooks and exercises litter the dirty floor. Some 
 silkworms' houses, made of the same materials, are 
 scattered over the desks. Two miserable little white 
 mice, left behind by their owner, are running up and 
 down in a fusty castle made of pasteboard and wire, 
 looking in all the corners with their red eyes for any- 
 thing to eat. A bird, in a cage very little bigger than 
 himself, makes a mournful rattle now and then in 
 hopping on his perch, two inches high, or dropping 
 from it; but neither sings nor chirps. There is a 
 strange unwholesome smell upon the room, like 
 mildewed corduroys, sweet apples wanting air, and 
 rotten books. There could not well be more ink 
 splashed about it, if it had been roofless from its first 
 construction, and the skies had rained, snowed, hailed 
 
 23 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 and blown ink through the varying seasons of the 
 year. 
 
 Mr. Mell having left me while he took his irrep- 
 arable boots upstairs, I went softly to the upper end 
 of the room, observing all this as I crept along. Sud- 
 denly I came upon a pasteboard placard, beautifully 
 written, which was lying on the desk, and bore these 
 words — ''Take care of him. He bites." 
 
 I got upon the desk immediately, apprehensive 
 of at least a great dog underneath. But, though I 
 looked all round with anxious eyes, I could see noth- 
 ing of him. I was still engaged in peering about, 
 when Mr. Mell came back, and asked me what I 
 did up there. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir," says I, "if you please, 
 I'm looking for the dog." 
 
 'Dog?" says he. "What dog?" 
 
 'Isn't it a dog, sir?" 
 
 'Isn't what a dog?" 
 
 'That's to be taken care of, sir; that bites." 
 
 'No, Copperfield," says he gravely, "that's not 
 a dog. That's a boy. My instructions are. Copper- 
 field, to put this placard on your back. I am sorry 
 to make such a beginning with you, but I must do it." 
 
 With that he took me down and tied the placard, 
 which was neatly constructed for the purpose, on 
 my shoulders like a knapsack; and wherever I went, 
 afterward, I had the consolation of carrying it. 
 
 What I suffered from that placard nobody can 
 
 24 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 imagine. Whether it was possible for people to see 
 me or not, I always fancied that somebody was read- 
 ing it. It was no relief to turn round and find no- 
 body; for wherever my back was, there I imagined 
 somebody always to be. That cruel man with the 
 wooden leg aggravated my sufiferings. He was in 
 authority; and if he ever saw me leaning against a 
 tree, or a wall, or the house, he roared out from his 
 lodge-door in a stupendous voice, "Hallo, you, sir! 
 You, Copperfield! Show that badge conspicuous, 
 or I'll report you!" The playground was a bare 
 gravelled yard, open to all the back of the house and 
 the offices ; and I knew that the servants read it, and 
 the butcher read it, and the baker read it; that every- 
 body, in a word, who came backward and forward to 
 the house, of a morning when I was ordered to walk 
 there, read that I was to be taken care of, for I bit. 
 I recollect that I positively began to have a dread of 
 myself, as a kind of wild boy who did bite. 
 
 There was an old door in this playground, on 
 which the boys had a custom of carving their names. 
 It was completely covered with such inscriptions. 
 In my dread of the end of the vacation and their 
 coming back, I could not read a boy's name, without 
 inquiring in what tone and with what emphasis he 
 would read, "Take care of him. He bites." There 
 was one boy — a certain J. Steerforth — who cut his 
 name very deep and very often, who, I conceived, 
 would read it in a rather strong voice, and afterward 
 
 25 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 pull my hair. There was another boy, one Tommy 
 Traddles, who I dreaded would make game of it, 
 and pretend to be dreadfully frightened of me. 
 There was a third, George Demple, who I fancied 
 would sing it. I have looked, a little shrinking crea- 
 ture, at that door, until the owners of all the names 
 — there were five- and- forty of them in the school 
 then, Mr. Mell said — seemed to send me to Coventry 
 by general acclamation, and to cry out, each in his 
 own way, "Take care of him. He bites!" 
 
 It was the same with the places at the desks and 
 forms. It was the same with the groves of deserted 
 bedsteads I peeped at, on my way to, and when I was 
 in, my own bed. I remember dreaming night after 
 night of being with my mother as she used to be, or 
 of going to a party at Mr. Peggotty's, or of travel- 
 ling outside the stage-coach, or of dining again with 
 my unfortunate friend the waiter, and in all these 
 circumstances making people scream and stare, by 
 the unhappy disclosure that I had nothing on but 
 my little night-shirt and that placard. 
 
 In the monotony of my life, and in my constant 
 apprehension of the reopening of the school, it was 
 such an insupportable affliction! I had long tasks 
 every day to do with Mr. Mell; but I did them, 
 there being no Mr. and Miss Murdstone here, and 
 got through them without disgrace. Before, and 
 after them, I walked about — supervised, as I have 
 mentioned, by the man with the wooden leg. How 
 
 26 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 vividly I call to mind the damp about the house, the 
 green cracked flagstones in the court, an old leaky 
 water-butt, and the discolored trunks of some of the 
 grim trees, which seemed to have dripped more in 
 the rain than other trees, and to have blown less in the 
 sun ! At one we dined, Mr. Mell and I, at the upper 
 end of a long bare dining-room, full of deal tables, 
 and smelling of fat. Then, we had more tasks until 
 tea, which Mr. Mell drank out of a blue teacup, and 
 I out of a tin pot. All day long, and until seven or 
 eight in the evening, Mr. Mell, at his own detached 
 desk in the schoolroom, worked hard with pen, ink, 
 ruler, books, and writing-paper, making out the bills 
 (as I found) for last half-year. When he had put up 
 his things for the night, he took out his flute, and 
 blew at it, until I almost thought he would grad- 
 ually blow his whole being into the large hole at the 
 top, and ooze away at the keys. 
 
 I picture my small self in the dimly-lighted 
 rooms, sitting with my head upon my hand, listen- 
 ing to the doleful performance of Mr. Mell, and 
 conning to-morrow's lessons. I picture myself with 
 my books shut up, still listening to the doleful per- 
 formance of Mr. Mell, and listening through it to 
 what used to be at home, and to the blowing of the 
 wind on Yarmouth flats, and feeling very sad and 
 solitary. I picture myself going up to bed, among 
 the unused rooms, and sitting on my bedside crying 
 for a comfortable word from Peggotty. I picture 
 
 27 
 
 Vol. IS — 2 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 myself coming downstairs in the morning, and look- 
 ing through a long ghastly gash of a staircase-window 
 at the school-bell hanging on the top of an outhouse, 
 with a weathercock above it; and dreading the time 
 when it shall ring J. Steerforth and the rest to work: 
 which is only second, in my foreboding apprehen- 
 sions, to the time when the man with the wooden leg 
 shall unlock the rusty gate to give admission to the 
 awful Mr. Creakle. I cannot think I was a very 
 dangerous character in any of these aspects, but in 
 all of them I carried the same warning on my back. 
 
 Mr. Mell never said much to me, but he was 
 never harsh to me. I suppose we were company to 
 each other, without talking. I forgot to mention that 
 he would talk to himself sometimes, and grin, and 
 clench his fist, and grind his teeth, and pull his hair 
 in an unaccountable manner. But he had these pe- 
 culiarities : and at first they frightened me, though I 
 soon got used to them. 
 
 I had led this life about a month, when the man 
 with the wooden leg began to stump about with a 
 mop and a bucket of water, from which I in- 
 ferred that preparations were making to receive Mr. 
 Creakle and the boys. I was not mistaken; for the 
 mop came into the schoolroom before long, and 
 turned out Mr. Mell and me, who lived where we 
 could, and got on how we could, for some days, dur- 
 ing which we were always in the way of two or three 
 young women, who had rarely shown themselves be- 
 
 28 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 fore, and were so continually in the midst of dust 
 that I sneezed almost as much as if Salem House 
 had been a great snuff-box. 
 
 One day I was informed by Mr. Mell that Mr. 
 Creakle would be home that evening. In the even- 
 ing, after tea, I heard that he was come. Before bed- 
 time, I was fetched by the man with the wooden leg 
 to appear before him. 
 
 Mr. Creakle's part of the house was a good deal 
 more comfortable than ours, and he had a snug bit 
 of garden that looked pleasant after the dusty play- 
 ground, which was such a desert in miniature that I 
 thought no one but a camel, or a dromedary, could 
 have felt at home in it. It seemed to me a bold 
 thing even to take notice that the passage looked com- 
 fortable, as I went on my way, trembling, to Mr. 
 Creakle's presence: which so abashed me, when I 
 was ushered into it, that I hardly saw Mrs. Creakle 
 or Miss Creakle (who were both there, in the par- 
 lor), or anything but Mr. Creakle, a stout gentlemen 
 with a bunch of watch-chain and seals, in an arm- 
 chair, with a tumbler and bottle beside him. 
 
 "So!" said Mr. Creakle. "This is the young 
 gentleman whose teeth are to be filed! Turn him 
 round." 
 
 The wooden-legged man turned me about so as to 
 exhibit the placard; and having afforded time for a 
 full survey of it, turned me about again, with my 
 face to Mr. Creakle, and posted himself at Mr. 
 
 29 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Creakle's side. Mr. Creakle's face was fiery, and 
 his eyes were small, and deep in his head; he had 
 thick veins in his forehead, a little nose, and a large 
 chin. He was bald on the top of his head; and had 
 some thin wet-looking hair that was just turning 
 gray, brushed across each temple, so that the two 
 sides interlaced on his forehead. But the circum- 
 stance about him which impressed me most was that 
 he had no voice, but spoke in a whisper. The exer- 
 tion this cost him, or the consciousness of talking in 
 that feeble way, made his angry face so much more 
 angry, and his thick veins so much thicker, when he 
 •spoke, that I am not surprised, on looking back, at 
 this peculiarly striking me as his chief one. 
 
 "Now," said Mr. Creakle. "What's the report 
 of this boy?" 
 
 "There's nothing against him yet," returned the 
 man with the wooden leg. "There has been no 
 opportunity." 
 
 I thought Mr. Creakle was disappointed. I 
 thought Mrs. and Miss Creakle (at whom I now 
 glanced for the first time, and who were, both, thin 
 and quiet) were not disappointed. 
 
 "Come here, sir!" said Mr. Creakle, beckoning 
 to me. 
 
 "Come here!" said the man with the wooden leg, 
 repeating the gesture. 
 
 "I have the happiness of knowing your father-in- 
 law," whispered Mr. Creakle, taking me by the ear; 
 
 30 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 "and a worthy man he is, and a man of a strong char- 
 acter. He knows me, and I know him. Do you 
 know me? Hey?" said Mr. Creakle, pinching my 
 ear with ferocious playfulness. 
 
 "Not yet, sir," I said, flinching with the pain. 
 
 "Not yet? Hey?" repeated Mr. Creakle. "But 
 you will soon. Hey?" 
 
 "You will soon. Hey?" repeated the man with 
 the wooden leg. I afterward found that he gen- 
 erally acted, with his strong voice, as Mr. Creakle's 
 interpreter to the boys. 
 
 I was very much frightened, and said, I hoped 
 so, if he pleased. I felt, all this while, as if my ear 
 were blazing; he pinched it so hard. 
 
 "I'll tell you what I am," whispered Mr. Creakle, 
 letting it go at last, with a screw at parting that 
 brought the water into my eyes, "I'm a Tartar." 
 
 "A Tartar," said the man with the wooden 
 leg. 
 
 "When I say I'll do a thing, I do it," said Mr. 
 Creakle; "and when I say I will have a thing done, 
 I will have it done." 
 
 " — Will have a thing done, I will have it done," 
 repeated the man with the wooden leg. 
 
 "I am a determined character," said Mr. Creakle. 
 "That's what I am. I do my duty. That's what / 
 do. My flesh and blood — " he looked at Mrs. 
 Creakle as he said this — "when it rises against me, 
 is not my flesh and blood. I discard it. Has that 
 
 31 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 fellow," to the man with the wooden leg, "been here 
 again?" 
 
 "No," was the answer. 
 
 "No," said Mr. Creakle. "He knows better. He 
 knows me. Let him keep away. I say let him keep 
 away," said Mr. Creakle, striking his hand upon the 
 table, and looking at Mrs. Creakle, "for he knows 
 me. Now you have begun to know me, too, my 
 young friend, and you may go. Take him away." 
 
 I was very glad to be ordered away, for Mrs. and 
 Miss Creakle were both wiping their eyes, and I felt 
 as uncomfortable for them as I did for myself. But 
 I had a petition on my mind which concerned me so 
 nearly, that I couldn't help saying, though I won- 
 dered at my own courage : 
 
 "If you please, sir — " 
 
 Mr. Creakle whispered, "Hah? What's this?" 
 and bent his eyes upon me, as if he would have 
 burned me up with them. 
 
 "If you please, sir," I faltered, "if I might be al- 
 lowed (I am very sorry indeed, sir, for what I did) 
 to take this writing off, before the boys come 
 back—" 
 
 Whether Mr. Creakle was in earnest, or whether 
 he only did it to frighten me, I don't know, but he 
 made a burst out of his chair, before which I pre- 
 cipitately retreated, without waiting for the escort of 
 the man with the wooden leg, and never once stopped 
 until I reached my own bedroom, where, finding I 
 
 32 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 was not pursued, I went to bed, as it was time, and 
 lay quaking, for a couple of hours. 
 
 Next morning Mr. Sharp came back. Mr. Sharp 
 was the first master, and superior to Mr. Mell. Mr. 
 Mell took his meals with the boys, but Mr. Sharp 
 dined and supped at Mr. Creakle's table. He was 
 a limp, delicate-looking gentleman, I thought, with 
 a good deal of nose, and a way of carrying his head 
 on one side, as if it were a little too heavy for him. 
 His hair was very smooth and wavy; but I was in- 
 formed by the very first boy who came back that it 
 was a wig (a second-hand one he said) , and that Mr. 
 Sharp went out every Saturday afternoon to get it 
 curled. 
 
 It was no other than Tommy Traddles who gave 
 me this piece of intelligence. He was the first boy 
 who returned. He introduced himself by inform- 
 ing me that I should find his name on the right-hand 
 corner of the gate, over the top bolt ; upon that I said : 
 "Traddles?" to which he replied: "The same," and 
 then he asked me for a full account of my family. 
 
 It was a happy circumstance for me that Trad- 
 dles came back first. He enjoyed my placard so 
 much, that he saved me from the embarrassment of 
 either disclosure or concealment, by presenting me 
 to every other boy who came back, great or small, 
 immediately on his arrival, in this form of introduc- 
 tion, "Look here! Here's a game!" Happily, too, 
 the greater part of the boys came back low-spirited, 
 
 33 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 and were not so boisterous at my expense as I had 
 expected. Some of them certainly did dance about 
 me like wild Indians, and the greater part could not 
 resist the temptation of pretending that I was a dog, 
 and patting and smoothing me lest I should bite, and 
 saying, "Lie down, sir!" and calling me Towzer. 
 This was naturally confusing, among so many stran- 
 gers, and cost me some tears, but on the whole it was 
 much better than I had anticipated. 
 
 I was not considered as being formally received 
 into the school, however, until J. Steerforth arrived. 
 Before this boy, who was reputed to be a great 
 scholar, and was very good-looking, and at least 
 half-a-dozen years my senior, I was carried as before 
 a magistrate. He inquired, under a shed in the play- 
 ground, into the particulars of my punishment, and 
 was pleased to express his opinion that it was "a jolly 
 shame ;" for which I became bound to him ever after- 
 ward. 
 
 "What money have you got, Copperfield?" he 
 said, walking aside with me when he had disposed 
 of my affair in these terms. 
 
 I told him seven shillings. 
 
 "You had better give it to me to take care of," 
 he said. "At least, you can if you like. You needn't 
 if you don't like." 
 
 I hastened to comply with his friendly sugges- 
 tion, and opening Peggotty's purse, turned it upside 
 down into his hand. 
 
 34 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 "Do you want to spend anything now?" he asked 
 me. 
 
 "No, thank you," I replied. 
 
 "You can if you like, you know," said Steerforth. 
 "Say the word." 
 
 "No, thank you, sir," I repeated. 
 
 "Perhaps you'd like to spend a couple of shillings 
 or so, in a bottle of currant wine by and by, up in the 
 bedroom?" said Steerforth. "You belong to my bed- 
 room, I find." 
 
 It certainly had not occurred to me before, but I 
 said, "Yes, I should like that." 
 
 "Very good," said Steerforth. "You'll be glad 
 to spend another shilling or so, in almond cakes, I 
 dare say?" 
 
 I said, "Yes, I should like that, too." 
 
 "And another shilling or so in biscuits, and an- 
 other in fruit, eh?" said Steerforth. "I say, young 
 Copperfield, you're going it!" 
 
 I smiled because he smiled, but I was a little 
 troubled in my mind, too. 
 
 "Well!" said Steerforth. "We must make it 
 stretch as far as we can; that's all. I'll do the best 
 in my power for you. I can go out when I like, and 
 I'll smuggle the prog in." With these words he put 
 the money in his pocket, and kindly told me not to 
 make myself uneasy; he would take care it should be 
 all right. 
 
 He was as good as his word, if that were all right 
 
 3S 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 which I had a secret misgiving was nearly all wrong 
 — for I feared it was a waste of my mother's two half- 
 crowns — though I had preserved the piece of paper 
 they were wrapped in : which was a precious saving. 
 When we went upstairs to bed, he produced the 
 whole seven shillings' worth, and laid it out on my 
 bed in the moonlight, saying: 
 
 "There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal 
 spread you've got!" 
 
 I couldn't think of doing the honors of the feast, 
 at my time of life, while he was by; my hand shook 
 at the very thought of it. I begged him to do me 
 the favor of presiding; and my request being sec- 
 onded by the other boys who were in that room, he 
 acceded to it, and sat upon my pillow, handing round 
 the viands — with perfect fairness, I must say — and 
 dispensing the currant wine in a little glass without 
 a foot, which was his own property. As to me, I sat 
 on his left hand, and the rest were grouped about us, 
 on the nearest beds and on the floor. 
 
 How well I recollect our sitting there, talking in 
 whispers; or their talking, and my respectfully listen- 
 ing, I ought rather to say; the moonlight falling a lit- 
 tle way into the room, through the window, painting 
 a pale window on the floor, and the greater part of 
 us in shadow, except when Steerforth dipped a match 
 into a phosphorus-box, when he wanted to look for 
 anything on the board, and shed a blue glare over us 
 that was gone directly! A certain mysterious feel- 
 
 36 
 
David Copperiield 
 
 ing, consequent on the darkness, the secrecy of the 
 revel, and the whisper in which everything was said, 
 steals over me again, and I listen to all they tell me 
 with a vague feeling of solemnity and awe, which 
 makes me glad that they are all so near, and frightens 
 me (though I feign to laugh) when Traddles pre- 
 tends to see a ghost in the corner. 
 
 I heard all kinds of things about the school and 
 all belonging to it. I heard that Mr. Creakle had 
 not preferred his claim to being a Tartar without 
 reason; that he was the sternest and most severe of 
 masters; that he had laid about him, right and left, 
 every day of his life, charging in among the boys 
 like a trooper, and slashing away, unmercifully. That 
 he knew nothing himself, but the art of slashing, be- 
 ing more ignorant (J. Steerforth said) than the low- 
 est boy in the school ; that he had been, a good many 
 years ago, a small hop-dealer in the Borough, and 
 had taken to the schooling business after being bank- 
 rupt in hops, and making away with Mrs. Creakle's 
 money. With a good deal more of that sort, which 
 I wondered how they knew. 
 
 I heard that the man with the wooden leg, whose 
 name was Tungay, was an obstinate barbarian who 
 had formerly assisted in the hop business, but had 
 come into the scholastic line with Mr. Creakle, in 
 consequence, as was supposed among the boys, of 
 his having broken his leg in Mr. Creakle's service, 
 and having done a deal of dishonest work for him, 
 
 37 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 and knowing his secrets. I heard that with the sin- 
 gle exception of Mr. Creakle, Tungay considered 
 the whole establishment, masters and boys, as his 
 natural enemies, and that the only delight of his life 
 was to be sour and malicious. I heard that Mr. 
 Creakle had a son, who had not been Tungay's friend 
 and who, assisting in the school, had once held some 
 remonstrance with his father on an occasion when its 
 discipline was very cruelly exercised, and was sup- 
 posed, besides, to have protested against his father's 
 usage of his mother. I heard that Mr. Creakle had 
 turned him out of doors, in consequence; and that 
 Mrs. and Miss Creakle had been in a sad way, ever 
 since. 
 
 But the greatest wonder that I heard of Mr. 
 Creakle was, there being one boy in the school on 
 whom he never ventured to lay a hand, and that boy 
 being J. Steerforth. Steerforth himself confirmed 
 this when it was stated, and said that he should like 
 to begin to see him do it. On being asked by a mild 
 boy (not me) how he would proceed if he did begin 
 to see him do it, he dipped a match into his phos- 
 phorus-box on purpose to shed a glare over his re- 
 ply, and said he would commence by knocking him 
 down with a blow on the forehead from the seven- 
 and-sixpenny ink-bottle that was always on the man- 
 telpiece. We sat in the dark for some time, breath- 
 less. 
 
 I heard that Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both 
 
 38 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 supposed to be wretchedly paid; and that when there 
 was hot and cold meat for dinner at Mr. Creakle's 
 table, Mr. Sharp was always expected to say he pre- 
 ferred cold; which was again corroborated by J. 
 Steerforth, the only parlor-boarder. I heard that 
 Mr. Sharp's wig didn't fit him; and that he needn't 
 be so "bounceable" — somebody else said "bump- 
 tious" — about it, because his own red hair was very 
 plainly to be seen behind. 
 
 I heard that one boy, who was a coal-merchant's 
 son, came as a set-ofif against the coal-bill, and was 
 called, on that account, "Exchange or Barter" — a 
 name selected from the arithmetic-book as expressing 
 this arrangement. I heard that the table-beer was a 
 robbery of parents, and the pudding an imposition. I 
 heard that Miss Creakle was regarded by the school 
 in general as being in love with Steerforth; and I 
 am sure, as I sat in the dark, thinking of his nice 
 voice, and his fine face, and his easy manner, and 
 his curling hair, I thought it very likely. I heard 
 that Mr. Mell was not a bad sort of a fellow, but 
 hadn't a sixpence to bless himself with; and that 
 there was no doubt that old Mrs. Mell, his mother, 
 was as poor as Job. I thought of my breakfast then, 
 and what had sounded like "My Charley!" but I 
 was, I am glad to remember, as mute as a mouse 
 about it. 
 
 The hearing of all this, and a good deal more, 
 outlasted the banquet some time. The greater part 
 
 39 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 of the guests had gone to bed as soon as the eating 
 and drinking were over; and we, who had remained 
 whispering and listening half undressed, at last be- 
 took ourselves to bed, too. 
 
 "Good-night, young Copperfield," said Steer- 
 forth, "I'll take care of you." 
 
 "You're very kind," I gratefully returned. "I 
 am very much obliged to you." 
 
 "You haven't got a sister, have you?" said Steer- 
 forth, yawning. 
 
 "No," I answered. 
 
 "That's a pity," said Steerforth. "If you had 
 had one, I should think she would have been a pretty, 
 timid, little, bright-eyed sort of girl. I should have 
 liked to know her. Good-night, young Copper- 
 field." 
 
 "Good-night, sir," I replied. 
 
 I thought of him very much after I went to bed, 
 and raised myself, I recollect, to look at him where 
 he lay in the moonlight, with his handsome face 
 turned up, and his head reclining easily on his arm. 
 He was a person of great power in my eyes ; that was, 
 of course, the reason of my mind running on him. 
 No veiled future dimly glanced upon him in the 
 moonbeams. There was no shadowy picture of his 
 footsteps, in the garden that I dreamed of walking in 
 all night. 
 
 School began in earnest next day. A profound 
 impression was made upon me, I remember, by the 
 
 40 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 roar of voices in the schoolroom suddenly becoming 
 hushed as death when Mr. Creakle entered after 
 breakfast, and stood in the doorway looking round 
 upon us like a giant in a story-book surveying his 
 captives. 
 
 Tungay stood at Mr. Creakle's elbow. He had 
 no occasion, I thought, to cry out "Silence!" so fero- 
 ciously, for the boys were all struck speechless and 
 motionless. 
 
 Mr. Creakle was seen to speak, and Tungay was 
 heard, to this effect. 
 
 "Now, boys, this is a new half. Take care what 
 you're about, in this new half. Come fresh up to the 
 lessons, I advise you, for I come fresh up to the pun- 
 ishment. I won't flinch. It will be of no use your 
 rubbing yourselves ; you won't rub the marks out that 
 I shall give you. Now get to work, every boy!" 
 
 When this dreadful exordium was over, and Tun- 
 gay had stumped out again, Mr. Creakle came to 
 where I sat, and told me that if I were famous for 
 biting he was famous for biting, too. He then 
 showed me the cane, and asked me what I thought 
 of that, for a tooth? Was it a sharp tooth, hey? 
 Was it a double tooth, hey? Had it a deep prong, 
 hey? Did it bite, hey? Did it bite? At every 
 question he gave me a fleshy cut with it that made 
 me writhe; so I was very soon made free of Salem 
 House (as Steerforth said), and very soon in tears 
 also. 
 
 41 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Not that I mean to say these were special marks 
 of distinction, which only I received. On the con- 
 trary, a large majority of the boys (especially the 
 smaller ones) were visited with similar instances of 
 notice, as Mr. Creakle made the round of the school- 
 room. Half the establishment was writhing and cry- 
 ing, before the day's work began; and how much of 
 it had writhed and cried before the day's work was 
 over, I am really afraid to recollect, lest I should 
 seem to exaggerate. 
 
 I should think there never can have been a man 
 who enjoyed his profession more than Mr. Creakle 
 did. He had a delight in cutting at the boys, which 
 was like the satisfaction of a craving appetite. I am 
 confident that he couldn't resist a chubby boy, es- 
 pecially; that there was a fascination in such a sub- 
 ject, which made him restless in his mind, until he 
 had scored and marked him for the day. I was 
 chubby myself, and ought to know. I am sure when 
 I think of the fellow now, my blood rises against him 
 with the disinterested indignation I should feel if I 
 could have known all about him without having ever 
 been in his power; but it rises hotly, because I know 
 him to have been an incapable brute, who had no 
 more right to be possessed of the great trust he held, 
 than to be Lord High Admiral, or Commander-in- 
 Chief: in either of which capacities, it is probable 
 that he would have done infinitely less mischief. 
 
 Miserable little propitiators of a remorseless Idol, 
 
 42 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 hdw abject we were to him ! What a launch in life 
 I think it now, on looking back, to be so mean and 
 servile to a man of such parts and pretensions! 
 
 Here I sit at the desk again, watching his eye — 
 humbly watching his eye, as he rules a ciphering- 
 book for another victim whose hands have just been 
 flattened by that identical ruler, and who is trying to 
 wipe the sting out with a pocket-handkerchief. I 
 have plenty to do. I don't watch his eye in idleness, 
 but because I am morbidly attracted to it, in a dread 
 desire to know what he will do next, and whether it 
 will be my turn to suffer, or somebody else's. A lane 
 of small boys beyond me, with the same interest in his 
 eye, watch it too. I think he knows it, though he 
 pretends he don't. He makes dreadful mouths as 
 he rules the ciphering-book; and now he throws his 
 eye sidewise down our lane, and we all droop over 
 our books and tremble. A moment afterward we 
 are again eying him. An unhappy culprit, found 
 guilty of imperfect exercise, approaches at his com- 
 mand. The culprit falters excuses, and professes a 
 determination to do better to-morrow. Mr. Creakle 
 cuts a joke before he beats him, and we laugh at it — 
 miserable little dogs, we laugh, with our visages as 
 white as ashes, and our hearts sinking into our boots. 
 
 Here I sit at the desk again, on a drowsy summer 
 afternoon. A buzz and hum go up around me, as if 
 the boys were so many bluebottles. A cloggy sensa- 
 tion of the lukewarm fat of meat is upon me (we 
 
 43 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 dined an hour or two ago), and my head is as heavy 
 as so much lead. I would give the world to go to 
 sleep. I sit with my eye on Mr. Creakle, blinking at 
 him like a young owl ; when sleep overpowers me for 
 a minute, he still looms through my slumber, ruling 
 those ciphering-books ; until he softly comes behind 
 me and wakes me to plainer perception of him, with 
 a red ridge across my back. 
 
 Here I am in the playground, with my eye still 
 fascinated by him, though I can't see him. The 
 window at a little distance from which I know he is 
 having his dinner, stands for him, and I eye that in- 
 stead. If he shows his face near it, mine assumes an 
 imploring and submissive expression. If he looks 
 out through the glass, the boldest boy (Steerforth ex- 
 cepted) stops in the middle of a shout or yell, and 
 becomes contemplative. One day, Traddles (the 
 most unfortunate boy in the world) breaks that win- 
 dow accidentally, with a ball. I shudder at this 
 moment with the tremendous sensation of seeing it 
 done, and feeling that the ball has bounded on to Mr. 
 Creakle's sacred head. 
 
 Poor Traddles! In a tight sky-blue suit that 
 made his arms and legs like German sausages, or 
 roly-poly puddings, he was the merriest and most 
 miserable of all the boys. He was always being 
 caned — I think he was caned every day that half- 
 year, except one holiday Monday when he was onlv 
 ruler'd on both hands — and was always going to 
 
 44 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 write to his uncle about it, and never did. After lay- 
 ing his head on the desk for a little while, he would 
 cheer up, somehow, begin to laugh again, and draw 
 skeletons all over his slate, before his eyes were dry. 
 I used at first to wonder what comfort Traddles 
 found in drawing skeletons; and for some time 
 looked upon him as a sort of hermit, who reminded 
 himself by those symbols of mortality that caning 
 couldn't last forever. But I believe he only did it 
 because they were easy, and didn't want any features. 
 
 He was very honorable, Traddles was, and held 
 it as a solemn duty in the boys to stand by one an- 
 other. He suffered for this on several occasions ; and 
 particularly once, when Steerforth laughed in church 
 and the beadle thought it was Traddles, and took him 
 out. I see him now, going away in custody, de- 
 spised by the congregation. He never said who was 
 the real offender, though he smarted for it next day, 
 and was imprisoned so many hours that he came forth 
 with a whole churchyardful of skeletons swarming 
 all over his Latin Dictionary. But he had his re- 
 ward. Steerforth said there was nothing of the sneak 
 in Traddles, and we all felt that to be the highest 
 praise. For my part, I could have gone through a 
 good deal (though I was much less brave than Trad- 
 dles, and nothing like so old) to have won such a 
 recompense. 
 
 To see Steerforth walk to church before us, arm- 
 in-arm with Miss Creakle, was one of the great sights 
 
 45 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 of my life. I didn't think Miss Creakle equal to lit- 
 tle Em'ly in point of beauty, and I didn't love her 
 (I didn't dare) ; but I thought her a young lady of 
 extraordinary attractions, and in point of gentility 
 not to be surpassed. When Steerforth, in white 
 trousers, carried her parasol for her, I felt proud to 
 know him ; and believed that she could not choose but 
 adore him with all her heart. Mr. Sharp and Mr. 
 Mell were both notable personages in my eyes; but 
 Steerforth was to them what the sun was to two stars. 
 
 Steerforth continued his protection of me, and 
 proved a very useful friend, since nobody dared to 
 annoy one whom he honored with his countenance. 
 He couldn't — or, at all events, he didn't — defend me 
 from Mr. Creakle, who was very severe with me ; but 
 whenever I had been treated worse than usual, he al- 
 ways told me that I wanted a little of his pluck, and 
 that he wouldn't have stood it himself; which I felt 
 he intended for encouragement, and considered to be 
 very kind of him. There was one advantage, and 
 only one that I know of, in Mr. Creakle's severity. 
 He found my placard in his way, when he came up 
 or down behind the form on which I sat, and wanted 
 to make a cut at me in passing; for this reason it was 
 soon taken off, and I saw it no more. 
 
 An accidental circumstance cemented the inti- 
 macy between Steerforth and me, in a manner that 
 inspired me with great pride and satisfaction, though 
 it sometimes led to inconvenience. It happened on 
 
 46 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 one occasion, when he was doing me the honor of 
 talking to me in the playground, that I hazarded the 
 observation that something or somebody — I forget 
 what now — ^was like something or somebody in 
 "Peregrine Pickle." He said nothing at the time ; but 
 when I was going to bed at night, asked me if I had 
 got that book. 
 
 I told him no, and explained how it was that I 
 had read it, and all those other books of which I have 
 made mention. 
 
 "And do you recollect them?" Steerforth said. 
 
 "Oh yes," I replied; "I had a good memory, and 
 I believed I recollected them very well." 
 
 "Then I tell you what, young Copperfield," said 
 Steerforth, "you shall tell 'em to me. I can't get to 
 sleep very early at night, and I generally wake rather 
 early in the morning. We'll go over 'em one after 
 another. We'll make some regular Arabian Nights 
 of it." 
 
 I felt extremely flattered by this arrangement, 
 and we commenced carrying it into execution that 
 very evening. What ravages I committed on my 
 favorite authors in the course of my interpretation of 
 them, I am not in a condition to say, and should be 
 very unwilling to know; but I had a profound faith 
 in them, and I had, to the best of my belief, a simple, 
 earnest manner of narrating what I did narrate; and 
 these qualities went a long way. 
 
 The drawback was, that I was often sleepy at 
 
 47 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 night, or out of spirits and indisposed to resume the 
 story; and then it was rather hard work, and it must 
 be done; for to disappoint or to displease Steerforth 
 was of course out of the question. In the morning 
 too, when I felt weary, and should have enjoyed an- 
 other hour's repose very much, it was a tiresome thing 
 to be roused, like the Sultana Scheherazade, and 
 forced into a long story before the getting-up bell 
 rang; but Steerforth was resolute; and as he ex- 
 plained to me, in return, my sums and exercises, and 
 anything in my tasks that was too hard for me, I was 
 no loser by the transaction. Let me do myself jus- 
 tice, however. I was moved by no interested or 
 selfish motive, nor was I moved by fear of him. 
 I admired and loved him, and his approval was 
 return enough. It was so precious to me, that 
 I look back on these trifles, now, with an aching 
 heart. 
 
 Steerforth was considerate too, and showed his 
 consideration, in one particular instance, in an un- 
 flinching manner that was a little tantalizing, I sus- 
 pect, to poor Traddles and the rest. Peggotty's 
 promised letter — what a comfortable letter it was! — 
 arrived before "the half" was many weeks old; and 
 with it a cake in a perfect nest of oranges, and two 
 bottles of cowslip wine. This treasure, as in duty 
 bound, I laid at the feet of Steerforth, and begged 
 him to dispense. 
 
 "Now, I'll tell you what, young Copperfield," 
 
 48 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 said he : "the wine shall be kept to wet your whistle 
 when you are story-telling." 
 
 I blushed at the idea, and begged him, in my 
 modesty, not to think of it. But he said he had ob- 
 served I was sometimes hoarse — a little roopy was his 
 exact expression — and it should be, every drop, de- 
 voted to the purpose he had mentioned. Accord- 
 ingly, it was locked up in his box, and drawn off by 
 himself in a phial, and administered to me through a 
 piece of quill in the cork, when I was supposed to be 
 in want of a restorative. Sometimes, to make it a 
 more sovereign specific, he was so kind as to squeeze 
 orange juice into it, or to stir it up with ginger, or 
 dissolve a peppermint drop in it; and although I 
 cannot assert that the flavor was improved by these 
 experiments, or that it was exactly the compound one 
 would have chosen for a stomachic, the last thing at 
 night and the first thing in the morning, I drank it 
 gratefully, and was very sensible of his attention. 
 
 We seem, to me, to have been months over Pere- 
 grine, and months more over the other stories. The 
 institution never flagged for want of a story, I am 
 certain; and the wine lasted out almost as well as the 
 matter. Poor Traddles — I never think of that boy 
 but with a strange disposition to laugh, and with 
 tears in my eyes — ^was a sort of chorus, in general; 
 and affected to be convulsed with mirth at the comic 
 parts, and to be overcome with fear when there was 
 any passage of an alarming character in the narra- 
 
 49 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 tive. This rather put me out, very often. It was a 
 great jest of his, I recollect, to pretend that he 
 couldn't keep his teeth from chattering, whenever 
 mention was made of an Alguazil in connection with 
 the adventures of Gil Bias; and I remember that, 
 when Gil Bias met the captain of the robbers in 
 Madrid, this unlucky joker counterfeited such an 
 ague of terror, that he was overheard by Mr. 
 Creakle, who was prowling about the passage, and 
 handsomely flogged for disorderly conduct in the 
 bedroom. 
 
 Whatever I had within me that was romantic and 
 dreamy, was encouraged by so much story-telling in 
 the dark; and in that respect the pursuit may not 
 have been very profitable to me. But the being cher- 
 ished as a kind of plaything in my room, and the 
 consciousness that this accomplishment of mine was 
 bruited about among the boys, and attracted a good 
 deal of notice to me though I was the youngest there, 
 stimulated me to exertion. In a school carried on 
 by sheer cruelty, whether it is presided over by a 
 dunce or not, there is not likely to be much 
 learned. I believe our boys were, generally, as ig- 
 norant a set as any schoolboys in existence ; they were 
 too much troubled and knocked about to learn; they 
 could no more do that to advantage, than any one 
 can do anything to advantage in a life of constant 
 misfortune, torment, and worry. But my little van- 
 ity, and Steerforth's help, urged me on somehow; 
 
 50 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 and without saving me from much, if anything, in 
 the way of punishment, made me, for the time I was 
 there, an exception to the general body, insomuch 
 that I did steadily pick up some crumbs of knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 In this I was much assisted by Mr. Mell, who 
 had a liking for me that I am grateful to remem- 
 ber. It always gave me pain to observe that Steer- 
 forth treated him with systematic disparagement, and 
 seldom lost occasion of wounding his feelings, or in- 
 ducing others to do so. This troubled me the more 
 for a long time, because I had soon told Steerforth, 
 from whom I could no more keep such a secret than 
 I could keep a cake or any other tangible possession, 
 about the two old women Mr. Mell had taken me to 
 see; and I was always afraid that Steerforth would 
 let it out, and twit him with it. 
 
 We little thought, any one of us, I dare say, when 
 I ate my breakfast that first morning, and went to 
 sleep under the shadow of the peacock's feathers to 
 the sound of the flute, what consequences would 
 come of the introduction into those almshouses of my 
 insignificant person. But the visit had its unfore- 
 seen consequences ; and of a serious sort, too, in their 
 way. 
 
 One day when Mr. Creakle kept the house from 
 indisposition, which naturally diffused a lively joy 
 through the school, there was a good deal of noise in 
 the course of the morning's work. The great relief 
 
 SI 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 and satisfaction experienced by the boys made them 
 difficult to manage ; and though the dreaded Tungay 
 brought his wooden leg in twice or thrice, and took 
 notes of the principal offenders' names, no great im- 
 pression was made by it, as they were pretty sure of 
 getting into trouble to-morrow, do what they would, 
 and thought it wise, no doubt, to enjoy themselves 
 to-day. 
 
 It was, properly, a half-holiday; being Saturday. 
 But as the noise in the playground would have dis- 
 turbed Mr. Creakle, and the weather was not favor- 
 able for going out walking, we were ordered into 
 school in the afternoon, and set some lighter tasks 
 than usual, which were made for the occasion. It 
 was the day of the week on which Mr. Sharp went 
 out to get his wig curled; so Mr. Mell, who always 
 did the drudgery, whatever it was, kept school by 
 himself. 
 
 If I could associate the idea of a bull or a bear 
 with any one so mild as Mr. Mell, I should think of 
 him, in connection with that afternoon when the up- 
 roar was at its height, as of one of those animals, 
 baited by a thousand dogs. I recall him bending his 
 aching head, supported on his bony hand, over the 
 book on his desk, and wretchedly endeavoring to get 
 on with his tiresome work, amid an uproar that would 
 make the Speaker of the House of Commons giddy. 
 Boys started in and out of their places, playing at 
 puss-in-the-corner with other boys ; there were laugh- 
 
 52 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 ing boys, singing boys, talking boys, dancing boys, 
 howling boys; boys shuffled with their feet, boys 
 whirled about him, grinning, making faces, mimick- 
 ing him behind his back and before his eyes: mim- 
 icking his poverty, his boots, his coat, his mother, 
 everything belonging to him that they should have 
 had consideration for. 
 
 "Silence!" cried Mr. Mell, suddenly rising up, 
 and striking his desk with the book. "What does 
 this mean! It's impossible to bear it. It's madden- 
 ing. How can you do it to me, boys?" 
 
 It was my book that he struck his desk with ; and 
 as I stood beside him, following his eye as it glanced 
 round the room, I saw the boys all stop, some sud- 
 denly surprised, some half afraid, and some sorry 
 perhaps. 
 
 Steerforth's place was at the bottom of the school, 
 at the opposite end of the long room. He was loung- 
 ing with his back against the wall, and his hands in 
 his pockets, and looked at Mr. Mell with his mouth 
 shut up as if he were whistling, when Mr. Mell 
 looked at him. 
 
 "Silence, Mr. Steerforth!" said Mr. Mell. 
 
 "Silence yourself," said Steerforth, turning red. 
 "Whom are you talking to?" 
 
 "Sit down," said Mr. Mell. 
 
 "Sit down yourself," said Steerforth, "and mind 
 your business." 
 
 There was a titter, and some applause; but Mr. 
 
 53 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Mell was so white, that silence immediately suc- 
 ceeded ; and one boy, who had darted out behind him 
 to imitate his mother again, changed his mind, and 
 pretended to want a pen mended. 
 
 "If you think, Steerforth," said Mr. Mell, "that I 
 am not acquainted with the power you can establish 
 over any mind here" — he laid his hand, without con- 
 sidering what he did (as I supposed), upon my head 
 — "or that I have not observed you, within a few 
 minutes, urging your juniors on to every sort of out- 
 rage against me, you are mistaken." 
 
 "I don't give myself the trouble of thinking at all 
 about you," said Steerforth, coolly; "so I'm not mis- 
 taken, as it happens." 
 
 "And when you make use of your position of fa- 
 voritism here, sir," pursued Mr. Mell, with his lip 
 trembling very much, "to insult a gentleman — " 
 
 "A what? — where is he?" said Steerforth. 
 
 Here somebody cried out, "Shame, J. Steerforth! 
 Too bad!" It was Traddles; whom Mr. Mell in- 
 stantly discomfited by bidding him hold his tongue. 
 
 — "To insult one who is not fortunate in life, sir, 
 and who never gave you the least offence, and the 
 many reasons for not insulting whom you are old 
 enough and wise enough to understand," said Mr. 
 Mell, with his lip trembling more and more, "you 
 commit a mean and base action. You can sit down 
 or stand up as you please, sir. Copperfield, go on." 
 
 "Young Copperfield," said Steerforth, coming 
 
 54 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 forward up the room, "stop a bit. I tell you what, 
 Mr. Mell, once for all. When you take the liberty 
 of calling me mean or base, or anything of that sort, 
 you are an impudent beggar. You are always a beg- 
 gar, you know; but when you do that, you are an 
 impudent beggar." 
 
 I am not clear whether he was going to strike Mr. 
 Mell, or Mr. Mell was going to strike him, or there 
 was any such intention on either side. I saw a ri- 
 gidity come upon the whole school as if they had 
 been turned into stone, and found Mr. Creakle in the 
 midst of us, with Tungay at his side, and Mrs. and 
 Miss Creakle looking in at the door as if they were 
 frightened. Mr. Mell, with his elbows on his desk 
 and his face in his hands, sat, for some moments, 
 quite still. 
 
 "Mr. Mell," said Mr. Creakle, shaking him by 
 the arm; and his whisper was so audible now, that 
 Tungay felt it unnecessary to repeat his words; "you 
 have not forgotten yourself, I hope?" 
 
 "No, sir, no," returned the Master, showing his 
 face, and shaking his head, and rubbing his hands in 
 great agitation. "No, sir. No. I have remem- 
 bered myself, I — no, Mr. Creakle, I have not for- 
 gotten myself, I — I have remembered myself, sir. I 
 — I — could wish you had remembered me a little 
 sooner, Mr. Creakle. It — it — would have been more 
 kind, sir, more just, sir. It would have saved me 
 something, sir." 
 
 5S 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Mr. Creakle, looking hard at Mr. Mell, put his 
 hand on Tungay's shoulder, and got his feet upon 
 the form close by, and sat upon the desk. After still 
 looking hard at Mr. Mell from this throne, as he 
 shook his head, and rubbed his hands, and remained 
 in the same state of agitation, Mr. Creakle turned to 
 Steerforth, and said: 
 
 "Now, sir, as he don't condescend to tell me, what 
 is this?" 
 
 Steerforth evaded the question for a little while; 
 looking in scorn and anger on his opponent, and re- 
 maining silent. I could not help thinking even in 
 that interval, I remember, what a noble fellow he was 
 in appearance, and how homely and plain Mr. Mell 
 looked opposed to him. 
 
 "What did he man by talking about favorites, 
 then?" said Steerforth, at length. 
 
 "Favorites?" repeated Mr. Creakle, with the 
 veins in his forehead swelling quickly. "Who talked 
 about favorites?" 
 
 "He did," said Steerforth. 
 
 "And pray, what did you mean by that, sir?" de- 
 manded Mr. Creakle, turning angrily on his assistant. 
 
 "I meant, Mr. Creakle," he returned in a low 
 voice, "as I said; that no pupil had a right to avail 
 himself of his position of favoritism to degrade 
 me." 
 
 "To degrade your said Mr. Creakle. "My 
 stars! But give me leave to ask you, Mr. What's- 
 
 56 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 your-name;" and here Mr. Creakle folded his arms, 
 cane and all, upon his chest, and made such a knot of 
 his brows that his little eyes were hardly visible be- 
 low them; "whether, when you talk about favorites, 
 you showed proper respect to me? To me, sir," said 
 Mr. Creakle, darting his head at him suddenly, and 
 drawing it back again, "the principal of this estab- 
 lishment, and your employer." 
 
 "It was not judicious, sir, I am willing to admit," 
 said Mr. Mell. "I should not have done so, if I had 
 been cool." 
 
 Here Steerforth struck in. 
 
 "Then he said I was mean, and then he said I was 
 base, and then I called him a beggar. If I had been 
 cool, perhaps I shouldn't have called him a beggar. 
 But I did, and I am ready to take the consequences 
 of it." 
 
 Without considering, perhaps, whether there 
 were any consequences to be taken, I felt quite in a 
 glow at this gallant speech. It made an impression 
 on the boys too, for there was a low stir among them, 
 though no one spoke a word. 
 
 "I am surprised, Steerforth — although your can- 
 dor does you honor," said Mr. Creakle, "does you 
 honor, certainly — I am surprised, Steerforth, I must 
 say, that you should attach such an epithet to any per- 
 son employed and paid in Salem House, sir." 
 
 Steerforth gave a short laugh. 
 
 "That's not an answer, sir," said Mr, Creakle, 
 
 57 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "to my remark. I expect more than that from you, 
 Steerforth." 
 
 If Mr. Mell looked homely, in my eyes, before 
 the handsome boy, it would be quite impossible to say 
 how homely Mr. Creakle looked. 
 
 "Let him deny it," said Steerforth. 
 
 "Deny that he is a beggar, Steerforth?" cried 
 Mr. Creakle. "Why, where does he go a beg- 
 ging?" 
 
 "If he is not a beggar himself, his near relation's 
 one," said Steerforth. "It's all the same." 
 
 He glanced at me, and Mr. Mell's hand gently 
 patted me upon the shoulder. I looked up, with a 
 flush upon my face and remorse in my heart, but 
 Mr. Mell's eyes were fixed on Steerforth. He con- 
 tinued to pat me kindly on the shoulder, but he 
 looked at him. 
 
 "Since you expect me, Mr. Creakle, to justify my- 
 self," said Steerforth, "and to say what I mean — 
 what I have to say is, that his mother lives on charity 
 in an almshouse." 
 
 Mr. Mell still looked at him, and still patted me 
 kindly on the shoulder, and said to himself in a whis- 
 per, if I heard right: "Yes, I thought so." 
 
 Mr. Creakle turned to his assistant, with a severe 
 frown and labored politeness. 
 
 "Now you hear what this gentleman says, Mr. 
 Mell. Have the goodness, if you please, to set him 
 right before the assembled school." 
 
 58 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 "He is right, sir, without correction," returned 
 Mr. Mell, in the midst of a dead silence; "what he 
 has said, is true." 
 
 "Be so good then as declare publicly, will you," 
 said Mr. Creakle, putting his head on one side, and 
 rolling his eyes round the school, "whether it ever 
 came to my knowledge until this moment?" 
 
 "I believe not directly," he returned. 
 
 "Why, you know not," said Mr. Creakle. "Don't 
 you, man?" 
 
 "I apprehend you never supposed my worldly 
 circumstances to be very good," replied the assistant. 
 "You know what my position is, and always has been, 
 here." 
 
 "I apprehend, if you come to that," said Mr. 
 Creakle, with his veins swelling again bigger than 
 ever, "that you've been in a wrong position alto- 
 gether, and mistook this for a charity school. Mr. 
 Mell, we'll part, if you please. The sooner the bet- 
 ter." 
 
 "There is no time," answered Mr. Mell, rising, 
 "like the present." 
 
 "Sir, to you!" said Mr. Creakle. 
 
 "I take my leave of you, Mr. Creakle, and of all 
 of you," said Mr. Mell, glancing round the room, 
 and again patting me gently on the shoulder. "James 
 Steerforth, the best wish I can leave you is that you 
 may come to be ashamed of what you have done to- 
 day. At present I would prefer to see you anything 
 
 59 
 
 Vol. 15—3 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 rather than a friend, to me, or to any one in whom I 
 feel an interest." 
 
 Once more he laid his hand upon my shoulder; 
 and then taking his flute and a few books from his 
 desk, and leaving the key in it for his successor, he 
 went out of the school, with his property under his 
 arm. Mr. Creakle then made a speech, through 
 Tungay, in which he thanked Steerforth for asserting 
 (though perhaps too warmly) the independence and 
 respectability of Salem House; and which he wound 
 up by shaking hands with Steerforth, while we gave 
 three cheers — I did not quite know what for, but I 
 supposed for Steerforth, and so joined in them ar- 
 dently, though I felt miserable. Mr. Creakle then 
 caned Tommy Traddles for being discovered in tears, 
 instead of cheers, on account of Mr. Mell's depart- 
 ure ; and went back to his sofa, or his bed, or wherever 
 he had come from. 
 
 We were left to ourselves now, and looked very 
 blank, I recollect, on one another. For myself, I felt 
 so much self-reproach and contrition for my part in 
 what had happened, that nothing would have en- 
 abled me to keep back my tears but the fear that 
 Steerforth, who often looked at me, I saw, might 
 think it unfriendly — or, I should rather say, consid- 
 ering our relative ages, and the feeling with which 
 I regarded him, undutiful — if I showed the emotion 
 which distressed me. He was very angry with 
 Traddles, and said he was glad he had caught it. 
 
 60 
 
David Copperfield 
 
 Poor Traddles, who had passed the stage of lying 
 with his head upon the desk, and was relieving him- 
 self as usual with a burst of skeletons, said he didn't 
 care. Mr. Mell was ill-used. 
 
 'Who has ill-used him, you girl?" said Steer- 
 forth. 
 
 "Why, you have," returned Traddles. 
 
 "What have I done?" said Steerforth. 
 
 'What have you done?" retorted Traddles. "Hurt 
 his feelings, and lost him his situation." 
 
 "His feelings!" repeated Steerforth disdainfully. 
 "His feelings will soon get the better of it, I'll be 
 bound. His feelings are not like yours. Miss Trad- 
 dles. As to his situation — which was a precious one, 
 wasn't it? — do you suppose I am not going to write 
 home, and take care that he get some money? 
 Polly?" 
 
 We thought this intention very noble in Steer- 
 forth, whose mother was a widow, and rich, and 
 would do almost anything, it was said, that he asked 
 her. We were all extremely glad to see Traddles so 
 put down, and exalted Steerforth to the skies: espe- 
 cially when he told us, as he condescended to do, that 
 what he had done had been done expressly for us, 
 and for our cause, and that he had conferred a great 
 boon upon us by unselfishly doing it. 
 
 But I must say that when I was going on with 
 a story in the dark that night, Mr. Mell's old flute 
 seemed more than once to sound mournfully in my 
 
 6i 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ears; and that when at last Steerforth was tired, and 
 I lay down in my bed, I fancied it playing so sorrow- 
 fully somewhere, that I was quite wretched. 
 
 I soon forgot him in the contemplation of Steer- 
 forth, who, in an easy amateur way, and without any 
 book (he seemed to me to know everything by heart) , 
 took some of his classes until a new master was found. 
 The new master came from a grammar-school, and 
 before he entered on his duties, dined in the parlor 
 one day, to be introduced to Steerforth. Steerforth 
 approved of him highly, and told us he was a Brick. 
 Without exactly understanding what learned distinc- 
 tion was meant by this, I respected him greatly for it, 
 and had no doubt whatever of his superior knowl- 
 edge: though he never took the pains with me — not 
 that I was anybody — that Mr. Mell had taken. 
 
 62 
 
TIVERTON SCHOOL 
 
 ]\/| Y father being of good substance, at least as we 
 '*'"* reckon in Exmoor, and seized in his own 
 right, from many generations, of one, and that the 
 best and largest, of the three farms into which our 
 parish is divided (or rather the cultured part there- 
 of), he, John Ridd, the elder, church-warden and 
 overseer, being a great admirer of learning, and well 
 able to write his name, sent me, his only son, to be 
 schooled at Tiverton, in the County of Devon. For 
 the chief boast of that ancient town (next to its 
 woollen staple) is a worthy grammar-school, the larg- 
 est in the west of England, founded and handsomely 
 endowed in the year 1604 by Master Peter Blundell, 
 of that same place, clothier. 
 
 Here, by the time I was twelve years old, I had 
 risen into the upper school, and could make bold with 
 Eutropius and Caesar — by aid of an English version 
 — and as much as six lines of Ovid. Some even said 
 that I might, before manhood, rise almost to the third 
 form, being of a persevering nature; albeit, by full 
 consent of all (except my mother), thickheaded. 
 But that would have been, as I now perceive, an am- 
 bition beyond a farmer's son; for there is but one 
 form above it, and that made of masterful scholars, 
 entitled rightly "monitors." So it came to pass, by 
 
 63 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 the grace of God, that I was called away from learn- 
 ing while sitting at the desk of the junior first in the 
 upper school, and beginning the Greek verb totttw. 
 
 My eldest grandson makes bold to say that I never 
 could have learned <ptUw^ ten pages further on, be- 
 ing all he himself could manage, vv^ith plenty of 
 stripes to help him. I know that he hath more head 
 than I — though never will he have such body; and 
 am thankful to have stopped betimes, with a meek 
 and wholesome head-piece. 
 
 But if you doubt of my having been there, because 
 now I know so little, go and see my name, "John 
 Ridd," graven on that very form. Forsooth, from 
 the time I was strong enough to open a knife and to 
 spell my name, I began to grave it in the oak, first 
 of the block whereon I sat, and then of the desk in 
 front of it, according as I was promoted from one to 
 other of them: and there my grandson reads it now, 
 at this present time of writing, and hath fought a boy 
 for scoffing at it — "John Ridd his name" — and done 
 again in "winkeys," a mischievous but cheerful de- 
 vice, in which we took great pleasure. 
 
 This is the manner of a "winkey," which I here 
 set down, lest child of mine, or grandchild, dare to 
 make one on my premises ; if he does I shall know the 
 mark at once, and score it well upon him. The 
 scholar obtains, by prayer or price, a handful of salt- 
 petre, and then with the knife, wherewith he should 
 rather be trying to mend his pens, what does he do 
 
 64 
 
Tiverton School 
 
 but scoop a hole where the desk is some three inches 
 thick. This hole should be left with the middle ex- 
 alted, and the circumfer dug more deeply. Then let 
 him fill it with saltpetre, all save a little space in the 
 midst, where the boss of the wood is. Upon that boss 
 (and it will be the better if a splinter of timber rise 
 upward) he sticks the end of his candle of tallow or 
 "rat's tail," as we called it, kindled and burning 
 smoothly. Anon, as he reads by that light his lesson, 
 lifting his eyes now and then, it may be, the fire of 
 candle lays hold of the petre with a spluttering noise 
 and a leaping. Then should the pupil seize his pen, 
 and, regardless of the nib, stir bravely, and he will see 
 a glow as of burning mountains, and a rich smoke, 
 and sparks going merrily; nor will it cease, if he stir 
 wisely, and there be good store of petre, until the 
 wood is devoured through, like the sinking of a well- 
 shaft. Now well may it go with the head of a boy 
 intent upon his primer, who betides to sit thereunder! 
 But, above all things, have good care to exercise this 
 art before the master strides up to his desk, in the 
 early gray of the morning. 
 
 Other customs, no less worthy, abide in the school 
 of Blundell, such as the singeing of night-caps; but 
 though they have a pleasant savor, and refreshing to 
 think of, I may not stop to note them, unless it be that 
 goodly one at the incoming of a flood. The school- 
 house stands beside a stream, not very large, called 
 "Lowman," which flows into the broad river of Exe, 
 
 65 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 about a mile below. This Lowman stream, although 
 it be not fond of brawl and violence (in the manner 
 of our Lynn) , yet is wont to flood into a mighty head 
 of waters when the storms or rain provoke it; and 
 most of all when its little co-mate, called the "Taun- 
 ton brook" — where I have plucked the very best 
 cresses that ever man put salt on — comes foaming 
 down like a great roan horse, and rears at the leap 
 of the hedge-rows. Then are the gray stone walls of 
 Blundell on every side encompassed, the vale is 
 spread over with looping waters, and it is a hard 
 thing for the day-boys to get home to their suppers. 
 And in that time, the porter, old Cop (so-called 
 because he hath copper boots to keep the wet from 
 his stomach, and a nose of copper also, in right of 
 other waters), his place it is to stand at the gate, at- 
 tending to the flood-boards grooved into one another, 
 and so to watch the torrent's rise, and not be washed 
 away, if it please God he may help it. But long ere 
 the flood hath attained this height, and while it is 
 only waxing, certain boys of deputy will watch at 
 the stoop of the drain-holes, and be apt to look out- 
 side the walls, when Cop is taking a cordial. And 
 in the very front of the gate, just without the arch- 
 way, where the ground is paved most handsomely, 
 you may see in copy-letters done a great P. B. of 
 white pebbles. Now it is the custom and the law 
 that when the invading waters, either fluxing along 
 the wall from below the road-bridge, or pouring 
 
 66 
 
Tiverton School 
 
 sharply across the meadows from a cut called 
 "Owen's ditch" — and I myself have seen it come 
 both ways — upon the very instant when the waxing 
 element lisps though it be but a single pebble of the 
 founder's letters, it is in the license of any boy, so- 
 ever small and undoctrined, to rush into the great 
 schoolrooms, where a score of masters sit heavily, 
 and scream at the top of his voice, "P. B." 
 
 Then, with a yell, the boys leap up, or break away 
 from their standing; they toss their caps to the black- 
 beamed roof, and haply the very books after them; 
 and the great boys vex no more the small ones, and 
 the small boys stick up to the great ones. One with 
 another, hard they go, to see the gain of the waters, 
 and the tribulation of Cop, and are prone to kick the 
 day-boys out, with words of scanty compliment. 
 Then the masters look at one another, having no class 
 to look to, and (boys being no more left to watch) in 
 a manner they put their mouths up. With a spirited 
 bang they close their books, and make invitation the 
 one to the other for pipes and foreign cordials, rec- 
 ommending the chance of the time, and the comfort 
 away from cold water. 
 
 But, lo! I am dwelling on little things and the 
 pigeons' eggs of the infancy, forgetting the bitter and 
 heavy life gone over me since then. If I am neither 
 a hard man nor a very close one God knows I have 
 had no lack of rubbing and pounding to make stone 
 of me. Yet can I not somehow believe that we 
 
 67 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ought to hate one another, to live far asunder, and 
 block the mouth each of his little den ; as do the wild 
 beasts of the wood, and the hairy outangs now 
 brought over, each with a chain upon him. Let 
 that matter be as it will. It is beyond me to unfold, 
 and mayhap of my grandson's grandson. All I know 
 is that wheat is better than when I began to sow it. 
 
 Now, the cause of my leaving Tiverton school, 
 and the way of it, were as follows : On the 29th day 
 of November, in the year of our Lord 1673, the very 
 day when I was twelve years old, and had spent all 
 my substance in sweetmeats, with which I made treat 
 to the little boys, till the large boys ran in and took 
 them, we came out of school at five o'clock, as the 
 rule is upon Tuesdays. According to custom we 
 drove the day-boys in brave rout down the causeway 
 from the school-porch even to the gate where Cop 
 has his dwelling and duty. Little it recked us and 
 helped them less, that they were our founder's citi- 
 zens, and haply his own grandnephews (for he left 
 no direct descendants), neither did we much inquire 
 what their lineage was; for it had long been fixed 
 among us, who were of the house and chambers, that 
 these same day-boys were all "caddes," as we had 
 discovered to call it, because they paid no groat for 
 their schooling, and brought their own commons 
 with them. In consumption of these we would help 
 them, for our fare in hall-fed appetite; and while 
 we ate their victuals we allowed them freely to talk 
 
 68 
 
Tiverton School 
 
 to us. Nevertheless, we could not feel, when all the 
 victuals were gone, but that these boys required kick- 
 ing from the premises of Blundell. And some of 
 them were shopkeepers' sons, young grocers, fell- 
 mongers and poulterers, and these to their credit, 
 seemed to know how righteous it was to kick them. 
 But others were of high family, as any need be, in 
 Devon — Carews, and Bouchers, and Bastards, and 
 some of these would turn sometimes and strike the 
 boy that kicked them. But to do them justice, even 
 these knew that they must be kicked for not paying. 
 After these "charity boys" were gone, as in con- 
 tumely we called them — "If you break my bag on my 
 head," said one, "whence will you dine to-morrow?" 
 — and after old Cop with clang of iron had jammed 
 the double gates in under the scrufif-stone archway, 
 whereupon are Latin verses, done in brass of small 
 quality, some of us who were not hungry, and cared 
 not for the supper-bell, having sucked much parlia- 
 ment and dumps at my only charges — not that I ever 
 bore much wealth, but because I had been thrifting 
 it for this time of my birth — we were leaning quite at 
 dust against the iron bars of the gate, some six; or 
 it may be seven of us, small boys all, and not con- 
 spicuous in the closing of the daylight and the fog 
 that came at eventide, else Cop would have rated us 
 up the green, for he was churly to little boys when his 
 wife had taken their money. There was plenty of 
 room for all of us, for the gate will hold nine boys 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 close packed, unless they be fed rankly whereof is 
 little danger; and now we were looking out on the 
 road and wishing we could get there ; hoping, more- 
 over, to see a good string of pack-horses come by, 
 with troopers to protect them. For the day-boys had 
 brought us word that some intending their way to 
 the town had lain that morning at Sampford Peveril, 
 and must be in ere nightfall, because Mr. Faggus 
 was after them. Now, Mr. Faggus was my first 
 cousin, and an honor to the family, being a North- 
 molton man of great renown on the highway from 
 Barum town even to London. Therefore, of course, 
 I hoped that he would catch the pack-men, and the 
 boys were asking my opinion, as of an oracle, about it. 
 A certain boy leaning up against me would not 
 allow my elbow room, and struck me very sadly in 
 the stomach part, though his own was full of my par- 
 liament. And this I felt so unkindly, that I smote 
 him straightway in the face without tarrying to con- 
 sider it, or weighing the question duly. Upon this 
 he put his head down, and presented it so vehemently 
 at the middle of my waistcoat, that for a minute or 
 more my breath seemed dropped, as it were, from 
 my pockets, and my life seemed to stop from great 
 want of ease. Before I came to myself again, it had 
 been settled for us that we should move to the "Iron- 
 ing-box," as the triangle of turf is called where the 
 two causeways coming from the school-porch and 
 the hall-porch meet, and our fights are mainly cele- 
 
 70 
 
Tiverton School 
 
 brated ; only we must wait until the convoy of horses 
 had passed, and then make a ring by candle-light, 
 and the other boys would like it. But suddenly 
 there came round the post where the letters of our 
 founder are, not from the way of Taunton, but from 
 the side of Lowman bridge, a very small string of 
 horses, only two indeed (counting for one the pony), 
 and a red-faced man on the bigger nag. 
 
 "Plaise ye, worshipful masters," he said, being 
 feared of the gate-way, "earn 'e tuU whur our Jan 
 Ridd be?" 
 
 "Hyur a be, ees fai, Jan Ridd," answered a sharp 
 little chap, making game of John Fry's language. 
 
 "Zhow un up, then," says John Fry, poking his 
 whip through the bars at us ; zhow un up, and putt 
 un aowt." 
 
 The other little chaps pointed at me, and some 
 began to halloo ; but I knew what I was about. 
 
 "Oh, John, John," I cried; "what's the use of 
 your coming now, and Peggy over the moors, too, 
 and it so cruel cold for her? The holidays don't be- 
 gin till Wednesday fortnight, John. To think of 
 your not knowing that!" 
 
 John Fry leaned forward in the saddle, and 
 turned his eyes away from me ; and then there was a 
 noise in his throat like a snail crawling on a window- 
 pane. 
 
 "Oh, us knaws that wuU enough, Maister Jan; 
 reckon every Oare-man knaw that, without go to 
 
 71 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 skoo-ull, like you doth. Your moother have kept arl 
 the apples up, and old Betty toorned the black pud- 
 dens, and none dare set trap for a blagbird. Arl for 
 thee, lad; every bit of it now for thee!" 
 
 He checked himself suddenly, and frightened me. 
 I knew that John Fry's way so well. 
 
 "And father, and father — oh, how is father?" I 
 pushed the boys right and left as I said it. "John, is 
 father up in town? He always used to come for me, 
 and leave nobody else to do it." 
 
 "Vayther'U be at the crooked post, tother zide o' 
 telling-house. He coodn't lave 'ouze by raison of 
 the Christmas bakkon comin' on, and zome o' the 
 cider welted." 
 
 He looked at the nag's ears as he said it; and, 
 being up to John Fry's ways, I knew that it was a lie. 
 And my heart fell like a lump of lead, and I leaned 
 back on the stay of the gate, and longed no more to 
 fight anybody. A sort of dull power hung over me, 
 like the cloud of a brooding tempest, and I feared 
 to be told anything. I did not even care to stroke the 
 nose of my pony Peggy, although she pushed it in 
 through the rails, where a square of broader lattice 
 is, and snifTed at me, and began to crop gently after 
 my fingers. But whatever lives or dies, business must 
 be attended to; and the principal business of good 
 Christians is, beyond all controversy, to fight with 
 one another. 
 
 "Come up, Jack," said one of the boys, lifting me 
 
 72 
 
Tiverton School 
 
 under the chin; "he hit you, and you hit him, you 
 know." 
 
 "Pay your debts before you go," said a monitor, 
 striding up to me, after hearing how the honor lay; 
 "Ridd, you must go through with it." 
 
 "Fight, for the sake of the junior first," cried the 
 little fellow in my ear, the clever one, the head of our 
 class, who had mocked John Fry, and knew all about 
 the aorists, and tried to make me know it; but I never 
 went more than three places up, and then it was an 
 accident, and I came down after dinner. The boys 
 were urgent round me to fight, though my stomach 
 was not up for it; and being very slow of wit (which 
 is not chargeable on me), I looked from one to other 
 of them, seeking any cure for it. Not that I was 
 afraid of fighting, for now I had been three years at 
 Blundell's, and foughten, all that time, a fight at 
 least once every week, till the boys began to know me ; 
 only that the load on my heart was not sprightly as 
 of the hay-field. It is a very sad thing to dwell on; 
 but even now, in my time of wisdom, I doubt it is a 
 fond thing to imagine, and a motherly to insist upon, 
 that boys can do without fighting. Unless they be 
 very good boys, and afraid of one another. 
 
 "Nay," I said, with my back against the wrought- 
 iron stay of the gate, which was socketed into Cop's 
 house-front; "I will not fight thee now, Robin Snell, 
 but wait till I come back again." 
 
 "Take coward's blow, Jack Ridd, then," cried 
 
 73 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 half a dozen little boys, shoving Bob Snell forward 
 to do it; because they all knew well enough, having 
 striven with me ere now, and proved me to be their 
 master — they knew, I say, that without great change 
 I would never accept that contumely. But I took 
 litle heed of them, looking in dull wonderment at 
 John Fry, and Smiler, and the blunderbuss and 
 Peggy. John Fry was scratching his head, I could 
 see, and getting blue in the face, by the light from 
 Cop's parlor window, and going to and fro upon 
 Smiler, as if he were hard set with it. And all the 
 time he was looking briskly from my eyes to the fist 
 I was clenching, and methought he tried to wink at 
 me in a covert manner; and then Peggy whisked her 
 tail. 
 
 "Shall I fight, John?" I said at last; "I would an 
 you had not come, John." 
 
 "Chraist's will be done; I zim thee had better 
 faight, Jan," he answered, in a whisper, through the 
 gridiron of the gate; "there be a dale of faighting 
 avore thee. Best wai to begin gude taime laike. 
 Wull the geatman latt me in, to zee as thee hast vair 
 plai, lad?" 
 
 He looked doubtfully down at the color of his 
 cowskin boots, and the mire upon the horses, for the 
 sloughs were exceeding mucky. Peggy, indeed, my 
 sorrel pony, being lighter of weight, was not crusted 
 much over the shoulders; but Smiler (our youngest 
 sledder) had been well in over his withers, and none 
 
 74 
 
Tiverton School 
 
 would have deemed him a piebald, save of red mire 
 and black mire. The great blunderbuss, moreover, 
 was choked with a gallop of slough-cake; and John 
 Fry's sad-colored Sunday hat was indued with a 
 plume of marish-weed. All this I saw while he was 
 dismounting, heavily and wearily, lifting his leg from 
 the saddle-cloth as if with a sore crick in his back. 
 By this time the question of fighting was gone 
 quite out of our own discretion; for sundry of the 
 elder boys, grave and reverend seniors, who had 
 taken no small pleasure in teaching our hands to 
 fight, to ward, to parry, to feign and counter, to 
 lunge in the manner of sword-play, and the weaker 
 child to drop on one knee when no cunning of fence 
 might baffle the onset — these great masters of the art, 
 who would far liefer see us little ones practice it than 
 themselves engage, six or seven of them came run- 
 ning down the rounded causeway, having heard that 
 there had arisen "a snug little mill" at the gate. Now, 
 whether that word hath origin in a Greek term mean- 
 ing a conflict, as the best-read boys asseverated, or 
 whether it is nothing more than a figure of simili- 
 tude, from the beating arms of a mill, such as I have 
 seen in counties where are no water-brooks, but folk 
 make bread with wind — it is not for a man devoid of 
 scholarship to determine. Enough that they who 
 made the ring intituled the scene a "mill," while we 
 who must be thumped inside it tried to rejoice in their 
 pleasantry, till it turned upon the stomach. 
 
 75 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Moreover, I felt upon me now a certain responu- 
 bility, a dutiful need to maintain, in the presence of 
 John Fr}^, the manliness of the Ridd family, and the 
 honor of Exmoor. Hitherto none had worsted me, 
 although in the three years of my schooling I had 
 fought more than three-score battles, and bedewed 
 with blood every plant of grass toward the middle of 
 the Ironing-box. And this success I owed at first 
 to no skill of my own, until I came to know better; 
 for up to twenty or thirty fights, I struck as nature 
 guided me, no wiser than a father-long-legs in the 
 heat of a lantern ; but I had conquered, partly through 
 my native strength and the Exmoor toughness in me, 
 and still more that I could not see when I had gotten 
 my bellyful. But now I was like to have that and 
 more; for my heart was down, to begin with; and 
 then Robert Snell was a bigger boy than I had ever 
 encountered, and as thick in the skull and hard in the 
 brain as even I could claim to be. 
 
 I had never told my mother a word about these 
 frequent strivings, because she was soft-hearted; 
 neither had I told my father, because he had not seen 
 it. Therefore, beholding me still an innocent-look- 
 ing child, with fair curls on my forehead, and no 
 store of bad language, John Fry thought this was the 
 very first fight that ever had befallen me; and so 
 when they let him in at the gate, "with a message to 
 the head-master," as one of the monitors told Cop, 
 and Peggy and Smiler were tied to the railings till I 
 
 76 
 
Tiverton School 
 
 should be through my business, John comes up to me 
 with the tears in his eyes, and says, "Doon't thee goo 
 for to do it, Jan; doon't thee do it, for gude now." 
 But I told him that now it was much too late to cry 
 off; so he said, "The Lord be with thee, Jan, and turn 
 thy thumb-knuckle inward." 
 
 It is not a very large piece of ground in the angle 
 of the causeways, but quite big enough to fight upon, 
 especially for Christians, who love to be cheek by 
 jowl at it. The great boys stood in a circle around, 
 being gifted with strong privilege, and the little boys 
 had leave to lie flat and look through the legs of the 
 great boys. But while we were yet preparing, and 
 the candles hissed in the fog-cloud, old Phoebe, of 
 more than fourscore years, whose room was over the 
 hall-porch, came hobbling out, as she always did, to 
 mar the joy of the conflict. No one ever heeded her, 
 neither did she expect it; but the evil was that two 
 senior boys must always lose the first round of the 
 fight by having to lead her home again. 
 
 I marvel how Robin Snell felt. Very likely he 
 thought nothing of it, always having been a boy of a 
 hectoring and unruly sort. But I felt my heart go 
 up and down as the boys came round to strip me ; and 
 greatly fearing to be beaten, I blew hot upon my 
 knuckles. Then pulled I off my little cut jerkin and 
 laid it down on my head cap, and over that my waist- 
 coat, and a boy was proud to take care of them. 
 Thomas Hooper was his name, and I remember how 
 
 77 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 he looked at me. My mother had made that little 
 cut jerkin in the quiet winter evenings, and taken 
 pride to loop it up in a fashionable way, and I was 
 loath to soil it with blood, and good filberds were in 
 the pocket. Then up to me came Robin Snell (mayor 
 of Exeter thrice since that) , and he stood very square* 
 and looked at me, and I lacked not long to look at 
 him. Round his waist he had a kerchief busking up 
 his small-clothes and on his feet light pumpkin 
 shoes, and all his upper raiment ofif. And he danced 
 about in a way that made my head swim on my shoul- 
 ders, and he stood some inches over me. But I, be- 
 ing muddled with much doubt about John Fry and 
 his errand, was only stripped of my jerkin and waist- 
 coat, and not comfortable to begin. 
 
 "Come now, shake hands," cried a big boy, jump- 
 ing in joy of the spectacle, a third-former nearly six 
 feet high ; "shake hands, you little devils. Keep your 
 pluck up, and show good sport, and Lord love the 
 better man of you." 
 
 Robin took me by the hand, and gazed at me dis- 
 dainfully, and then smote me painfully in the face, 
 ere I could get my fence up. 
 
 "Whutt be 'bout, lad?" cried John Fry; "hutt un 
 again, Jan, wull 'e? Well done then, our Jan boy." 
 
 For I had replied to Robin now, with all the 
 weight and cadence of penthemimeral caesura (a 
 thing, the name of which I know, but could never 
 make head nor tail of it), and the strife began in a 
 
 78 
 
Tiverton School ' 
 
 serious style, and the boys looking on were not 
 cheated. Although I could not collect their shouts 
 when the blows were ringing upon me; it was no 
 great loss; for John Fry told me afterward that their 
 oaths went up like a furnace fire. But to these we 
 paid no heed or hap, being in the thick of swinging, 
 and devoid of judgment. All I know is, I came to 
 my corner, when the round was over, with very hard 
 pumps in my chest, and a great desire to fall away. 
 
 "Time is up," cried head-monitor ere ever I got 
 my breath again; and when I fain would have lin- 
 gered a while on the knee of the boy that held me. 
 John Fry had come up, and the boys were laughing 
 because he wanted a stable lantern, and threatened 
 to tell my mother. 
 
 "Time is up," cried another boy, more headlong 
 than head-monitor. "If we count three before the 
 come of thee, thwacked thou art, and must go to the 
 women." I felt it hard upon me. He began to 
 count, one, two, three — but before the "three" was 
 out of his mouth, I was facing my foe, with both 
 hands up, and my breath going rough and hot, and 
 resolved to wait the turn of it. For I had found 
 seat on the knee of a boy sage and skilled to tutor me, 
 who knew how much the end very often differs from 
 the beginning. A rare ripe scholar he was; and now 
 he hath routed up the Germans in the matter of criti- 
 cism. Sure the clever boys and men have most love 
 toward the stupid ones. 
 
 79 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "Finish him off, Bob," cried a big boy, and that 
 I noticed especially, because I thought it unkind of 
 him, after eating of my taffee as he had that after- 
 noon; "finish him off, neck and crop; he deserves it 
 for sticking up to a man like you." 
 
 But I was not so to be finished off, though feeling 
 in my knuckles now as if it were a blueness and a 
 sense of chilblain. Nothing held except my legs, 
 and they were good to help me. So this bout, or 
 round, if you please, was foughten warily by me, with 
 gentle recollection of what my tutor, the clever boy, 
 had told me, and some resolve to earn his praise be- 
 fore I came back to his knee again. And never, I 
 think, in all my life, sounded sweeter words in my 
 ears (except when my love loved me) than when my 
 second and backer, who had made himself part of 
 my doings now, and would have wept to see me 
 beaten, said: 
 
 "Famously done. Jack, famously. Only keep your 
 wind up. Jack, and you'll go right through him!" 
 
 Meanwhile John Fry was prowling about, asking 
 the boys what they thought of it, and whether I was 
 like to be killed, because of my mother's trouble. 
 But finding now that I had foughten threescore 
 fights already, he came up to me wofully, in the 
 quickness of my breathing, while I sat on the knee 
 of my second, with a piece of spongious coralline to 
 ease me of my bloodshed ; and he says in my ears, as 
 if he were clapping spurs into a horse. 
 
 80 
 
Tiverton School 
 
 "Never thee knack under, Jan, or never coom 
 naigh Hexmoor no more." 
 
 With that it was all up with me. A simmering 
 buzzed in my heavy brain, and a light came through 
 my eye-places. At once I set both fists again, and my 
 heart stuck to me like cobbler's wax. Either Robin 
 Snell should kill me, or I would conquer Robin 
 Snell. So I went in again with my courage up, and 
 Bob came smiling for victory, and I hated him for 
 smiling. He let at me with his left hand, and I gave 
 him my right between his eyes, and he blinked, and 
 was not pleased with it. I feared him not, and spared 
 him not, neither spared myself. My breath came 
 again, and my heart stood cool, and my eyes struck 
 fire no longer. Only I knew that I would die sooner 
 than shame my birthplace. How the rest of it was 
 I know not; only that I had the end of it, and helped 
 to put Robin in bed. 
 
PAUL'S EDUCATION 
 
 A FTER the lapseof some minutes, which appeared 
 ^^^ an immense time to little Paul Dombey on the 
 table, Doctor Blimber came back. The Doctor's walk 
 was stately, and calculated to impress the juvenile 
 mind with solemn feelings. It was a sort of march; 
 but when the Doctor put out his right foot, he gravely 
 turned upon his axis, with a semicircular sweep to- 
 ward the left; and when he put out his left foot, he 
 turned in the same manner toward the right. So 
 that he seemed, at every stride he took, to look about 
 him as though he were saying, "Can anybody have 
 the goodness to indicate any subject, in any direction, 
 on which I am uninformed? I rather think not." 
 
 Mrs. Blimber and Miss Blimber came back in the 
 Doctor's company; and the Doctor, lifting his new 
 pupil off the table, delivered him over to Miss 
 Blimber. 
 
 "Cornelia," said the Doctor, "Dombey will be 
 your charge at first. Bring him on, Cornelia, bring 
 him on." 
 
 Miss Blimber received her young ward from the 
 Doctor's hands; and Paul, feeling that the spectacles 
 were surveying him, cast down his eyes. 
 
 "How old are you, Dombey?" said Miss Blimber. 
 
 "Six," answered Paul, wondering, as he stole a 
 
 82 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 glance at the young lady, why her hair didn't grow 
 long like Florence's, and why she was like a boy. 
 
 "How much do you know of your Latin Gram- 
 mar, Dombey?" said Miss Blimber. 
 
 "None of it," answered Paul. Feeling that the 
 answer was a shock to Miss Blimber's sensibility, he 
 looked up at the three faces that were looking down 
 at him, and said: 
 
 "I haven't been well. I have been a weak child. 
 I couldn't learn a Latin Grammar when I was out, 
 every day, with old Glubb. I wish you'd tell old 
 Glubb to come and see me, if you please." 
 
 "What a dreadfully low name!" said Mrs. Blim- 
 ber. "Unclassical to a degree! Who is the monster, 
 child?" 
 
 "What monster?" inquired Paul. 
 
 "Glubb," said Mrs. Blimber, with a great dis- 
 relish. 
 
 "He's no more a monster than you are," returned 
 Paul. 
 
 "What!" cried the Doctor, in a terrible voice. 
 "Ay, ay, ay? Aha! What's that?" 
 
 Paul was dreadfully frightened; but still he made 
 a stand for the absent Glubb, though he did it trem- 
 bling. "He's a very nice old man, Ma'am," he said. 
 "He used to draw my couch. He knows all about 
 the deep sea, and the fish that are in it, and the great 
 monsters that come and lie on rocks in the sun, and 
 dive into the water again when they're startled, blow- 
 
 83 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ing and splashing so, that they can be heard for miles, 
 There are some creatures," said Paul, warming with 
 his subject, "I don't know how many yards long, and 
 I forget their names, but Florence knows, that pre- 
 tend to be in distress; and when a man goes near 
 them, out of compassion, they open their great jaws, 
 and attack him. But all he has got to do," said Paul, 
 boldly tendering this information to the very Doctor 
 himself, "is to keep on turning as he runs away, and 
 then, as they turn slowly, because they are so long, 
 and can't bend, he's sure to beat them. And though 
 old Glubb don't know why the sea should make me 
 think of my mamma that's dead, or what it is that 
 it is always saying — always saying! he knows a great 
 deal about it. And I wish," the child concluded, 
 with a sudden falling of his countenance, and failing 
 in his animation, as he looked like one forlorn, upon 
 the three strange faces, "that you'd let old Glubb 
 come here to see me, for I know him very well, and 
 he knows me." 
 
 "Ha!" said the Doctor, shaking his head; "this is 
 bad, but study will do much." 
 
 Mrs. Blimber opined, witK something like a 
 shiver, that he was an unaccountable child; and, al- 
 lowing for the difference of visage, looked at him 
 pretty much as Mrs. Pipchin had been used to do. 
 
 "Take him round the house, Cornelia," said the 
 Doctor, "and familiarize him with his new sphere. 
 Go with that young lady, Dombey." 
 
 84 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 Dombey obeyed; giving his hand to the abstruse 
 Cornelia, and looking at her sideways, with timid cu- 
 riosity, as they went away together. 'For her spec- 
 tacles, by reason of the glistening of the glasses, made 
 her so mysterious, that he didn't know where she was 
 looking, and was not indeed quite sure that she had 
 any eyes at all behind them. 
 
 Cornelia took him first to the schoolroom, which 
 was situated at the back of the hall, and was ap- 
 proached through two baize doors, which deadened 
 and muffled the young gentlemen's voices. Here, 
 there were eight young gentlemen in various stages 
 of mental prostration, all very hard at work, and 
 very grave indeed. Toots, as an old hand, had a 
 desk to himself in one corner: and a magnificent 
 man, of immense age, he looked, in Paul's young 
 eyes, behind it. 
 
 Mr. Feeder, 'B.A., who sat at another little desk, 
 had his Virgil stop on, and was slowly grinding that 
 tune to four young gentlemen. Of the remaining 
 four, two, who grasped their foreheads convulsively, 
 were engaged in solving mathematical problems; 
 one with his face like a dirty window, from much 
 crying, was endeavoring to flounder through a hope- 
 less number of lines before dinner; and one sat look- 
 ing at his task in stony stupefaction and despair — 
 which it seemed had been his condition ever since 
 breakfast time. 
 
 The appearance of a new boy did not create the 
 
 «5 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 sensation that might have been expected. Mr. 
 Feeder, B.A. (who was in the habit of shaving his 
 head for coolness, and had nothing but little bristles 
 on it), gave him a bony hand, and told him he was 
 glad to see him — which Paul would have been very 
 glad to have told him, if he could have done so with 
 the least sincerity. Then Paul, instructed by Cor- 
 nelia, shook hands with the four young gentlemen 
 at Mr. Feeder's desk; then with the two young gen- 
 tlemen at work on the problems, who were very 
 feverish; then with the young gentleman at work 
 against time, who was very inky; and lastly with the 
 young gentleman in a state of stupefaction, who was 
 flabby and quite cold. 
 
 Paul having been already introduced to Toots, 
 that pupil merely chuckled and breathed hard, as his 
 custom was, and pursued the occupation in which 
 he was engaged. It was not a severe one; for on 
 account of his having "gone through" so much (in 
 more senses than one), and also of his having, as be- 
 fore hinted, left ofif blowing in his prime. Toots 
 now had license to pursue his own course of study: 
 which was chiefly to write long letters to himself 
 from persons of distinction, addressed "P. Toots, Es- 
 quire, Brighton, Sussex," and to preserve them in his 
 desk with great care. 
 
 These ceremonies passed, Cornelia led Paul up- 
 stairs to the top of the house; which was rather a 
 slow journey, on account of Paul being obliged to 
 
 86 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 land both feet on every stair, before he mounted an- 
 other. But they reached their journey's end at last; 
 and there, in a front room, looking over the wild 
 sea, Cornelia showed him a nice little bed with white 
 hangings, close to the window, on which there was 
 already beautifully written on a card in round text — 
 downstrokes very thick, and upstrokes very fine — 
 Dombey; while two other little bedsteads in the 
 same room were announced, through the like 
 means, as respectively appertaining unto Briggs 
 and TozER. 
 
 Just as they got downstairs again into the hall, 
 Paul saw the weak-eyed young man who had given 
 that mortal offence to Mrs. Pipchin, suddenly seize 
 a very large drumstick, and fly at a gong that was 
 hanging up, as if he had gone mad, or wanted ven- 
 geance. Instead of receiving warning, however, or 
 being instantly taken into custody, the young man 
 left off unchecked, after having made a dreadful 
 noise. Then Cornelia Blimber said to Dombey that 
 dinner would be ready in a quarter of an hour, and 
 perhaps he had better go into the schoolroom among 
 his "friends." 
 
 So Dombey, deferentially passing the great clock 
 which was still as anxious as ever to know how he 
 found himself, opened the schoolroom door a very 
 little way, and strayed in like a lost boy: shutting it 
 after him with some difficulty. His friends were 
 all dispersed about the room except the stony friend, 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 who remained immovable. Mr. Feeder was stretch- 
 ing himself in his gra}^ gown, as if, regardless of ex- 
 pense, he were resolved to pull the sleeves off. 
 
 "Heigh ho hum!" cried Mr. Feeder, shaking 
 himself like a cart-horse, "oh dear me, dear me! 
 Ya-a-a-ah!" 
 
 Paul was quite alarmed by Mr. Feeder's yawn- 
 ing; it was done on such a great scale, and he was so 
 terribly in earnest. All the boys too (Toots ex- 
 cepted) seemed knocked up, and were getting ready 
 for dinner — some newly tying their neckcloths, which 
 were very stiff indeed; and others washing their 
 hands or brushing their hair, in an adjoining ante- 
 chamber — as if they didn't think they should enjoy 
 it at all. 
 
 Young Toots who was ready beforehand, and had 
 therefore nothing to do, and had leisure to bestow 
 upon Paul, said, with heavy good-nature: 
 
 "Sit down, Dombey." 
 
 "Thank you, sir," said Paul. 
 
 His endeavoring to hoist himself on to a very 
 high window-seat, and his slipping down again, ap- 
 peared to prepare Toots's mind for the reception of 
 a discovery. 
 
 "You're a very small chap," said Mr. Toots. 
 
 "Yes, sir, I'm small," returned Paul. "Thank 
 you, sir." 
 
 For Toots had lifted him into the seat, and done 
 it kindly too. 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 "Who's your tailor?" inquired Toots, after look- 
 ing at him for some moments, 
 
 "It's a woman that has made my clothes as yet," 
 said Paul. "My sister's dressmaker." 
 
 "My tailor's Burgess and Co," said Toots. 
 "Fash'nable. But very dear." 
 
 Paul had wit enough to shake his head, as if he 
 would have said it was easy to see that; and indeed 
 he thought so. 
 
 "Your father's regularly rich, ain't he?" in- 
 quired Mr. Toots. 
 
 "Yes, sir," said Paul. "He's Dombey and Son." 
 
 "And which?" demanded Toots. 
 
 "And Son, sir," replied Paul. 
 
 Mr. Toots made one or two attempts, in a low 
 voice, to fix the firm in his mind; but not quite suc- 
 ceeding, said he would get Paul to mention the name 
 again to-morrow morning, as it was rather impor- 
 tant. And indeed he purposed nothing less than 
 writing himself a private and confidential letter from 
 Dombey and Son immediately. 
 
 By this time the other pupils (always excepting 
 the stony boy) gathered round. They were polite, 
 but pale; and spoke low; and they were so de- 
 pressed in their spirits, that in comparison with the 
 general tone of that company, Master Bitherstone 
 was a perfect Miller, or Complete Jest Book. And 
 ye he had a sense of injury upon him too, had Bither- 
 stone. 
 
 89 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "You sleep in my room, don't you?" asked a sol- 
 emn young gentleman, whose shirt-collar curled up 
 the lobes of his ears. 
 
 "Master Briggs?" inquired Paul. 
 
 "Tozer," said the young gentleman. 
 
 Paul answered yes; and Tozer pointing out the 
 stony pupil, said that was Briggs. Paul had already 
 felt certain that it must be either Briggs of Tozer, 
 though he didn't know why. 
 
 "Is yours a strong constitution?" inquired Tozer. 
 
 Paul said he thought not. Tozer replied that 
 he thought not also judging from Paul's looks, and 
 that it was a pity, for it need be. He then asked 
 Paul if he were going to begin with Cornelia; and on 
 Paul saying "yes," all the young gentlemen (Briggs 
 excepted) gave a low groan. 
 
 It was drowned in the tintinnabulation of the 
 gong, which sounding again with great fury, there 
 was a general move toward the dining-room; still 
 excepting Briggs the stony boy, who remained where 
 he was, and as he was ; and on its way to whom Paul 
 presently encountered a round of bread, genteelly 
 served on a plate and napkin, and with a silver fork 
 lying crosswise on the top of it. 
 
 Doctor Blimber was already in his place in the 
 dining-room, at the top of the table, with Miss 
 Blimber and Mrs. Blimber on either side of him. 
 Mr. Feeder in a black coat was at the bottom. Paul's 
 chair was next to Miss Blimber; but it being found, 
 
 90 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 when he sat in it, that his eyebrows were not much 
 above the level of the table-cloth, some books were 
 brought in from the Doctor's study, on which he 
 was elevated, and on which he always sat from that 
 time — carrying them in and out himself on after 
 occasions, like a little elephant and castle. 
 
 Grace having been said by the Doctor, dinner be- 
 gan. There was some nice soup; also roast meat, 
 boiled meat, vegetables, pie, and cheese. Every 
 young gentleman had a massive silver fork, and a 
 napkin; and all the arrangements were stately and 
 handsome. In particular, there was a butler in a 
 blue coat and bright buttons, who gave quite a 
 winy flavor to the table beer; he poured it out so 
 superbly. 
 
 Nobody spoke, unless spoken to, except Doctor 
 Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, and Miss Blimber, who con- 
 versed occasionally. Whenever a young gentleman 
 was not actually engaged with his knife and fork or 
 spoon, his eye, with an irresistible attraction, sought 
 the eye of Doctor Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, or Miss 
 Blimber, and modestly rested there. Toots ap- 
 peared to be the only exception to this rule. He 
 sat next Mr. Feeder on Paul's side of the table, and 
 ferquently looked behind and before the intervening 
 boys to catch a glimpse of Paul. 
 
 Only once during dinner was there any conversa- 
 tion that included the young gentlemen. It hap- 
 pened at the epoch of the cheese, when the Doctor, 
 
 ^ Vol. is-4 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 having taken a glass of port wine, and hemmed twice 
 or thrice, said: 
 
 "It is remarkable, Mr. Feeder, that the Ro- 
 mans — " 
 
 At the mention of this terrible people, their im- 
 placable enemies, every young gentleman fastened 
 his gaze upon the Doctor, with an assumption of the 
 deepest interest. One of the number who happened 
 to be drinking, and who caught the Doctor's eye 
 glaring at him through the side of his tumbler, left 
 off so hastily that he was convulsed for some mo- 
 ments, and in the sequel ruined Doctor Blimber's 
 point. 
 
 "It is remarkable, Mr. Feeder," said the Doctor, 
 beginning again slowly, "that the Romans, in those 
 gorgeous and profuse entertainments of which we 
 read in the days of the Emperors, when luxury had 
 attained a height unknown before or since, and when 
 whole provinces were ravaged to supply the splendid 
 means of one Imperial Banquet — " 
 
 Here the offender, who had been swelling and 
 straining, and waiting in vain for a full stop, broke 
 out violently. 
 
 "Johnson," said Mr. Feeder, in a low, reproach- 
 ful voice, "take some water." 
 
 The Doctor, looking very stern, made a pause 
 until the water was brought, and then resumed: 
 
 "And when, Mr. Feeder—" 
 
 But Mr. Feeder, who saw that Johnson must 
 
 92 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 break out again, and who knew that the Doctor 
 would never come to a period before the young gen- 
 tlemen until he had finished all he meant to say, 
 couldn't keep his eye off Johnson; and thus was 
 caught in the fact of not looking at the Doctor, who 
 consequently stopped. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir," said Mr. Feeder, red- 
 dening. "I beg your pardon, Doctor Blimber." 
 
 "And when," said the Doctor, raising his voice, 
 "when, sir, as we read, and have no reason to doubt 
 — incredible as it may appear to the vulgar of our 
 time — the brother of Vitellius prepared for him a 
 feast, in which were served, of fish, two thousand 
 dishes — " 
 
 "Take some water, Johnson — dishes, sir," said 
 Mr. Feeder. 
 
 "Of various sorts of fowl, five thousand dishes." 
 
 "Or try a crust of bread," said Mr. Feeder, 
 
 "And one dish," pursued Doctor Blimber, rais- 
 ing his voice still higher as he looked all round the 
 table, "called, from its enormous dimensions, the 
 Shield of Minerva, and made, among other costly 
 ingredients, of the brains of pheasants — " 
 
 "Ow, ow, ow!" (from Johnson). 
 
 "Woodcocks — " 
 
 "Ow, ow, ow!" 
 
 "The sounds of the fish called scari — " 
 
 "You'll burst some vessel in your head," said Mr. 
 Feeder. "You had better let it come." 
 
 93 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "And the spawn of the lamprey, brought from the 
 Carpathian Sea," pursued the Doctor, in his severest 
 voice; "when we read of costly entertainments such 
 as these, and still remember, that we have a Titus — " 
 
 "What would be your mother's feelings if you 
 died of apoplexy!" said Mr. ''Feeder. 
 
 "A Domitian— " 
 
 "And you're blue, you know," said Mr. Feeder. 
 
 "A Nero, a Tiberius, a Caligula, a Heliogabalus, 
 and many more," pursued the Doctor; "it is, Mr. 
 Feeder — if you are doing me the honor to attend 
 — remarkable; VERY remarkable, sir — " 
 
 But Johnson, unable to suppress it any longer, 
 burst at that moment into such an overwhelming 
 fit of coughing, that, although both his immediate 
 neighbors thumped him on the back, and Mr. Feeder 
 himself held a glass of water to his lips, and the 
 butler walked him up and down several times be- 
 tween his own chair and the sideboard, like a sentry, 
 it was full five minutes before he was moderately 
 composed. Then there was a profound silence. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said Doctor Blimber, "rise for 
 grace! Cornelia, lift Dombey down" — nothing of 
 whom but his scalp was accordingly seen above the 
 table-cloth. "Johnson will repeat to me to-morrow 
 morning before breakfast, without book, and from 
 the Greek Testament, the first Epistle of Saint Paul 
 to the Ephesians. We will resume our studies, Mr. 
 Feeder, in half-an-hour." 
 
 94 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 The young gentlemen bowed and withdrew. Mr. 
 Feeder did likewise. During the half hour, the 
 young gentlemen, broken into pairs, loitered arm-in- 
 arm, up and down a small piece of ground behind 
 the house, or endeavored to kindle a spark of anima- 
 tion in the breast of Briggs. But nothing happened 
 so vulgar as play. Punctually at the appointed time, 
 the gong was sounded, and the studies, under the 
 joint auspices of Doctor Blimber and Mr. Feeder, 
 were resumed. 
 
 As the Olympic game of lounging up and down 
 had been cut shorter than usual that day, on John- 
 son's account, they all went out for a walk before 
 tea. Even Briggs (though he hadn't begun yet) par- 
 took of this dissipation; in the enjoyment of which he 
 looked over the clif¥ two or three times darkly. Doc- 
 tor Blimber accompanied them; and Paul had the 
 honor of being taken in tow by the Doctor himself : 
 a distinguished state of things, in which he looked 
 very little and feeble. 
 
 Tea was served in a style no less polite than the 
 dinner; and after tea, the young gentlemen rising 
 and bowing as before, withdrew to fetch up the un- 
 finished tasks of that day, or to get up the already 
 looming tasks of to-morrow. In the meantime Mr. 
 Feeder withdrew to his own room; and Paul sat in a 
 corner wondering whether Florence was thinking of 
 him, and what they were all about at Mrs. Pip- 
 chin's. 
 
 95 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Mr. Toots, who had been detained by an impor- 
 tant letter from the Duke of Wellington, found Paul 
 out after a time ; and having looked at him for a long 
 while, as before, inquired if he was fond of waist- 
 coats. 
 
 Paul said, "Yes, sir." 
 
 "So am I," said Toots. 
 
 No word more spoke Toots that night; but he 
 stood looking at Paul as if he liked him; and as 
 there was company in that, and Paul was not in- 
 clined to talk, it answered his purpose better than 
 conversation. 
 
 At eight o'clock or so, the gong sounded again for 
 prayers in the dining-room, where the butler after- 
 ward presided over a side table, on which bread and 
 cheese and beer were spread for such young gentle- 
 men as desired to partake of those refreshments. The 
 ceremonies concluded by the Doctor's saying, "Gen- 
 tlemen, we will resume our studies at seven to-mor- 
 row;" and then, for the first time, Paul saw Cornelia 
 Blimber's eye, and saw that it was upon him. When 
 the Doctor had said these words, "Gentlemen, we 
 will resume our studies at seven to-morrow," the pu- 
 pils bowed again, and went to bed. 
 
 In the confidence of their own room upstairs, 
 Briggs said his head ached ready to split, and that 
 he should wish himself dead if it wasn't for his 
 mother, and a blackbird he had at home. Tozer 
 didn't say much, but he sighed a good deal, and told 
 
 96 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 Paul to look out, for his turn would come to-mor- 
 row. After uttering those prophetic words, he un- 
 dressed himself moodily, and got into bed. Briggs 
 was in his bed, too, and Paul in his bed, too, before 
 the weak-eyed young man appeared to take away the 
 candle, when he wished them good night and pleas- 
 ant dreams. But his benevolent wishes were in vain, 
 as far as Briggs and Tozer were concerned ; for Paul, 
 who lay awake for a long while, and often woke 
 afterward, found that Briggs was ridden by his les- 
 son as a nightmare: and that Tozer, whose mind was 
 affected in his sleep by similar causes, in a minor de- 
 gree, talked unknown tongues, or scraps of Greek 
 and Latin — it was all one to Paul — which, in the si- 
 lence of night, had an inexpressibly wicked and 
 guilty effect. 
 
 Paul had sunk into a sweet sleep, and dreamed 
 that he was walking hand in hand with Florence 
 through beautiful gardens, when they came to a large 
 sunflower which suddenly expanded itself into a 
 gong, and began to sound. Opening his eyes, he 
 found that it was a dark, windy morning, with a 
 drizzling rain: and that the real gong was giving 
 dreadful note of preparation, down in the hall. 
 
 So he got up directly, and found Briggs with 
 hardly any eyes, for nightmare and grief had made 
 his face puffy, putting his boots on; while Tozer 
 stood shivering and rubbing his shoulders, in a very 
 bad humor. Poor Paul couldn't dress himself 
 
 91 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 easily, not being used to it, and asked them if they 
 would have the goodness to tie some strings for him ; 
 but as Briggs merely said "Bother!" and Tozer, "Oh 
 yes!" he went down when he was otherwise ready, 
 to the next story, where he saw a pretty young wo- 
 man in leather gloves, cleaning a stove. The young 
 woman seemed surprised at his appearance, and 
 asked him where his mother was. When Paul told 
 her she was dead, she took her gloves off, and did 
 what he wanted; and furthermore rubbed his hands 
 to warm them; and gave him a kiss; and told him 
 whenever he wanted anything of that sort — meaning 
 in the dressing way — to ask for 'Melia; which Paul, 
 thanking her very much, said he certainly would 
 He then proceeded softly on his journey downstairs, 
 toward the room in which the young gentlemen re- 
 sumed their studies, when, passing by a door that 
 stood ajar, a voice from within cried, "Is that Dom- 
 bey?" On Paul replying, "Yes, Ma'am:" for he 
 knew the voice to be Miss Blimber's: Miss Blimber 
 said, "Come in, Dombey." And in he went. 
 
 Miss Blimber presented exactly the appearance 
 she had presented yesterday, except that she wore a 
 shawl. Her little light curls were as crisp as ever, 
 and she had already her spectacles on, which made 
 Paul wonder whether she went to bed in them. She 
 had a cool little sitting-room of her own up there, 
 with some books in it, and no fire. But Miss Blim- 
 ber was never cold, and never sleepy. 
 
 98 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 "Now, Dombey," said Miss Blimber. "I'm go- 
 ing out for a constitutional." 
 
 Paul wondered what that was, and why she didn't 
 send the footman out to get it in such unfavorable 
 weather. But he made no observation on the sub- 
 ject: his attention being devoted to a little pile of 
 new books, on which Miss Blimber appeared to have 
 been recently engaged. 
 
 "These are yours, Dombey," said Miss Blim- 
 ber. 
 
 "All of 'em, ma'am?" said Paul. 
 
 "Yes," returned Miss Blimber; "and Mr. Feeder 
 will look you out some more very soon, if you are as 
 studious as I expect you will be, Dombey." 
 
 "Thank you, ma'am," said Paul. 
 
 "I am going out for a constitutional," resumed 
 Miss Blimber; "and while I am gone, that is to say in 
 the interval between this and breakfast, Dombey, I 
 wish you to read over what I have marked in these 
 books, and to tell me if you quite understand what 
 you have got to learn. Don't lose time, Dombey, for 
 you have none to spare, but take them downstairs, 
 and begin directly." 
 
 "Yes, ma'am," answered Paul. 
 
 There were so many of them, that although Paul 
 put one hand under the bottom book and his other 
 hand and his chin on the top book, and hugged them 
 all closely, the middle book slipped out before he 
 reached the door, and then they all tumbled down on 
 
 99 
 
 Lofa 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 the floor. Miss Blimber said, "Oh, Dombey, Dom- 
 bey, this is really very careless!" and piled them up 
 afresh for him; and this time, by dint of balancing 
 them with great nicety, Paul got out of the room, and 
 down a few stairs before two of them escaped again. 
 But he held the rest so tight, that he only left one 
 more on the first floor, and one in the passage; and 
 when he had got the main body down into the school- 
 room, he set ofif upstairs again to collect the strag- 
 glers. Having at last amassed the whole library, and 
 climbed into his place, he fell to work, encouraged 
 by a remark from Tozer to the effect that he "was in 
 for it now;" which was the only interruption he re- 
 ceived till breakfast time. At that meal, for which 
 he had no appetite, everything was quite as solemn 
 and genteel as at the others; and when it was fin- 
 ished, he followed Miss Blimber upstairs. 
 
 "Now, Dombey," said Miss Blimber. "How 
 have you got on with those books?" 
 
 They comprised a little English, and a deal of 
 Latin — names of things, declensions of articles and 
 substantives, exercises thereon, and preliminary rules 
 — a trifle of orthography, a glance at ancient history, 
 a wink or two at modern ditto, a few tables, two or 
 three weights and measures, and a little general in- 
 formation. When poor Paul had spelled out num- 
 ber two, he found he had no idea of number one; 
 fragments whereof afterward obtruded themselves 
 into number three, which slided into number four, 
 
 lOO 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 which grafted itself on to number two. So that 
 whether twenty Romuluses made a Remus, or hie 
 haec hoc was troy weight, or a verb always agreed 
 with an ancient Briton, or three times four was Tau- 
 rus a bull, were open questions with him. 
 
 "Oh, Dombey, Dombey!" said Miss Blimber, 
 "this is very shocking." 
 
 "If you please," said Paul, "I think if I might 
 sometimes talk a little to old Glubb, I should be able 
 to do better." 
 
 "Nonsense, Dombey," said Miss Blimber. "I 
 couldn't hear of it. This is not the place for Glubbs 
 of any kind. You must take the books down, I sup- 
 pose, Dombey, one by one, and perfect yourself in the 
 day's instalment of subject A, before you turn at all 
 to subject B. And now take away the top book, if 
 you please, Dombey, and return when you are master 
 of the theme." 
 
 Miss Blimber expressed her opinions on the sub- 
 ject of Paul's uninstructed state with a gloomy de- 
 light, as if she had expected this result, and were 
 glad to find that they must be in constant communi- 
 cation. Paul withdrew with the top task, as he was 
 told, and labored away at it, down below: sometimes 
 remembering every word of it, and sometimes for- 
 getting it all, and everything else besides : until at last 
 he ventured up stairs again to repeat the lesson, when 
 it was nearly all driven out of his head before he be- 
 gan, by Miss Blimber's shutting up the book, and 
 
 lOI 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 saying: "Go on, Dombey!" a proceeding so sugges- 
 tive of the knowledge inside of her, that Paul looked 
 upon the young lady with consternation, as a kind of 
 learned Guy Faux, or artificial Bogle, stuffed full of 
 scholastic straw. 
 
 He acquitted himself very well, nevertheless; 
 and Miss Blimber, commending him as giving prom- 
 ise of getting on fast, immediately provided him with 
 subject B ; from which he passed to C, and even D 
 before dinner. It was hard work, resuming his 
 studies, soon after dinner; and he felt giddy and con- 
 fused and drowsy and dull. But all the other young 
 gentlemen had similar sensations, and were obliged 
 to resume their studies too, if thejre were any com- 
 fort in that. It was a wonder that the great clock in 
 the hall, instead of being constant to its first enquiry, 
 never said: "Gentlemen, we will now resume our 
 studies," for that phrase was often enough repeated 
 in its neighborhood. The studies went round like a 
 mighty wheel, and the young gentlemen were al- 
 ways stretched upon it. 
 
 After tea there were exercises again, and prepara- 
 tions for next day by candle-light. And in due 
 course there was bed; where, but for that resumption 
 of the studies which took place in dreams, were rest 
 and sweet forgetfulness. 
 
 Oh Saturdays! Oh happy Saturdays, when Flor- 
 ence always came at noon, and never would, in any 
 weather, stay away, though Mrs. Pipchin snarled and 
 
 102 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 growled, and worried her bitterly. Those Saturdays 
 were Sabbaths for at least two little Christians among 
 all the Jews, and did the holy Sabbath work of 
 strengthening and knitting up a brother's and a sis- 
 ter's love. 
 
 Not even Sunday nights — the heavy Sunday 
 nights, whose shadow darkened the first waking burst 
 of light on Sunday mornings — could mar those pre- 
 cious Saturdays. Whether it was the great sea- 
 shore, where they sat, and strolled together; or 
 whether it was only Mrs. Pipchin's dull back room, 
 in which she sang to him so softly, with his drowsy 
 head upon her arm; Paul never cared. It was Flor- 
 ence. That was all he thought of. So, on Sunday 
 nights, when the Doctor's dark door stood agape to 
 swallow him up for another vv^eek, the time was come 
 for taking leave of Florence ; no one else. 
 
 Mrs. Wickam had been drafted home to the 
 house in town, and Miss Nipper, now a smart young 
 woman, had come down. To many a single combat 
 with Mrs. Pipchin, did Miss Nipper gallantly de- 
 vote herself; and if ever Mrs. Pipchin in all her life 
 had found her match, she had found it now. Miss 
 Nipper threw away the scabbard the first morning 
 she arose in Mrs. Pipchin's house. She asked and 
 gave no quarter. She said it must be war, and war 
 it was; and Mrs. Pipchin lived from that time in the 
 midst of surprises, harassings, and defiances; and 
 skirmishing attacks that came bouncing in upon her 
 
 103 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 from the passage, even in unguarded moments of 
 chops, and carried desolation to her very toast. 
 
 Miss Nipper had returned one Sunday night with 
 Florence, from walking back with Paul to the Doc- 
 tor's, when Florence took from her bosom a little 
 piece of paper, on which she had pencilled down 
 some words. 
 
 "See here, Susan," she said. "These are the 
 names of the little books that Paul brings home to do 
 those long exercises with, when he is so tired. I 
 copied them last night while he was writing." 
 
 "Don't show 'em to me. Miss Floy, if you please," 
 returned Nipper, "I'd as soon see Mrs. Pipchin." 
 
 "I want you to buy them for me, Susan, if you 
 will, to~morrow" morning. I have money enough," 
 said Florence. 
 
 "Why, goodness gracious me, Miss Floy," re- 
 turned Miss Nipper, "how can you talk like that, 
 when you have books upon books already, and mas- 
 terses and mississes a teaching of you everything con- 
 tinual, though my belief is that your pa. Miss Dom- 
 bey, never would have learned you nothing, never 
 would have thought of it, unless you'd asked him — 
 when he couldn't well refuse; but giving consent 
 when asked, and offering when unasked, Miss, is 
 quite two things ; I may not have my objections to a 
 young man's keeping company with me, and when he 
 puts the question, may say ^es,' but that's not saying 
 'would you be so kind as like me.' " 
 
 104 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 "But you can buy me the books, Susan; and you 
 will, when you know I want them." 
 
 "Well, Miss, and why do you want 'em?" replied 
 Nipper; adding, in a lower voice, "If it was to fling 
 at Mrs. Pipchin's head, I'd buy a cart-load." 
 
 "I think I could perhaps give Paul some help, 
 Susan, if I had these books," said Florence, "and 
 make the coming week a little easier to him. At least 
 I want to try. So buy them for me, dear, and I will 
 never forget how kind it was of you to do it!" 
 
 It must have been a harder heart than Susan Nip- 
 per's that could have rejected the little purse Flor- 
 ence held out with these words, or the gentle look of 
 entreaty with which she seconded her petition. 
 Susan put the purse in her pocket without reply, and 
 trotted out at once upon her errand. 
 
 The books were not easy to procure; and the an- 
 swer at several shops was, either that they were just 
 out of them, or that they never kept them, or that 
 they had had a great many last month, or that they 
 expected a great many next week. But Susan was 
 not easily baffled in such an enterprise; and having 
 entrapped a white-haired youth, in a black calico 
 apron, from a library where she was known, to ac- 
 company her in her quest, she led him such a life in 
 going up and down, that he exerted himself to the 
 utmost, if it were only to get rid of her; and finally 
 enabled her to return home in triumph. 
 
 With these treasures then, after her own daily 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 lessons were over, Florence sat down at night to track 
 Paul's footsteps through the thorny ways of learning; 
 and being possessed of a naturally quick and sound 
 capacity, and taught by that most wonderful of mas- 
 ters, love, it was not long before she gained upon 
 Paul's heels, and caught and passed him. 
 
 Not a word of this was breathed to Mrs. Pipchin : 
 but many a night when they were all in bed, and 
 when Miss Nipper, with her hair in papers and her- 
 self asleep in some uncomfortable attitude, reposed 
 unconsicous by her side; and when the chinking ashes 
 in the grate were cold and gray; and when the can- 
 dles were burned down and guttering out — Florence 
 tried so hard to be a substitute for one small Dom- 
 bey, that her fortitude and perseverance might have 
 almost won her a free right to bear the name herself. 
 
 And high was her reward, when one Saturday 
 evening, as little Paul was sitting down as usual to 
 "resume his studies," she sat down by his side, and 
 showed him all that was so rough, made smooth, and 
 all that was so dark, made clear and plain, before 
 him. It was nothing but a startled look in Paul's 
 wan face — a flush — a smile — and then a close em- 
 brace — but God knows how her heart leaped up at 
 this rich payment for her trouble. 
 
 "Oh, Floy!" cried her brother. "How I love 
 you! How I love you, Floy!" 
 
 "And I you, dear!" 
 
 "Oh! I am sure of that, Floy." 
 
 1 06 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 He said no more about it, but all that evening sat 
 close by her, very quiet; and in the night he called 
 out from his little room within hers, three or four 
 times, that he loved her. 
 
 Regularly, after that, Florence was prepared to 
 sit down with Paul on Saturday night, and patiently 
 assist him through so much as they could anticipate 
 together, of his next week's work. The cheering 
 thought that he was laboring on where Florence had 
 just toiled before him, would, of itself, have been a 
 stimulant to Paul in the perpetual resumption of his 
 studies; but coupled with the actual lightening of 
 his load, consequent on this assistance, it saved him, 
 possibly, from sinking underneath the burden which 
 the fair Cornelia Blimber piled upon his back. 
 
 It was not that Miss Blimber meant to be too 
 hard upon him, or that Doctor Blimber meant to 
 bear too heavily on the young gentlemen in general. 
 Cornelia merely held the faith in which she had been 
 bred; and the Doctor, in some partial confusion of 
 his ideas, regarded the young gentlemen as if they 
 were all Doctors, and were born grown up. Com- 
 forted by the applause of the young gentlemen's near- 
 est relations, and urged on by their blind vanity and 
 ill-considered haste, it would have been strange if 
 Doctor Blimber had discovered his mistake, or 
 trimmed his swelling sails to any other tack. 
 
 Thus in the case of Paul. When Doctor Blim- 
 ber said he made great progress, and was naturally 
 
 107 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 clever, Mr. Dombey was more bent than ever on his 
 being forced and crammed. In the case of Briggs, 
 when Doctor Blimber reported that he did not make 
 great progress yet, and was not naturally clever, 
 Briggs senior was inexorable in the same purpose. 
 In short, however high and false the temperature at 
 which the Doctor kept his hothouse, the owners of 
 the plants were always ready to lend a helping hand 
 at the bellows, and to stir the fire. 
 
 Such spirits as he had in the outset, Paul soon lost 
 of course. But he retained all that was strange, and 
 old, and thoughtful, in his character: and under cir- 
 cumstances so favorable to the development of those 
 tendencies, became even more strange, and old, and 
 thoughtful, than before. 
 
 The only difference was, that he kept his charac- 
 ter to himself. He grew more thoughtful and re- 
 served, every day; and had no such curiosity in any 
 living member of the Doctor's household, as he had 
 had in Mrs. Pipchin. He loved to be alone; and in 
 those short intervals when he was not occupied with 
 his books, liked nothing so well as wandering about 
 the house by himself, or sitting on the stairs, listening 
 to the great clock in the hall. He was intimate with 
 all the paperhanging in the house; saw things that no 
 one else saw in the patterns; found out miniature 
 tigers and lions running up the bedroom walls, and 
 squinting faces leering in the squares and diamonds 
 of the floorcloth. 
 
 io8 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 The solitary child lived on, surrounded by this 
 arabesque work of his musing fancy, and no one un- 
 derstood him. Mrs. Blimber thought him "odd," 
 and sometimes the servants said among themselves 
 that little Dombey "moped ;" but that was all. 
 
 Unless young Toots had some idea on the subject, 
 to the expression of which he was wholly unequal. 
 Ideas, like ghosts (according to the common notion 
 of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before they will 
 explain themselves; and Toots had long left off ask- 
 ing any questions of his own mind. Some mist there 
 may have been, issuing from that leaden casket, his 
 cranium, which, if it could have taken shape and 
 form, would have become a genie; but it could not; 
 and it only so far followed the example of the smoke 
 in the Arabian story, as to roll out in a thick cloud, 
 and there hang and hover. But it left a little figure 
 visible upon a lonely shore, and Toots was always 
 staring at it. 
 
 "How are you?" he would say to Paul, fifty times 
 a day. 
 
 "Quite well, sir, thank you," Paul would answer. 
 
 "Shake hands," would be Toots's next advance. 
 
 Which Paul, of course, would immediately do. 
 Mr. Toots generally said again, after a long interval 
 of staring and hard breathing: "How are you?" To 
 which Paul again replied: "Quite well, sir, thank 
 you." 
 
 One evening Mr. Toots was sitting at his desk, op- 
 
 109 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 pressed by correspondence, when a great purpose 
 seemed to flash upon him. He laid down his pen, 
 and went off to seek Paul, whom he found at last, 
 after a long search, looking through the window of 
 his little bedroom. 
 
 "I say!" cried Toots, speaking the moment he en- 
 tered the room, lest he should forget it; "what do you 
 think about?" 
 
 "Oh! I think about a great many things," replied 
 Paul. 
 
 "Do you, though?" said Toots, appearing to con- 
 sider that fact in itself surprising. 
 
 "If you had to die," said Paul, looking up into his 
 face — 
 
 Mr. Toots started, and seemed much disturbed. 
 
 " — Don't you think you would rather die on a 
 moonlight night, when the sky was quite clear, and 
 the wind blowing, as it did last night?" 
 
 Mr. Toots said, looking doubtfully at Paul, and 
 shaking his head, that he didn't know about that. 
 
 "Not blowing, at least," said Paul, "but sound- 
 ing in the air like the sea sounds in the shells. It 
 was a beautiful night. When I had listened to the 
 water for a long time, I got up and looked out. 
 There was a boat over there, in the full light of the 
 moon : a boat with a sail." 
 
 The child looked at him so steadfastly, and spoke 
 so earnestly, that Mr. Toots, feeling himself called 
 upon to say something about this boat, said "Smug- 
 
 I lO 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 glers." But with an impartial remembrance of there 
 being two sides to every question, he added "or Pre- 
 ventive." 
 
 "A boat with a sail," repeated Paul, "in the full 
 light of the moon. The sail like an arm, all silver. It 
 went away into the distance, and what do you think it 
 seemed to do as it moved with the waves?" 
 
 "Pitch," said Mr. Toots. 
 
 "It seemed to beckon," said the child, "to beckon 
 me to come! — There she is! — There she is!" 
 
 Toots was almost beside himself with dismay at 
 this sudden exclamation, after what had gone before, 
 and cried "Who?" 
 
 "My sister Florence!" cried Paul, "looking up 
 here, and waving her hand. She sees me — she sees 
 me! Good-night, dear, good-night, good-night!" 
 
 His quick transition to a state of unbounded pleas- 
 ure, as he stood at his window, kissing and clapping 
 his hands; and the way in which the light retreated 
 from his features as she passed out of his view, and 
 left a patient melancholy on the little face : were too 
 remarkable wholly to escape even Toots's notice. 
 Their interview being interrupted at this moment by 
 a visit from Mrs. Pipchin, who usually brought her 
 black skirts to bear upon Paul just before dusk, once 
 or twice a week, Toots had no opportunity of improv- 
 ing the occasion; but it left so marked an impression 
 on his mind that he twice returned, after having ex- 
 changed the usual salutations, to ask Mrs. Pipchin 
 
 III 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 how she did. This the irascible old lady conceived to 
 be a deeply-devised and long-meditated insult, origi- 
 nating in the diabolical invention of the weak-eyed 
 young man down stairs, against whom she accord- 
 ingly lodged a formal complaint with Doctor Blim- 
 ber that very night; who mentioned to the young man 
 that if he ever did it again, he should be obliged to 
 part with him. 
 
 The evenings being longer now, Paul stole up to 
 his window every evening to look out for Florence. 
 She always passed and repassed at a certain time, un- 
 til she saw him; and their mutual recognition was a 
 gleam of sunshine in Paul's daily life. Often after 
 dark, one other figure walked alone before the Doc- 
 tor's house. He rarely joined them on the Saturday 
 now. He could not bear it. He would rather come 
 unrecognized, and look up at the windows where his 
 son was qualifying for a man; and wait, and watch, 
 and plan, and hope. 
 
 Oh! could he but have seen, or seen as others did, 
 the slight spare boy above, watching the waves and 
 clouds at twilight, with his earnest eyes, and breasting 
 the window of his solitary cage when birds flew by, 
 as if he would have emulated them, and soared away! 
 
 When the midsummer vacation approached, no 
 indecent manifestations of joy were exhibited by the 
 leaden-eyed young gentlemen assembled at Doctor 
 Blimber's. Any such violent expression as "break- 
 ing up," would have been quite inapplicable to that 
 
 112 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 polite establishment. The young gentlemen oozed 
 away, semi-annually, to their own homes; but they 
 never broke up. They would have scorned the ac- 
 tion. 
 
 Tozer, who was constantly galled and tormented 
 by a starched white cambric neckerchief, which he 
 wore at the express desire of Mrs, Tozer, his parent, 
 who, designing him for the Church, was of opinion 
 that he couldn't be in that forward state of prepara- 
 tion too soon — Tozer said, indeed, that choosing be- 
 tween two evils, he thought he would rather stay 
 where he was, than go home. However inconsistent 
 this declaration might appear with that passage in 
 Tozer's essay on the subject, wherein he had ob- 
 served "that the thoughts of home and all its recol- 
 lections, awakened in his mind the most pleasing 
 emotions of anticipation and delight," and had also 
 likened himself to a Roman general, flushed with a 
 recent victory over the Iceni, or laden with Cartha- 
 ginian spoil, advancing within a few hours' march 
 of the Capitol, presupposed, for the purposes of the 
 simile, to be the dwelling-place of Mrs. Tozer, still it 
 was very sincerely made. For it seemed that Tozer 
 had a dreadful uncle, who not only volunteered ex- 
 aminations of him, in the holidays, on abstruse points, 
 but twisted innocent events and things, and wrenched 
 them to the same fell purpose. So that if this uncle 
 took him to the play, or, on a similar pretence of 
 kindness, carried him to see a Giant, or a Dwarf, or 
 
 113 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 a Conjurer, or anything, Tozer knew he had read up 
 some classical allusion to the subject beforehand, and 
 was thrown into a state of mortal apprehension: not 
 foreseeing where he might break out, or what author- 
 ity he might not quote against him. 
 
 As to Briggs, his father made no show of artifice 
 about it. He never would leave him alone. So nu- 
 merous and severe were the mental trials of that 
 unfortunate youth in vacation time, that the friends 
 of the family (then resident near Bayswater, Lon- 
 don) seldom approached the ornamental piece of 
 water in Kensington Gardens, without a vague ex- 
 pectation of seeing Master Briggs's hat floating on 
 the surface, and an unfinished exercise lying on the 
 bank. Briggs, therefore, was not at all sanguine on 
 the subject of holidays; and these two sharers of lit- 
 tle Paul's bedroom were so fair a sample of the young 
 gentlemen in general, that the most elastic among 
 them contemplated the arrival of those festive peri- 
 ods with genteel resignation. 
 
 It was far otherwise with little Paul. The end of 
 these first holidays was to witness his separation from 
 Florence, but who ever looked forward to the end of 
 holidays whose beginning was not yet come! Not 
 Paul, assuredly. As the happy time drew near, the 
 lions and tigers climbing up the bedroom walls, be- 
 came quite tame and frolicsome. The grim sly faces 
 In the squares and diamonds of the floorcloth, re- 
 laxed and peeped out at him with less wicked eyes. 
 
 114 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 The grave old clock had more of personal interest in 
 the tone of its formal inquiry; and the restless sea 
 went rolling on all night, to the sounding of a melan- 
 choly strain — yet pleasant too — that rose and fell 
 with the waves, and rocked him, as it were, to sleep. 
 
 Mr. Feeder, B.A., seemed to think that he, too, 
 would enjoy the holidays very much. Mr. Toots 
 projected a life of holidays from that time forth; for, 
 as he regularly informed Paul every day, it was his 
 "last half" at Doctor Blimber's, and he was going 
 to begin to come in to his property directly. 
 
 It was perfectly understood between Paul and 
 Mr. Toots, that they were intimate friends, notwith- 
 standing their distance in point of years and station. 
 As the vacation approached, and Mr. Toots breathed 
 harder and stared oftener in Paul's society, than he 
 had done before, Paul knew that he meant he was 
 sorry they were going to lose sight of each other, and 
 felt very much obliged to him for his patronage and 
 good opinion. 
 
 It was even understood by Doctor Blimber, Mrs. 
 Blimber, and Miss Blimber, as well as by the young 
 gentlemen in general, that Toots had somehow con- 
 stituted himself protector and guardian of Dombey, 
 and the circumstance became so notorious, even to 
 Mrs. Pipchin, that the good old creature cherished 
 feelings of bitterness and jealousy against Toots; and, 
 in the sanctuary of her own home, repeatedly de- 
 nounced him as a "chuckleheaded noodle." -Whereas 
 
 115 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 the innocent Toots had no more idea of awakening 
 Mrs. Pipchin's wrath, than he had of any other defi- 
 nite possibility or proposition. On the contrary, he 
 was disposed to consider her rather a remarkable 
 character, with many points of interest about her. For 
 this reason he smiled on her with so much urbanity, 
 and asked her how she did, so often, in the course of 
 her visits to little Paul, that at last she one night told 
 him plainly, she wasn't used to it, whatever he might 
 think; and she could not, and she would not bear it, 
 either from himself or any other puppy then exist- 
 ing: at which unexpected acknowledgment of his 
 civilities, Mr. Toots was so alarmed that he secreted 
 himself in a retired spot, until she had gone. Nor 
 did he ever again face the doughty Mrs. Pipchin, un- 
 der Doctor Blimber's roof. 
 
 They were within two or three weeks of the holi- 
 days, when, one day, Cornelia Blimber called Paul 
 into her room, and said : "Dombey, I am going to 
 send home your analysis." 
 
 "Thank you, ma'am," returned Paul. 
 
 "You know what I mean, do you, Dombey?" in- 
 quired Miss Blimber, looking hard at him through 
 the spectacles. 
 
 "No, ma'am," said Paul. 
 
 "Dombey, Dombey," said Miss Blimber, "I begin 
 to be afraid you are a sad boy. When you don't know 
 the meaning of an expression, why don't you seek for 
 information?" 
 
 ii6 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 "Mrs. Pipchin told me I wasn't to ask questions," 
 returned Paul. 
 
 "I must beg you not to mention Mrs. Pipchin to 
 me, on any account, Dombey," returned Miss Blim- 
 ber. "I couldn't think of allowing it. The course 
 of study here, is very far removed from anything of 
 that sort. A repetition of such allusions would make 
 it necessary for me to request to hear, without a 
 mistake, before breakfast-time to-morrow morn- 
 ing from Verbun personate down to simillima 
 cygnof 
 
 "I didn't mean, ma'am — " began little Paul. 
 
 "I must trouble you not to tell me that you didn't 
 mean, if you please, Dombey," said Miss Blimber, 
 who preserved an awful politeness in her admoni- 
 tions. "That is a line of argument, I couldn't dream 
 of permitting." 
 
 Paul felt it safest to say nothing at all, so he only 
 looked at Miss Blimber's spectacles. Miss Blimber 
 having shaken her head at him gravely, referred to a 
 paper lying before her. 
 
 " 'Analysis of the character of P. Dombey.' If 
 my recollection serves me," said Miss Blimber break- 
 ing off, "the word analysis as opposed to synthesis, is 
 thus defined by Walker. 'The resolution of an object, 
 whether of the senses or of the intellect, into its first 
 elements.' As opposed to synthesis, you observe. 
 Now you know what analysis is, Dombey." 
 
 Dombey didn't seem to be absolutely blinded by 
 
 117 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 the light let in upon his intellect, but he made Miss 
 Blimber a little bow. 
 
 " 'Analysis,' " resumed Miss Blimber, casting her 
 eye over the paper, " 'of the character of P. Dombey.' 
 I find that the natural capacity of Dombey is ex- 
 tremely good; and that his general disposition to 
 study may be stated in an equal ratio. Thus, taking 
 eight as our standard and highest number, I find 
 these qualities in Dombey stated each at six three- 
 fourths!" 
 
 Miss Blimber paused to see how Paul received 
 this news. Being undecided whether six three- 
 fourths, meant six pounds fifteen, or sixpence three 
 farthings, or six foot three, or three quarters past six, 
 or six somethings that he hadn't learned yet, with 
 three unknown something elses over, Paul rubbed his 
 hands and looked straight at Miss Blimber, It hap- 
 pened to answer as well as anything else he could 
 have done; and Cornelia proceeded. 
 
 " 'Violence two. Selfishness two. Inclination to 
 low company, as evinced in the case of a person 
 named Glubb, originally seven, but since reduced- 
 Gentlemanly demeanor four, and improving with ad- 
 vancing years.' Now what I particularly wish to call 
 your attention to, Dombey, is the general observation 
 at the close of this analysis." 
 
 Paul set himself to follow it with great care. 
 " 'It may be generally observed of Dombey,' " 
 said Miss Blimber, reading in a loud voice, and at 
 
 ii8 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 every second word directing her spectacles toward 
 the little figure before her: " 'that his abilities and in- 
 clinations are good, and that he has made as much 
 progress as under the circumstances could have been 
 expected. But it is to be lamented of this young gen- 
 tleman that he is singular (what is usually termed 
 old-fashioned) in his character and conduct, and 
 that, without presenting anything in either which 
 distinctly calls for reprobation, he is often very un- 
 like other young gentlemen of his age and social po- 
 sition.' Now, Dombey," said Miss Blimber, laying 
 down the paper, "do you understand that?" 
 
 "I think I do, ma'am," said Paul. 
 
 "This analysis, you see, Dombey," Miss Blimber 
 continued, "is going to be sent home to your re- 
 spected parent. It will naturally be very painful to 
 him to find that you are singular in your character 
 and conduct. It is naturally painful to us; for we 
 can't like you, you know, Dombey, as well as we 
 could wish." 
 
 She touched the child upon a tender point. He had 
 secretly become more and more solicitous from day 
 to day, as the time of his departure drew more near, 
 that all the house should like him. For some hid- 
 den reason, very imperfectly understood by himself — 
 if understood at all — he felt a gradually increasing 
 impulse of affection, toward almost everything and 
 everybody in the place. He could not bear to think 
 that they would be quite indifferent to him when he 
 
 119 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 was gone. He wanted them to remember him 
 kindly; and he had made it his business even to con- 
 ciliate a great hoarse shaggy dog, chained up at the 
 back of the house, who had previously been the terror 
 of his life; that even he might miss him when he was 
 no longer there. 
 
 Little thinking that in this, he only showed again 
 the difference between himself and his compeers, 
 poor tiny Paul set it forth to Miss Blimber as well as 
 he could, and begged her, in despite of the official 
 analysis, to have the goodness to try and like him. To 
 Mrs. Blimber, who had joined them, he preferred 
 the same petition : and when that lady could not for- 
 bear, even in his presence, from giving utterance to 
 her often-repeated opinion, that he was an odd child, 
 Paul told her that he was sure she was quite right; 
 that he thought it must be his bones, but he didn't 
 know; and that he hoped she would overlook it, for 
 he was fond of them all. 
 
 "Not so fond," said Paul, with a mixture of ti- 
 midity and perfect frankness, which was one of the 
 most peculiar and most engaging qualities of the 
 child, "not so fond as I am of Florence, of course; 
 that could never be. You couldn't expect that, could 
 you, ma'am?" 
 
 "Oh! the old-fashioned little soul!" cried Mrs. 
 Blimber, in a whisper. 
 
 "But I like everybody here very much," pursued 
 Paul, "and I should grieve to go away, and think 
 
 1 20 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 that any one was glad that I was gone, or didn't 
 
 care." 
 
 Mrs. Blimber was now quite sure that Paul was 
 the oddest child in the world ; and when she told the 
 Doctor what had passed, the Doctor did not contro- 
 vert his wife's opinion. But he said, as he had said 
 before, when Paul first came, that study would do 
 much; and he also said, as he had said on that occa- 
 sion: "Bring him on, Cornelia! Bring him on!" 
 
 Cornelia had always brought him on as vigor- 
 ously as she could ; and Paul had had a hard life of it. 
 But over and above the getting through his tasks, he 
 had long had another purpose always present to him, 
 and to which he still held fast. It was, to be a gen- 
 tle, useful, quiet little fellow, always striving to se- 
 cure the love and attachment of the rest; and though 
 he was yet often to be seen at his old post on the stairs, 
 or watching the waves and clouds from his solitary 
 window, he was oftener found, too, among the other 
 boys, modestly rendering them some little voluntary 
 service. Thus it came to pass, that even among those 
 rigid and absorbed young anchorites, who mortified 
 themselves beneath the roof of Doctor Blimber, Paul 
 was an object of general interest; a fragile little 
 plaything that they all liked, and that no one would 
 have thought of treating roughly. But he could not 
 change his nature, or rewrite the analysis; and so they 
 all agreed that Dombey was old-fashioned. 
 
 There were some immunities, however, attaching 
 
 T2I 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 to the character enjoyed by no one else. They could 
 have better spared a newer-fashioned child, and that 
 alone was much. When the others only bowed to 
 Doctor Blimber and family on retiring for the night, 
 Paul would stretch out his morsel of a hand, and 
 boldly shake the Doctor's; also Mrs. Blimber's; also 
 Cornelia's. If anybody was to be begged off from 
 impending punishment, Paul was always the dele- 
 gate. The weak-eyed young man himself had once 
 consulted him, in reference to a little breakage of 
 glass and china. And it was darkly rumored that the 
 butler, regarding him with favor such as that stern 
 man had never shown before to mortal boy, had 
 sometimes mingled porter with his table-beer to 
 make him strong. 
 
 Over and above these extensive privileges, Paul 
 had free right of entry to Mr. Feeder's room, from 
 which apartment he had twice led Mr. Toots into the 
 open air in a state of faintness, consequent on an un- 
 successful attempt to smoke a very blunt cigar: one 
 of a bundle which that young gentleman had covertly 
 purchased on the shingle from a most desperate 
 smuggler, who had acknowledged, in confidence, that 
 two hundred pounds was the price set upon his head, 
 dead or alive, by the Custom House. It was a snug 
 room, Mr. Feeder's, with his bed in another little 
 room inside of it; and a flute, which Mr. Feeder 
 couldn't play yet, but was going to make a point of 
 learning, he said, hanging up over the fireplace. 
 
 122 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 There were some books in it, too, and a fishing-rod; 
 for Mr. Feeder said he should certainly make a point 
 of learning to fish, when he could find time. Mr. 
 Feeder had amassed, with similar intentions, a beau- 
 tiful little curly second-hand key-bugle, a chess- 
 board and men, a Spanish Grammar, a set of sketch- 
 ing materials and a pair of boxing-gloves. The art 
 of self-defence Mr. Feeder said he should undoubt- 
 edly make a point of learning, as he considered it the 
 duty of every man to do ; for it might lead to the pro- 
 tection of a female in distress. 
 
 But Mr. Feeder's great possession was a large 
 green jar of snufif, which Mr. Toots had brought 
 down as a present, at the close of the last vacation; 
 and for which he had paid a high price, as having 
 been the genuine property of the Prince Regent. 
 Neither Mr. Toots nor Mr. Feeder could partake of 
 this or any other snufif, even in the most stinted and 
 moderate degree, without being seized with convul- 
 sions of sneezing. Nevertheless it was their great 
 delight to moisten a boxful with cold tea, stir it up 
 on a piece of parchment with a paper-knife, and de- 
 vote themselves to its consumption than and there. 
 In the course of which cramming of their noses, they 
 endured surprising torments with the constancy of 
 martyrs : and drinking table-beer at intervals, felt all 
 the glories of dissipation. 
 
 To little Paul sitting silent in their company, and 
 by the side of his chief patron, Mr. Toots, there was 
 
 ^^^ Vol. is-S 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 a dread charm in these reckless occasions; and when 
 Mr. Feeder spoke of the dark mysteries of London, 
 and told Mr. Toots that he was going to observe it 
 himself closely in all its ramifications in the ap- 
 proaching holidays, and for that purpose had made 
 arrangements to board with two old maiden ladies 
 at Peckham, Paul regarded him as if he were the 
 hero of some book of travels or wild adventure, and 
 was almost afraid of such a slashing person. 
 
 Going into this room one evening, when the holi- 
 days were very near, Paul found Mr. Feeder filling 
 up the blanks in some printed letters, while some 
 others, already filled up and strewn before him, were 
 being folded and sealed by Mr. Toots. Mr. Feeder 
 said: "Aha, Dombey, there you are, are you?" — for 
 they were always kind to him, and glad to see him — 
 and then said, tossing one of the letters toward him: 
 "And there you are, too, Dombey. That's yours." 
 
 "Mine, sir?" said Paul. 
 
 "Your invitation," returned Mr. Feeder. 
 
 Paul, looking at it, found, in copper-plate print, 
 with the exception of his own name and date, which 
 w^ere in Mr. Feeder's penmanship, that Doctor and 
 Mrs. Blimber requested the pleasure of Mr. P. Dom- 
 bey's company at an early party on Wednesday even- 
 ing the seventeenth instant; and that the hour was 
 half-past seven o'clock; and that the object was quad- 
 rilles. Mr. Toots also showed him, by holding up a 
 companion sheet of paper, that Doctor and Mrs. 
 
 124 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 Blimber requested the pleasure of Mr. Toots's com- 
 pany at an early party on Wednesday evening the 
 seventeenth instant, w^hen the hour was half-past 
 seven o'clock, and when the object was quadrilles. 
 He also found, on glancing at the table where Mr. 
 Feeder sat, that the pleasure of Mr. Briggs's com- 
 pany, and of Mr. Tozer's company, and of every 
 young gentleman's company, was requested by Doc- 
 tor and Mrs. Blimber on the same genteel occasion. 
 
 Mr. Feeder then told him, to his great joy, that 
 his sister was invited, and that it was a half-yearly 
 event, and that, as the holidays began that day, he 
 could go away with his sister after the party, if he 
 liked, which Paul interrupted him to say he would 
 like, very much. Mr. Feeder then gave him to un- 
 derstand that he would be expected to inform Doctor 
 and Mrs. Blimber, in superfine small-hand, that Mr. 
 P. Dombey would be happy to have the honor of 
 waiting on them, in accordance with their polite invi- 
 tation. Lastly, Mr. Feeder said, he had better not 
 refer to the festive occasion, in the hearing of Doc- 
 tor and Mrs. Blimber; as these preliminaries, and the 
 whole of the arrangements, v/ere conducted on prin- 
 ciples of classicality and high breeding; and that 
 Doctor and Mrs. Blimber on the one hand, and the 
 young gentlemen on the other, were supposed, in 
 their scholastic capacities, not to have the least idea 
 of what was in the wind. 
 
 Paul thanked Mr. Feeder for these hints, and 
 
 J25 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 pocketing his invitation, sat down on a stool by the 
 side of Mr. Toots, as usual. But Paul's head, which 
 had long been ailing more or less, and was sometimes 
 very heavy and painful, felt so uneasy that night, that 
 he was obliged to support it on his hand. And yet it 
 dropped so, that by little and little it sank on Mr. 
 Toots's knee, and rested there, as if it had no care to 
 be ever lifted up again. 
 
 That was no reason why he should be deaf; but 
 he must have been, he thought, for, by and by, he 
 heard Mr. Feeder calling in his ear, and gently shak- 
 ing him to rouse his attention. And when he raised 
 his head, quite scared, and looked about him, he 
 found that Doctor Blimber had come into the room ; 
 and that the window was open, and that his forehead 
 was wet with sprinkled water; though how all this 
 had been done without his knowledge, was very curi- 
 ous indeed. 
 
 "Ah! Come, come! That's well! How is my 
 little friend now?" said Doctor Blimber, encourag- 
 ingly. 
 
 "Oh, quite well, thank you, sir," said Paul. 
 
 But there seemed to be something the matter 
 with the floor, for he couldn't stand upon it steadily; 
 and with the walls too, for they were inclined to turn 
 round and round, and could only be stopped by being 
 looked at very hard indeed. Mr. Toots's head had 
 the appearance of being at once bigger and further 
 ofif than was quite natural : and when he took Paul in 
 
 126 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 his arms, to carry him up-stairs, Paul observed with 
 astonishment that the door was in quite a different 
 place from that in which he had expected to find it, 
 and almost thought, at first, that Mr. Toots was go- 
 ing to walk straight up the chimney. 
 
 It was very kind of Mr. Toots to carry him to the 
 top of the house so tenderly; and Paul told him that 
 it was. But Mr. Toots said he would do a great deal 
 more than that, if he could ; and indeed he did more 
 as it was: for he helped Paul to undress, and helped 
 him to bed, in the kindest manner possible, and then 
 sat down by the bedside and chuckled very much; 
 while Mr. Feeder, B.A., leaning over the bottom of 
 the bedstead, set all the little bristles on his head bolt 
 upright with his bony hands, and then made believe 
 to spar at Paul with great science, on account of his 
 being all right again, which was so uncommonly 
 facetious, and kind too in Mr. Feeder, that Paul, not 
 being able to make up his mind whether it was best 
 to laugh or cry at him, did both at once. 
 
 How Mr. Toots melted away, and Mr. Feeder 
 changed into Mrs. Pipchin, Paul never thought of 
 asking; neither was he at all curious to know; but 
 when he saw Mrs. Pipchin standing at the bottom of 
 the bed, instead of Mr. Feeder, he cried out: "Mrs. 
 Pipchin, don't tell Florence!" 
 
 "Don't tell Florence what, my little Paul?" said 
 Mrs. Pipchin, coming round to the bedside, and sit- 
 ting down in the chair. 
 
 127 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "About me," said Paul. 
 
 "No, no," said Mrs. Pipchin. 
 
 "What do you think I mean to do when I grow 
 up, Mrs. Pipchin?" inquired Paul, turning his face 
 toward her on his pillow, and resting his chin wist- 
 fully on his folded hands. 
 
 Mrs. Pipchin couldn't guess. 
 
 "I mean," said Paul, "to put my money all to- 
 gether in one bank, never try to get any more, go 
 away into the country with my darling Florence, 
 have a beautiful garden, fields, and woods, and live 
 there with her all my life!" 
 
 "Indeed!" cried Mrs. Pipchin. 
 
 "Yes," said Paul. "That's what I mean to do, 
 when I " He stopped, and pondered for a mo- 
 ment. 
 
 Mrs. Pipchin's gray eye scanned his thoughtful 
 face. 
 
 "If I grow up," said Paul. Then he went on im- 
 mediately to tell Mrs. Pipchin all about the party, 
 about Florence's invitation, about the pride he would 
 have in the admiration that would be felt for her by 
 all the boys, about their being so kind to him and 
 fond of him, about his being so fond of them, and 
 about his being so glad of it. Then he told Mrs. 
 Pipchin about the analysis, and about his being cer- 
 tainly old-fashioned, and took Mrs. Pipchin's opin- 
 ion on that point, and whether she knew why it was, 
 and what it meant. Mrs. Pipchin denied the fact 
 
 128 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 altogether, as the shortest way of getting out of the 
 difficulty; but Paul was far from satisfied with that 
 reply, and looked so searchingly at Mrs. Pipchin for 
 a truer answer, that she was obliged to get up and 
 look out of the window to avoid his eyes. 
 
 There was a certain calm apothecary, who at- 
 tended at the establishment when any of the young 
 gentlemen were ill, and somehow he got into the 
 room and appeared at the bedside, with Mrs. Blim- 
 ber. How they came there, or how long they had 
 been there, Paul didn't know; but when he saw them, 
 he sat up in bed and answered all the apothecary's 
 questions at full length, and whispered to him that 
 Florence was not to know anything about it, if he 
 pleased, and that he had set his mind upon her 
 coming to the party. He was very chatty with the 
 apothecary, and they parted excellent friends. Lying 
 down again with his eyes shut, he heard the apothe- 
 cary say, out of the room and quite a long way off — 
 or he dreamed it — that there was a want of vital 
 power (what was that, Paul wondered!) and great 
 constitutional weakness. That as the little fellow 
 had set his heart on parting with his schoolmates on 
 the seventeenth, it would be better to indulge the 
 fancy if he grew no worse. That he was glad to hear 
 from Mrs. Pipchin, that the little fellow would go to 
 his friends in London on the eighteenth. That he 
 would write to Mr. Dombey, when he should have 
 gained a better knowledge of the case, and before 
 
 129 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 that day. That there was no immediate cause for — 
 what? Paul lost that word. And that the little 
 fellow had a fine mind, but was an old-fashioned 
 boy. 
 
 What old fashion could that be, Paul wondered 
 with a palpitating heart, that was so visibly expressed 
 in him; so plainly seen by so many people? 
 
 He could neither make it out, nor trouble him- 
 self long with the effort. Mrs. Pipchin was again be- 
 side him, if she had ever been away (he thought she 
 had gone out with the Doctor, but it was all a dream 
 perhaps), and presently a bottle and glass got into 
 her hands magically, and she poured out the con- 
 tents for him. After that, he had some real good 
 jelly, which Mrs. Blimber brought to him herself; 
 and then he was so well, that Mrs. Pipchin went 
 home, at his urgent solicitation, and Briggs and To- 
 zer came to bed. Poor Briggs grumbled terribly 
 about his own analysis, which could hardly have dis- 
 composed him more if it had been a chemical proc- 
 ess; but he was very good to Paul, and so was Tozer, 
 and so were all the rest, for they every one looked in 
 before going to bed, and said: "How are you now, 
 Dombey?" "Cheer up, little Dombey!" and so forth. 
 After Briggs had got into bed, he lay awake for a 
 long time, still bemoaning his analysis, and saying he 
 knew it was all wrong, and they couldn't have an- 
 alyzed a murderer worse, and how would Doctor 
 Blimber like it if his pocket-money depended on 
 
 130 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 it? It was very easy, Briggs said, to make a galley- 
 slave of a boy all the half-year, and then score him 
 up idle; and to crib two dinners a week out of his 
 board, and then score him up greedy; but that wasn't 
 going to be submitted to, he believed, was it? Oh! 
 Ah! 
 
 Before the weak-eyed young man performed on 
 the gong next morning, he came upstairs to Paul 
 and told him he was to lie still, which Paul very 
 gladly did. Mrs. Pipchin reappeared a little before 
 the apothecary, and a little after the good young 
 woman whom Paul had seen cleaning the stove on 
 that first morning (how long ago it seemed now!) 
 had brought him his breakfast. There was another 
 consultation a long way off, or else Paul dreamed it 
 again; and then the apothecary, coming back with 
 Doctor and Mrs. Blimber, said: 
 
 "Yes, I think, Doctor Blimber, we may release 
 this young gentleman from his books just now; the 
 vacation being so very near at hand." 
 
 "By all means," said Doctor Blimber. "My love, 
 you will inform Cornelia, if you please." 
 
 "Assuredly," said Mrs. Blimber. 
 
 The apothecary bending down, looked closely 
 into Paul's eyes, and felt his head, and his pulse, and 
 his heart, with so much interest and care, that Paul 
 said: "Thank you, sir." 
 
 "Our little friend," observed Doctor Blimber, 
 "has never complained." 
 
 131 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "Oh no!" replied the apothecary. "He was not 
 likely to complain." 
 
 "You find him greatly better?" said Doctor Blim- 
 ber. 
 
 "Oh! he is greatly better, sir," returned the 
 apothecary. 
 
 Paul had begun to speculate, in his own odd way, 
 on the subject that might occupy the apothecary's 
 mind just at that moment; so musingly had he an- 
 swered the two questions of Doctor Blimber. But the 
 apothecary happening to meet his little patient's eyes, 
 as the latter set off on that mental expedition, and 
 coming instantly out of his abstraction with a 
 cheerful smile, Paul smiled in return and aban- 
 doned it. 
 
 He lay in bed all that day, dozing and dreaming, 
 and looking at Mr. Toots : but got up on the next, and 
 went down-stairs. Lo and behold, there was some- 
 thing the matter with the great clock; and a work- 
 man on a pair of steps had taken its face off, and was 
 poking instruments into the works by the light of a 
 candle! This was a great event for Paul, who sat 
 down on the bottom stair, and watched the operation 
 attentively: now and then glancing at the clock-face, 
 leaning all askew, against the wall hard by, and feel- 
 ing a little confused by a suspicion that it was ogling 
 him. 
 
 The workman on the steps was very civil; and as 
 he said, when he observed Paul: "How do you do, 
 
 132 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 sir?" Paul got into conversation with him, and told 
 him he hadn't been quite well lately. The ice being 
 thus broken, Paul asked him a multitude of questions 
 about chimes and clocks : as, whether people watched 
 up in the lonely church steeples by night to make 
 them strike, and how the bells were rung when peo- 
 ple died, and whether those were different bells from 
 wedding bells, or only sounded dismal in the fancies 
 of the living. Finding that his new acquaintance was 
 not very well informed on the subject of the Curfew 
 Bell of ancient days, Paul gave him an account of 
 that institution; and also asked him, as a practical 
 man, what he thought about King Alfred's idea of 
 measuring time by the burning of candles; to 
 which the workman replied, that he thought it 
 would be the ruin of the clock trade if it was to come 
 up again. In fine, Paul looked on, until the clock 
 had quite recovered its familiar aspect, and resumed 
 its sedate inquiry: when the workman, putting away 
 his tools in a long basket, bade him good day, and 
 went away. Though not before he had whispered 
 something, on the door-mat, to the footman, in which 
 there was the phrase "old-fashioned" — for Paul 
 heard it. 
 
 What could that old fashion be, that seemed to 
 make the people sorry? What could it be? 
 
 Having nothing to learn now, he thought of this 
 frequently; though not so often as he might have 
 done, if he had had fewer things to think of. But he 
 
 ^33 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 had a great many; and was always thinking, all day 
 long. 
 
 First, there was Florence coming to the party. 
 Florence would see that the boys were fond of him; 
 and that would make her happy. This was his great 
 theme. Let Florence once be sure that they were 
 gentle and good to him, and that he had become a 
 little favorite among them, and then she would al- 
 ways think of the time he had passed there, without 
 being very sorry. Florence might be all the happier 
 too for that, perhaps, when he came back. 
 
 When he came back! Fifty times a day, his 
 noiseless little feet went up the stairs to his own 
 room, as he collected every book, and scrap, and 
 trifle that belonged to him, and put them all together 
 there, down to the minutest thing, for taking home! 
 There was no shade of coming back on little Paul; 
 no preparation for it, or other reference to it, grew 
 out of anything he thought or did, except this slight 
 one in connection with his sister. On the contrary, 
 he had to think of everything familiar to him, in his 
 contemplative moods and in his wanderings about 
 the house, as being to be parted with ; and hence the 
 many things he had to think of, all day long. 
 
 He had to peep into those rooms up-stairs, and 
 think how solitary they would be when he was gone, 
 and wonder through how many silent days, weeks, 
 months, and years, they would continue just as grave 
 and undisturbed. He had to think — would any other 
 
 134 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 child (old-fashioned, like himself) stray there at any 
 time, to whom the same grotesque distortions of pat- 
 tern and furniture would manifest themselves; and 
 would anybody tell that boy of little Dombey, who 
 had been there once. 
 
 He had to think of a portrait on the stairs, which 
 always looked earnestly after him as he went away, 
 eying it over his shoulder; and which, when he 
 passed it in the company of any one, still seemed to 
 gaze at him, and not at his companion. He had 
 much to think of, in association with a print that 
 hung up in another place, where, in the centre of a 
 wondering group, one figure that he knew, a figure 
 with a light about its head — benignant, mild, and 
 merciful — stood pointing upward. 
 
 At his own bedroom window, there were crowds 
 of thoughts that mixed with these, and came on, one 
 upon another, one upon another, like the rolling 
 waves. Where those wild birds lived, that were al- 
 ways hovering out at sea in troubled weather; where 
 the clouds rose, and first began; whence the wind is- 
 sued on its rushing flight, and where it stopped; 
 whether the spot where he and Florence had so often 
 sat, and watched, and talked about these things, could 
 ever be exactly as it used to be without them ; whether 
 it could ever be the same to Florence, if he were in 
 some distant place, and she were sitting there alone. 
 
 He had to think, too, of Mr. Toots, and Mr. 
 Feeder, B.A.; of all the boys; and of Doctor Blim- 
 
 135 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ber, Mrs. Blimber, and Miss Blimber; of home, and 
 of his aunt and Miss Tox; of his father, Dombey and 
 Son, Walter with the poor old uncle who had got the 
 money he wanted, and that gruff-voiced captain with 
 the iron hand. Besides all this, he had a number of 
 little visits to pay, in the course of the day; to the 
 school-room, to Doctor Blimber's study, to Mrs. 
 Blimber's private apartment, to Miss Blimber's, and 
 to the dog. For he was free of the whole house now, 
 to range it as he chose; and, in his desire to part with 
 everybody on affectionate terms, he attended, in his 
 way, to them all. Sometimes he found places in 
 books for Briggs, who was always losing them; some- 
 times he looked up words in dictionaries for other 
 young gentlemen who were in extremity; sometimes 
 he held skeins of silk for Mrs. Blimber to wind; 
 sometimes he put Cornelia's desk to rights; some- 
 times he would even creep into the Doctor's study, 
 and, sitting on the carpet near his learned feet, turn 
 the globes softly, and go round the world, or take a 
 flight among the far-off stars. 
 
 In those days immediately before the holidays, in 
 short, when the other young gentlemen were laboring 
 for dear life through a general resumption of the 
 studies of the whole half-year, Paul was such a privi- 
 leged pupil as had never been seen in that house be- 
 fore. He could hardly believe it himself; but his 
 liberty lasted from hour to hour, and from day to 
 day; and little Dombey was caressed by every one. 
 
 136 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 Doctor Blimber was so particular about him, that he 
 requested Johnson to retire from the dinner-table one 
 day, for having thoughtlessly spoken to him as "poor 
 little Dombey;" which Paul thought rather hard 
 and severe, though he had flushed at the moment, and 
 wondered why Johnson should pity him. It was the 
 more questionable justice, Paul thought, in the Doc- 
 tor, from his having certainly overheard that great 
 authority give his assent on the previous evening, to 
 the proposition (stated by Mrs. Blimber) that poor 
 dear little Dombey was more old-fashioned than 
 ever. And now it was that Paul began to think it 
 must surely be old-fashioned, to be very thin, and 
 light, and easily tired, and soon disposed to lie down 
 an5rwhere and rest; for he couldn't help feeling that 
 these were more and more his habits every day. 
 
 At last the party-day arrived; and Doctor Blim- 
 ber said at breakfast: "Gentlemen, we will resume 
 our studies on the twenty-fifth of next month." Mr. 
 Toots immediately threw off his allegiance, and put 
 on his ring: and mentioning the Doctor in casual 
 conversation shortly afterwards, spoke of him as 
 "Blimber"! This act of freedom inspired the older 
 pupils with admiration and envy; but the younger 
 spirits were appalled, and seemed to marvel that no 
 beam fell down and crushed him. 
 
 Not the least allusion was made to the ceremonies 
 of the evening, either at breakfast or at dinner; but 
 there was a bustle in the house all day, and in the 
 
 137 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 course of his perambulations, Paul made acquaint- 
 ance with various strange benches and candlesticks, 
 and met a harp in a green great-coat standing on the 
 landing outside the drawing-room door. There was 
 something queer, too, about Mrs. Blimber's head at 
 dinner-time, as if she had screwed her hair up too 
 tight; and though Miss Blimber showed a graceful 
 bunch of plaited hair on each temple, she seemed 
 to have her own little curls in paper underneath, and 
 in a play-bill too; for Paul read "Theatre Royal" 
 over one of her sparkling spectacles, and "Brighton" 
 over the other. 
 
 There was a grand array of white waistcoats and 
 cravats in the young gentlemen's bedrooms as even- 
 ing approached; and such a smell of singed hair, that 
 Doctor Blimber sent up the footman with his com- 
 pliments, and wished to know if the house was on fire. 
 But it was only the hairdresser curling the young 
 gentlemen, and overheating his tongs in the ardor of 
 business. 
 
 When Paul was dressed — which was very soon 
 done, for he felt unwell and drowsy, and was not able 
 to stand about it very long — he went down into the 
 drawing-room; where he found Doctor Blimber pac- 
 ing up and down the room full dressed, but with a 
 dignified and unconcerned demeanor, as if he 
 thought it barely possible that one or two people 
 might drop in by and by. Shortly afterward, Mrs. 
 Blimber appeared, looking lovely, Paul thought; and 
 
 138 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 attired in such a number of skirts that it was quite an 
 excursion ta walk round her. Miss Blimber came 
 down soon after her mamma; a little squeezed in ap- 
 pearance, but very charming. 
 
 Mr. Toots and Mr. Feeder were the next ar- 
 rivals. Each of these gentlemen brought his hat in 
 his hand, as if he lived somewhere else; and when 
 they were announced by the butler, Doctor Blimber 
 said, "Ay, ay, ay! God bless my soul!" and seemed 
 extremely glad to see them. Mr. Toots was one 
 blaze of jewelry and buttons: and he felt the circum- 
 stance so strongly, that when he had shaken hands 
 with the Doctor, and had bowed to Mrs. Blimber 
 and Miss Blimber, he took Paul aside, and said, 
 "What do you think of this, Dombey!" 
 
 But notwithstanding this modest confidence in 
 himself, Mr. Toots appeared to be involved in a good 
 deal of uncertainty whether, on the whole, it was ju- 
 dicious to button the bottom button of his waistcoat, 
 and whether, on a calm revision of all the circum- 
 stances, it was best to wear his wristbands turned up 
 or turned down. Observing that Mr. Feeder's were 
 turned up, Mr. Toots turned his up; but the wrist- 
 bands of the next arrival being turned down, Mr. 
 Toots turned his down. The differences in point of 
 waistcoat buttoning, not only at the bottom, but at the 
 top, too, became so numerous and complicated as the 
 arrivals thickened, that Mr. Toots was continually 
 fingering that article of dress, as if he were per- 
 
 ^39 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 forming on some instrument; and appeared to find 
 the incessant execution it demanded quite bewilder- 
 ing. 
 
 All the young gentlemen, tightly cravatted, 
 curled, and pumped, and with their best hats in 
 their hands, having been at different times an- 
 nounced and introduced, Mr. Baps, the dancing- 
 master, came, accompanied by Mrs. Baps, to whom 
 Mrs. Blimber was extremely kind and condescend- 
 ing. Mr. Baps was a very grave gentleman, with 
 a slow and measured manner of speaking; and be- 
 fore he had stood under the lamp five minutes, he 
 began to talk to Toots (who had been silently com- 
 paring pumps with him) about what you were to do 
 with your raw materials when they came into your 
 ports in return for your drain of gold. Mr. Toots, 
 to whom the question seemed perplexing, suggested 
 "Cook 'em." But Mr Baps did not appear to think 
 that would do. 
 
 Paul now slipped away from the cushioned cor- 
 ner of a sofa, which had been his post of observa- 
 tion, and went downstairs into the tea-room to be 
 ready for Florence, whom he had not seen for nearly 
 a fortnight, as he had remained at Doctor Blimber's 
 on the previous Saturday and Sunday, lest he should 
 take cold. Presently she came: looking so beautiful 
 in her simple ball-dress, with her fresh flowers in 
 her hand, that when she knelt down on the ground 
 to take Paul round the neck and kiss him (for there 
 
 140 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 was no one there, but his friend and another young 
 woman waiting to serve out the tea) , he could hardly 
 make up his mind to let her go again, or to take away 
 her bright and loving eyes from his face. 
 
 "But what is the matter, Floy?" asked Paul, al- 
 most sure that he saw a tear there. 
 
 "Nothing, darling; nothing," returned Flor- 
 ence. 
 
 Paul touched her cheek gently with his finger — 
 and it was a tear! "Why, Floy!" said he. 
 
 "We'll go home together, and I'll nurse you, 
 love," said Florence. 
 
 "Nurse me!" echoed Paul. 
 
 Paul couldn't understand what that had to do 
 with it, nor why the two young women looked on so 
 seriously, nor why Florence turned away her face for 
 a moment, and then turned it back, lighted up again 
 with smiles. 
 
 "Floy," said Paul, holding a ringlet of her dark 
 hair in his hand. "Tell me, dear. Do you think 
 I have grown old-fashioned?" 
 
 His sister laughed, and fondled him, and told 
 him "No." 
 
 "Because I know they say so," returned Paul, 
 "and I want to know what they mean, Floy." 
 
 'But a loud double knock coming at the door, and 
 Florence hurrying to the table, there was no more 
 said between them. Paul wondered again when he 
 saw his friend whisper to Florence, as if she were 
 
 141 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 comforting her; but a new arrival put that out of his 
 head speedily. 
 
 It was Sir Barnet Skettles, Lady Skettles, and 
 Master Skettles. Master Skettles was to be a new 
 boy after the vacation, and Fame had been busy, in 
 Mr. Feeder's room, with his father, who was in the 
 House of Commons, and of whom Mr. Feeder had 
 said that when he did catch the Speaker's eye (which 
 he had been expected to do for three or four years), 
 it was anticipated that he would rather touch up the 
 Radicals. 
 
 "And what room is this now, for instance?" said 
 Lady Skettles to Paul's friend, 'Melia. 
 
 "Doctor Blimber's study, ma'am," was the reply. 
 
 Lady Skettles took a panoramic survey of it 
 through her glass, and said to Sir Barnet Skettles, 
 with a nod of approval, "Very good." Sir Barnet 
 assented, but Master Skettles looked suspicious and 
 doubtful. 
 
 "And this little creature, now," said Lady Sket- 
 tles, turning to Paul. "Is he one of the — " 
 
 "Young gentlemen, ma'am; yes, ma'am," said 
 Paul's friend. 
 
 "And what is your name, my pale child?" said 
 Lady Skettles. 
 
 "Dombey," answered Paul. 
 
 Sir Barnet Skettles immediately interposed, and 
 said that he had had the honor of meeting Paul's 
 father at a public dinner, and that he hoped he was 
 
 142 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 very well. Then Paul heard him say to Lady Sket- 
 tles, "City — very rich — most respectable — Doctor 
 mentioned it." And then he said to Paul, "Will you 
 tell your good papa that Sir Barnet Skettles rejoiced 
 to hear that he was very well, and sent him his best 
 compliments?" 
 
 "Yes, sir," answered Paul. 
 
 "That is my brave boy," said Sir Barnet Skettles. 
 "Barnet," to Master Skettles, who was revenging 
 himself for the studies to come, on the plum-cake, 
 "this isayoung gentleman you ought to know. This is 
 a young gentleman you may know, Barnet," said Sir 
 Barnet Skettles, with an emphasis on the permission. 
 
 "What eyes! What hair! What a lovely face !" 
 exclaimed Lady Skettles softly, as she looked at 
 Florence through her glass. 
 
 "My sister," said Paul, presenting her. 
 
 The satisfaction of the Skettleses was now com- 
 plete. And as Lady Skettles had conceived, at first 
 sight, a liking for Paul, they all went upstairs to- 
 gether: Sir Barnet Skettles taking care of Florence, 
 and young Barnet following. 
 
 Young Barnet did not remain long in the back- 
 ground after they had reached the drawing-room, 
 for Doctor Blimber had him out in no time, danc- 
 ing with Florence. He did not appear to Paul to 
 be particularly happy, or particularly anything but 
 sulky, or to care much what he was about; but as 
 Paul heard Lady Skettles say to Mrs. Blimber, while 
 
 143 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 she beat time with her fan, that her dear boy was evi- 
 dently smitten to death by that angel of a child, Miss 
 Dombey, it would seem that Skettles Junior was in a 
 state of bliss, without showing it. 
 
 Little Paul thought it a singular coincidence that 
 nobody had occupied his place among the pillows; 
 and that when he came into the room again, they 
 should all make way for him to go back to it, remem- 
 bering it was his. Nobody stood before him, either, 
 when they observed that he liked to see Florence 
 dancing, but they left the space in front quite clear, 
 so that he might follow her with his eyes. They 
 were so kind, too, even the strangers, of whom there 
 were soon a great many, that they came and spoke 
 to him every now and then, and asked him how he 
 was, and if his head ached, and whether he was tired. 
 He was very much obliged to them for all their kind- 
 ness and attention, and reclining propped up in his 
 corner, with Mrs. Blimber and Lady Skettles on the 
 same sofa, and Florence coming and sitting by his 
 side as soon as every dance was ended, he looked on 
 very happily indeed. 
 
 Florence would have sat by him all night, and 
 would not have danced at all of her own accord, but 
 Paul made her, by telling her how much it pleased 
 him. And he told her the truth, too; for his small 
 heart swelled, and his face glowed, when he saw how 
 much they all admired her, and how she was the 
 beautiful little rosebud of the room. 
 
 144 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 From his nest among the pillows, Paul could see 
 and hear almost everything that passed, as if the 
 whole were being done for his amusement. Among 
 other little incidents that he observed, he observed 
 Mr. Baps, the dancing-master, get into conversation 
 with Sir Barnet Skettles, and very soon ask him, as 
 he had asked Mr. Toots, what you were to do with 
 your raw materials, when they came into your ports 
 in return for your drain of gold — ^which was such a 
 mystery to Paul that he was quite desirous to know 
 what ought to be done with them. Sir Barnet Sket- 
 tles had much to say upon the question, and said it; 
 but it did not appear to solve the question, for Mr. 
 Baps retorted, Yes, but supposing Russia stepped in 
 with her tallows; which struck Sir Barnet almost 
 dumb, for he could only shake his head after that, 
 and say, why then you must fall back upon your cot- 
 tons, he supposed. 
 
 Sir Barnet Skettles looked after Mr. Baps when 
 he went to cheer up Mrs. Baps (who, being quite de- 
 serted, was pretending to look over the music-book 
 of the gentleman who played the harp), as if he 
 thought him a remarkable kind of man ; and shortly 
 afterward he said so in those words to Doctor Blim- 
 ber, and inquired if he might take the liberty of ask- 
 ing who he was, and whether he had ever been in the 
 Board of Trade. Doctor Blimber answered no, he 
 believed not; and that in fact he was a Professor 
 of— 
 
 H5 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "Of something connected with statistics, I'll 
 swear?" observed Sir Barnet Skettles. 
 
 "Why, no, Sir Barnet," replied Doctor Blimber, 
 rubbing his chin. "No, not exactly." 
 
 "Figures of some sort, I would venture a bet," 
 said Sir Barnet Skettles. 
 
 "Why, yes," said Dr. Blimber, "yes, but not of 
 that sort. Mr. Baps is a very worthy sort of man, Sir 
 Barnet, and — in fact, he's our professor of dancing." 
 
 Paul was amazed to see that this piece of in- 
 formation quite altered Sir Barnet Skettles' opinion 
 of Mr. Baps, and that Sir Barnet flew into a perfect 
 rage, and glowered at Mr. Baps over on the other 
 side of the room. He even went so far as to D Mr. 
 Baps to Lady Skettles, in telling her what had hap- 
 pened, and to say that it was like his most con-sum- 
 mate and con-found-ded impudence. 
 
 There was another thing that Paul observed. 
 Mr. Feeder, after imbibing several custard-cups of 
 negus, began to enjoy himself. The dancing, in gen- 
 eral, was ceremonious, and the music rather solemn 
 — a little like church music, in fact — but after the 
 custard-cups Mr. Feeder told Mr. Toots that he was 
 going to throw a little spirit into the thing. After 
 that, Mr. Feeder not only began to dance as if he 
 meant dancing and nothing else, but secretly to stim- 
 ulate the music to perform wild tunes. Further, he 
 became particular in his attentions to the ladies; and 
 dancing with Miss Blimber, whispered to her — 
 
 146 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 whispered to her! — though not so softly but that Paul 
 heard him say this remarkable poetry, 
 
 "Had I a heart for falsehood framed, 
 I ne'er could injure You !" 
 
 This, Paul heard him repeat to four young ladies in 
 succession. Well he might say to Mr. Toots, that he 
 was afraid he should be worse for it, to-morrow! 
 
 Mrs. Blimber was a little alarmed by this — com- 
 paratively speaking — profligate behavior; and espe- 
 cially by the alteration in the character of the music, 
 which, beginning to comprehend low melodies that 
 were popular in the streets, might not naturally be 
 supposed to give ofifence to Lady Skettles. But Lady 
 Skettles was so very kind as to beg Mrs. Blimber not 
 to mention it; and to receive her explanation that 
 Mr. Feeder's spirits sometimes betrayed him into ex- 
 cesses on these occasions, with the greatest courtesy 
 and politeness; observing, that he seemed a very nice 
 sort of person for his situation, and that she particu- 
 larly liked the unassuming style of his hair — which 
 (as already hinted) was about a quarter of an inch 
 long. 
 
 Once, when there was a pause in the dancing, 
 Lady Skettles told Paul that he seemed very fond of 
 music. Paul replied, that he was; and if she was, 
 too, she ought to hear his sister, Florence, sing. Lady 
 Skettles presently discovered that she was dying with 
 anxiety to have that gratification; and though Flor- 
 ence was at first very much frightened at being asked 
 
 147 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 to sing before so many people, and begged earnestly 
 to be excused, yet, on Paul calling her to him, and 
 saying, "Do, Floy! Please! Forme, my dear!" she 
 went straight to the piano, and began. When they 
 all drew a little away, that Paul might see her: and 
 when he saw her sitting there alone, so young, and 
 good, and beautiful, and kind to him; and heard her 
 thrilling voice, so natural and sweet, and such a 
 golden link between him and all his life's love and 
 happiness, rising out of the silence; he turned his 
 face away, and hid his tears. Not, as he told them 
 when they spoke to him, not that the music was too 
 plaintive or too sorrowful, but it was so dear to him. 
 They all loved Florence. How could they help it! 
 Paul had known beforehand that they must and 
 would; and sitting in his cushioned corner, with 
 calmly folded hands, and one leg loosely doubled 
 under him, few would have thought what triumph 
 and delight expanded his childish bosom while he 
 watched her, or what a sweet tranquillity he felt. 
 Lavish encomiums on "Dombey's sister" reached his 
 ears from all the boys : admiration of the self-pos- 
 sessed and modest little beauty was on every lip: re- 
 ports of her intelligence and accomplishments floated 
 past him, constantly; and, as if borne in upon the air 
 of the summer night, there was a half-intelligible 
 sentiment diffused around, referring to Florence and 
 himself, and breathing sympathy for both, that 
 soothed and touched him. 
 
 148 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 He did not know why. <For all that the child 
 observed, and felt, and thought, that night — the pres- 
 ent and the absent; what was then and what had been 
 — were blended like the colors in the rainbow, or in 
 the plumage of rich birds when the sun is shining on 
 them, or in the softening sky when the same sun is 
 setting. The many things he had had to think of 
 lately, passed before him in the music; not as claim- 
 ing his attention over again, or as likely evermore 
 to occupy it, but as peacefully disposed of and gone. 
 A solitary window, gazed through years ago, looked 
 out upon an ocean, miles and miles away; upon its 
 waters, fancies, busy with him only yesterday, were 
 hushed and lulled to rest like broken waves. The 
 same mysterious murmur he had wondered at, when 
 lying on his couch upon the beach, he thought he 
 still heard sounding through his sister's song, and 
 through the hum of voices, and the tread of feet, and 
 having some part in the faces flitting by, and even 
 in the heavy gentleness of Mr. Toots, who frequently 
 came up to shake him by the hand. Through the 
 universal kindness he still thought he heard it, speak- 
 ing to him; and even his old-fashioned reputation 
 seemed to be allied to it, he knew not how. Thus 
 little Paul sat musing, listening, looking on, and 
 dreaming; and was very happy. 
 
 Until the time arrived for taking leave: and then, 
 indeed, there was a sensation in the party. Sir Bar- 
 net Skettles brought up Skettles Junior to shake 
 
 149 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 hands with him, and asked him if he would remem- 
 ber to tell his good papa, with his best compliments, 
 that he, Sir Barnet Skettles, had said he hoped the 
 two young gentlemen would become intimately ac- 
 quainted. Lady Skettles kissed him, and parted his 
 hair upon his brow, and held him in her arms; and 
 even Mrs. Baps — poor Mrs. Baps! Paul was glad 
 of that — came over from beside the music-book of 
 the gentleman who played the harp, and took leave 
 of him quite as heartily as anybody in the room. 
 
 "Good-by, Doctor Blimber," said Paul, stretch- 
 ing out his hando 
 
 "Good-by, my little friend," returned the Doctor. 
 
 "I'm very much obliged to you, sir," said Paul, 
 looking innocently up into his awful face. "Ask 
 them to take care of Diogenes, if you please." 
 
 Diogenes was the dog: who had never in his life 
 received a friend into his confidence, before Paul. 
 The Doctor promised that every attention should 
 be paid to Diogenes in Paul's absence, and Paul hav- 
 ing again thanked him, and shaken hands with him, 
 bade adieu to Mrs. Blimber and Cornelia with 
 such heartfelt earnestness that Mrs. Blimber forgot 
 from that moment to mention Cicero to Lady Sket- 
 tles, though she had fully intended it all the evening. 
 Cornelia, taking both Paul's hands in hers, said, 
 "Dombey, Dombey, you have always been my favor- 
 ite pupil. God bless you!" And it showed, Paul 
 thought, how easily one might do injustice to a per- 
 
 150 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 son; for Miss Blimber meant it — though she ivas a 
 Forcer — and felt it. 
 
 A buzz then went round among the young gentle- 
 men, of "Dombey's going!" "Little Dombey's go- 
 ing!" and there was a general move after Paul and 
 Florence down the staircase and into the hall, in 
 which 'the whole Blimber family were included. 
 Such a circumstance, Mr. Feeder said aloud, as had 
 never happened in the case of any former young gen- 
 tleman within his experience; but it would be diffi- 
 cult to say if this were sober fact or custard-cups. 
 The servants, with the butler at their head, had all an 
 interest in seeing little Dombey go; and even the 
 weak-eyed young man, taking out his books and 
 trunks to the coach that was to carry him and 
 Florence to Mrs. Pipchin's for the night, melted 
 visibly. 
 
 Not even the influence of the softer passion on the 
 young gentlemen — and they all, to a boy, doted on 
 Florence — could restrain them from taking quite a 
 noisy leave of Paul ; waving hats after him, pressing 
 downstairs to shake hands with him, crying individ- 
 ually, "Dombey, don't forget me!" and indulging 
 in many such ebullitions of feeling, uncommon 
 among those young Chesterfields. Paul whispered 
 Florence, as she wrapped him up before the door 
 was opened. Did she hear them? Would she ever 
 forget it? Was she glad to know it? And a lively 
 delight was in his eyes as he spoke to her. 
 
 151 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Once, for a last look, he turned and gazed upon 
 the faces thus addressed to him, surprised to see how 
 shining and how bright, and numerous they were, 
 and how they were all piled and heaped up, as faces 
 are at crowded theatres. They swam before him as 
 he looked, like faces in an agitated glass; and next 
 moment he was in the dark coach outside, holding 
 close to Florence. From that time, whenever he 
 thought of Doctor Blimber's, it came back as he had 
 seen it in this last view; and it never seemed to 
 be a real place again, but always a dream, full of 
 eyes. 
 
 This was not quite the last of Doctor Blimber's, 
 however. There was something else. There was 
 Mr. Toots. Who, unexpectedly letting down one of 
 the coach-windows, and looking in, said, with a most 
 egregious chuckle, "Is Dombey there?" and imme- 
 diately put it up again, without waiting for an an- 
 swer. Nor was this quite the last of Mr. Toots, 
 even ; for before the coachman could drive off, he as 
 suddenly let down the other window, and looking in 
 with a precisely similar chuckle, said in a precisely 
 similar tone of voice, "Is Dombey there?" and dis- 
 appeared precisely as before. 
 
 How Florence laughed! Paul often remem- 
 bered it, and laughed himself whenever he did so. 
 
 But there was much, soon afterward — next day, 
 and after that — which Paul could only recollect con- 
 fusedly. As, why they stayed at Mrs. Pipchin's 
 
 152 
 
Paul's Education 
 
 days and nights, instead of going home; why he lay 
 in bed, with Florence sitting by his side; whether 
 that had been his father in the room, or only a tall 
 shadow on the wall ; whether he had heard his doc- 
 tor say, of some one, that if they had removed him 
 before the occasion on which he had built up fan- 
 cies, strong in proportion to his own weakness, it was 
 very possible he might have pined away. 
 
 He could not even remember whether he had 
 often said to Florence, "Oh, Floy, take me home, and 
 never leave me !" but he thought he had. He fancied 
 sometimes he had heard himself repeating, "Take 
 me home, Floy! take me home!" 
 
 But he could remember, when he got home, and 
 was carried up the well-remembered stairs, that there 
 had been the rumbling of a coach for many hours 
 together, while he lay upon the seat, with Florence 
 still beside him, and old Mrs. Pipchin sitting oppo- 
 site. He remembered his old bed, too, when they laid 
 him down in it: his aunt. Miss Tox, and Susan: but 
 there was something else, and recent, too, that still 
 perplexed him. 
 
 "I want to speak to Florence, if you please," he 
 said. "To Florence by herself, for a moment!" 
 
 She bent down over him, and the others stood 
 away. 
 
 "Floy, my pet, wasn't that Papa in the hall, when 
 they brought me from the coach?" 
 
 "Yes, dear." 
 
 153 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "He didn't cry, and go into his room, Floy, did 
 he, when he saw me coming in?" 
 
 Florence shook her head, and pressed her lips 
 against his cheek. 
 
 "I'm very glad he didn't cry," said little Paul. "I 
 thought he did. Don't tell them that I asked." 
 
 154 
 
EDUCATION OF JOHANN WOLFGANG 
 GOETHE 
 
 /^^N the 28th of August, 1749, at mid-day, as the 
 ^-^ clock struck twelve, I came into the world, at 
 Frankfort-on-the-Maine. My horoscope was pro- 
 pitious: the sun stood in the sign of the Virgin, and 
 had culminated for the day; Jupiter and Venus 
 looked on him with a friendly eye, and Mercury not 
 adversely; while Saturn and Mars kept themselves 
 indifferent; the Moon alone, just full, exerted the 
 power of her reflection all the more, as she had then 
 reached her planetary hour. She opposed herself, 
 therefore, to my birth, which could not be accom- 
 plished until this hour was passed. 
 
 These good aspects, which the astrologers man- 
 aged subsequently to reckon very auspicious for me, 
 may have been the causes of my preservation; for, 
 through the unskilfulness of the midwife, I came 
 into the world as dead, and only after various efforts 
 was I enabled to see the light. This event, which 
 had put our household into sore straits, turned to the 
 advantage of my fellow-citizens, inasmuch as my 
 grandfather, the Schultheiss, Johann Wolfgang Tex- 
 tor, took occasion from it to have an accoucheur es- 
 tablished, and to introduce or revive the tuition of 
 midwives, which may have done some good to those 
 who were born after me. 
 
 -'-' Vol. 15—6 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 When we desire to recall what befell us in the 
 earliest period of youth, it often happens that we con- 
 found what we have heard from others with that 
 which we really possess from our own direct experi- 
 ence. Without, therefore, instituting a very close 
 investigation into the point, which after all could 
 lead to nothing, I am conscious that we lived in an 
 old house, which, in fact, consisted of two adjoining 
 houses, that had been opened into each other. A 
 spiral staircase led to rooms on different levels, and 
 the unevenness of the stories was remedied by steps. 
 ■For us children, a younger sister and myself, the fa- 
 vorite resort was a spacious floor below, near the door 
 of which was a large wooden lattice that allowed us 
 direct communication with the street and open air. 
 A bird-cage of this sort, with which many houses 
 were provided, was called a Frame (Gerdms). The 
 women sat in it to sew and knit; the cook picked her 
 salad there; female neighbors chatted with each 
 other, and the streets consequently in the fine season 
 wore a southern aspect. One felt at ease w^hile in 
 communication with the public. We children, too, 
 by means of these frames, were brought into contact 
 with our neighbors, of whom three brothers Von 
 Ochsenstein, the surviving sons of the deceased Schul- 
 theiss, living on the other side of the way, won my 
 love, and occupied and diverted themselves with me 
 in many ways. 
 
 Our family liked to tell of all sorts of waggeries 
 
 156 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 to which I was enticed by these otherwise grave and 
 solitary men. Let one of these pranks suffice for all. 
 A crockery fair had just been held, from which not 
 only our kitchen had been supplied for a while with 
 articles for a long time to come, but a great deal of 
 small gear of the same ware had been purchased as 
 playthings for us children. One fine afternoon, 
 when everything was quiet in the house, I whiled 
 away the time with my pots and dishes in the Frame, 
 and finding that nothing more was to be got out of 
 them, hurled one of them into the street. The Von 
 Ochsensteins, who saw me so delighted at the fine 
 smash it made, that I clapped my hands for joy, cried 
 out, "Another." I was not long in flinging out a 
 pot, and as they made no end to their calls for more, 
 by degrees the whole collection, platters, pipkins, 
 mugs and all, were dashed upon the pavement. iMy 
 neighbors continued to express their approbation, 
 and I was highly delighted to give them pleasure. 
 But my stock was exhausted, and still they shouted, 
 "More." I ran, therefore, straight to the kitchen, 
 and brought the earthenware, which produced a still 
 livelier spectacle in breaking, and thus I kept run- 
 ning backward and forward, fetching one plate after 
 another as I could reach it from where they stood in 
 rows on the shelf. But as that did not satisfy my 
 audience, I devoted all the ware that I could drag 
 out to similar destruction. It was not till afterward 
 that any one appeared to hinder and save. The mis- 
 
 157 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 chief was done, and in place of so much broken 
 crockery, there was at least a ludicrous story, in 
 which the roguish authors took special delight to 
 the end of their days. 
 
 My father's mother, in whose house we properly 
 dwelt, lived in a large back-room directly on the 
 ground floor, and we were accustomed to carry on 
 our sports even up to her chair, and when she was ill, 
 up to her bedside. I remember her, as it were, a 
 spirit — a handsome, thin woman, always neatly 
 dressed in white. Mild, gentle, and kind, she has 
 ever remained in my memory. 
 
 The street in which our house was situated passed 
 by the name of the Stag-Ditch; but as neither stags 
 nor ditches were to be seen, we wished to have the 
 expression explained. They told us that our house 
 stood on a spot that was once outside the city, and 
 that where the street now ran had formerly been a 
 ditch, in which a number of stags were kept. 
 These stags were preserved and fed here because the 
 senate every year, according to an ancient custom, 
 feasted publicly on a stag, which was therefore al- 
 ways at hand in the ditch for such a festival, in case 
 princes or knights interfered with the city's right of 
 chase outside, or the walls were encompassed or be- 
 sieged by an enemy. This pleased us much, and we 
 wished that such a lair for tame animals could have 
 been seen in our times. 
 
 The back of the house, from the second story 
 
 158 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 particularly, commanded a very pleasant prospect 
 over an almost immeasurable extent of neighboring 
 gardens, stretching to the very walls of the city. But, 
 alas! in transforming what were once public grounds 
 into private gardens, our house and some others ly- 
 ing toward the corner of the street had been much 
 stinted, since the houses toward the horse-market had 
 appropriated spacious out-houses and large gardens 
 to themselves, while a tolerably high wall shut us 
 out from these adjacent paradises. 
 
 On the second floor was a room which was called 
 the garden-room, because they had there endeavored 
 to supply the want of a garden by means of a few 
 plants placed before the window. As I grew older, 
 it was there that I made my favorite, not melancholy 
 but somewhat sentimental, retreat. Over these gar- 
 dens, beyond the city's walls and ramparts, might be 
 seen a beautiful and fertile plain ; the same which 
 stretches toward Hochst. In the summer season I 
 commonly learned my lessons there, and watched 
 the thunderstorms, but could never look my fill at 
 the setting sun, which went down directly opposite 
 my windows. And when, at the same time, I saw the 
 neighbors wandering through their gardens taking 
 care of their flowers, the children playing, parties 
 of friends enjoying themselves, and could hear the 
 bowls rolling and the nine pins dropping, it early ex- 
 cited within me a feeling of solitude, and a sense of 
 vague longing resulting from it, which, conspiring 
 
 159 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 with the seriousness and awe implanted in me by 
 Nature, exerted its influence at an early age, and 
 showed itself more distinctly in after years. 
 
 The old, many cornered, and gloomy arrange- 
 ment of the house was moreover adapted to awaken 
 dread and terror in childish minds. Unfortunately, 
 too, the principle of discipline that young persons 
 should be early deprived of all fear for the awful 
 and invisible, and accustomed to the terrible, still 
 prevailed. We children, therefore, were compelled 
 to sleep alone, and when we found this impossible, 
 and softly slipped from our beds to seek the society 
 of the servants and maids, our father, with his dress- 
 ing-gown turned inside out, which disguised him suf- 
 ficiently for the purpose, placed himself in the way, 
 and frightened us back to our resting-places. The 
 evil effect of this any one may imagine. How is he 
 who is encompassed with a double terror to be eman- 
 cipated from fear? My mother, always cheerful 
 and gay, and willing to render others so, discovered 
 a much better pedagogical expedient. She managed 
 to gain her end by rewards. It was the season for 
 peaches, the plentiful enjoyment of which she prom- 
 ised us every morning if we overcame our fears dur- 
 ing the night. In this way she succeeded, and both 
 parties were satisfied. 
 
 In the interior of the house my eyes were chiefly 
 attracted by a series of Roman Views, with which 
 my father had ornamented an ante-room. They 
 
 1 60 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 were engravings by some of the accomplished prede- 
 cessors of Piranesi, who well understood perspective 
 and architecture, and whose touches were clear and 
 excellent. There I saw every day, the Piazza del 
 Popolo, the Colosseum, the Piazza of St. Peter's and 
 St. Peter's Church, within and without, the castle of 
 St. Angelo, and many other places. These images 
 impressed themselves deeply upon me, and my other- 
 wise very laconic father was often so kind as to fur- 
 nish descriptions of the objects. His partiality for 
 the Italian language, and for everything pertaining 
 to Italy, was very decided. A small collection of 
 marbles and natural curiosities, which he had brought 
 with him thence, he often showed to us; and he de- 
 voted a great part of his time to a description of his 
 travels, written in Italian, the copying and correction 
 of which he slowly and accurately completed, in 
 several parcels, with his own hand. A lively old 
 teacher of Italian, called Giovinazzi, was of service 
 to him in this work. The old man, moreover, did 
 not sing badly, and my mother every day must needs 
 accompany him and herself upon the clavichord, 
 and thus I speedily learned the Solitario bosco om- 
 broso so as to know it by heart before I understood it. 
 My father was altogether of a didactic turn, and 
 in his retirement from business liked to communi- 
 cate to others what he knew or was able to do. Thus, 
 during the first years of their marriage, he had kept 
 my mother busily engaged in writing, playing the 
 
 r6i 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 clavichord, and singing, by which means she had 
 been laid under the necessity of acquiring some 
 knowledge and a slight readiness in the Italian 
 tongue. 
 
 Generally we passed all our leisure hours with 
 my grandmother, in whose spacious apartment we 
 found plenty of room for our sports. She contrived 
 to engage us with various trifles, and to regale us 
 with all sorts of nice morsels. But one Christmas 
 evening, she crowned all her kind deeds, by hav- 
 ing a puppet-show exhibited before us, and thus un- 
 folding a new world in the old house. This unex- 
 pected drama attracted our young minds with great 
 force; upon the Boy particularly it made a very 
 strong impression, which continued to vibrate with 
 a great and lasting effect. 
 
 The little stage with its speechless personages, 
 which at the outset had only been exhibited to us, but 
 was afterward given over for our own use and dra- 
 matic vivification, was prized more highly by us 
 children, as it was the last bequest of our good grand- 
 mother, whom encroaching disease first withdrew 
 from our sight, and death next tore away from our 
 hearts forever. Her departure was of still more im- 
 portance to our family, as it drew after it a complete 
 change in our condition. 
 
 As long as my grandmother lived, my father had 
 refrained from any attempt to change or renovate 
 the house, even in the slightest particular, though it 
 
 162 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 was known that he had pretty large plans of build- 
 ing, which were now immediately begun. In Frank- 
 fort, as in many other old towns, when anybody put 
 up a wooden structure, he ventured, for the sake of 
 space, to make not only the first, but each successive 
 story project over the lower one, by which means 
 narrow streets especially were rendered somewhat 
 dark and confined. At last a law was passed, that 
 every one putting up a new house from the ground, 
 should confine his projections to the first upper story, 
 and carry the others up perpendicularly. My father, 
 that he might not lose the projecting space in the 
 second story, caring little for outward architectural 
 appearance, and anxious only for the good and con- 
 venient arrangement of the interior, resorted to the 
 expedient which others had employed before him, 
 of propping the upper part of the house, until one 
 part after another had been removed from the bot- 
 tom upward, and a new house, as it were, inserted in 
 its place. Thus, while comparatively none of the 
 old structure remained, the new one merely passed 
 for a repair. Now, as the tearing down and build- 
 ing up was done gradually, my father determined not 
 to quit the house, that he might better direct and 
 give his orders — as he possessed a good knowledge 
 of the technicalities of building. At the same time 
 he would not suffer his family to leave him. This 
 new epoch was very surprising and strange for the 
 children. To see the rooms in which they had so 
 
 163 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 often been confined and pestered with wearisome 
 tasks and studies, the passages they had played in, 
 the walls which had always been kept so carefully 
 clean, all falling before the mason's hatchet and the 
 carpenter's axe — and that from the bottom upward ; 
 to float, as it were, in the air, propped up by beams, 
 being, at the same time, constantly confined to a cer- 
 tain lesson, or definite task — all this produced a com- 
 motion in our young heads that was not easily settled. 
 But the young people felt the inconvenience less, be- 
 cause they had somewhat more space for play than 
 before, and had many opportunities of swinging on 
 beams, and playing at see-saw with the boards. 
 
 At first my father obstinately persisted in carry- 
 ing out his plan; but when at last even the roof was 
 partly removed, and the rain reached our beds, in 
 spite of the carpets that had been taken up, converted 
 into tarpaulin, and stretched over as a defence, he 
 determined, though reluctantly, that the children 
 should be intrusted for a time to some kind friends, 
 who had already offered their services, and sent to a 
 public school. 
 
 This transition was rather unpleasant; for when 
 the children who had all along been kept at home 
 in a secluded, pure, refined, yet strict manner, were 
 thrown among a rude mass of young creatures, they 
 were compelled unexpectedly to suffer everything 
 from the vulgar, bad, and even base, since they lacked 
 both weapons and skill to protect themselves. 
 
 164 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 It was properly about this period that I first be- 
 came acquainted with my native city, which I strolled 
 over with more and more freedom, in every direc- 
 tion, sometimes alone, and sometimes in the com- 
 pany of lively companions. To convey to others in 
 any degree the impression made upon me by these 
 grave and revered spots, I must here introduce a de- 
 scription of my birthplace, as in its different parts 
 it was gradually unfolded to me. I loved more than 
 anything else to promenade on the great bridge over 
 the Maine. Its length, its firmness, and its fine ap- 
 pearance, rendered it a notable structure, and it was, 
 besides, almost the only memorial left from ancient 
 times of the precautions due from the civil govern- 
 ment to its citizens. The beautiful stream above 
 and below bridge, attracted my eye, and when the 
 gilt weathercock on the bridge-cross glittered in the 
 sunshine, I always had a pleasant feeling. Gener- 
 ally I extended my walk through Sachsenhausen, and 
 for a Kreutzer was ferried comfortably across the 
 river. I was now again on this side of the stream, 
 stole along to the wine market, and admired the 
 mechanism of the cranes when goods were unloaded. 
 But it was particularly entertaining to watch the ar- 
 rival of the market-boats, from which so many and 
 such extraordinary figures were seen to disembark. 
 On entering the city, the Saalhof, which at least 
 stood on the spot where the Castle of Emperor 
 Charlemagne and his successor was reported to have 
 
 i6c 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 been, was greeted every time with profound rever- 
 ence. One liked to lose one's self in the old trading 
 town, particularly on market-days, among the crowd 
 collected about the church of St. Bartholomew. 
 From the earliest times, throngs of buyers and sell- 
 ers had gathered there, and the place being thus oc- 
 cupied, it was not easy in later days to bring about 
 a more roomy and cheerful arrangement. The 
 booths of the so-called Pfarreisen were very impor- 
 tant places for us children, and we carried many a 
 Batzen to them in order to purchase sheets of colored 
 paper stamped with gold animals. But seldom, how- 
 ever, could one make one's way through the narrow, 
 crowded, and dirty market-place. I call to mind, 
 also, that I always flew past the adjoining meat- 
 stalls, narrow and disgusting as they were, in perfect 
 horror. On the other hand, the Roman Hill 
 (Romerberg) was a most delightful place for walk- 
 ing. The way to the New-Town, along by the new 
 shops, was always cheering and pleasant; yet we re- 
 gretted that a street did not lead into the Zeil by the 
 Church of Our Lady, and that we always had to go 
 a round-about way by the Hasengasse, or the Cath- 
 erine Gate. But what chiefly attracted the child's 
 attention, were the many little towns within the town, 
 the fortresses within the fortress; viz., the walled 
 monastic inclosures, and several other precincts, re- 
 maining from earlier times, and more or less like 
 castles — as the Nuremberg Court, the Compostella, 
 
 i66 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 the Braunfels, the ancestral house of the family of 
 Stallburg, and several strongholds, in later days 
 transformed into dwellings and warehouses. No 
 architecture of an elevating kind was then to be 
 seen in Frankfort, and everything pointed to a period 
 long past and unquiet, both for town and district. 
 Gates and towers, which defined the bounds of the 
 old city — then further on again, gates, towers, walls, 
 bridges, ramparts, moats, with which the new city 
 was encompassed — all showed, but too plainly, that 
 a necessity for guarding the commonweal in disas- 
 trous times had induced these arrangements, that all 
 the squares and streets, even the newest, broadest, and 
 best laid out, owed their origin to chance and ca- 
 price and not to any regulating mind. A certain 
 liking for the antique was thus implanted in the Boy, 
 and was especially nourished and promoted by old 
 chronicles and wood-cuts, as for instance, those of 
 Grave relating to the siege of Frankfort. At the 
 same time a different taste was developed in him for 
 observing the conditions of mankind, in their mani- 
 fold variety and naturalness, without regard to their 
 importance or beauty. It was, therefore, one of our 
 favorite walks, which we endeavored to take now 
 and then in the course of a year, to follow the circuit 
 of the path inside the city walls. Gardens, courts, 
 and back buildings extend to the Zwinger; and we 
 saw many thousand people amid their little domestic 
 and secluded circumstances. From the ornamental 
 
 167 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 and show gardens of the rich, to the orchards of the 
 citizen, anxious about his necessities — from thence to 
 the factories, bleaching-grounds, and similar estab- 
 lishments, even to the burying-ground — for a little 
 world lay within the limits of the city — we passed a 
 varied, strange, spectacle, which changed at every 
 step, and with the enjoyment of which our childish 
 curiosity was never satisfied. In fact, the celebrated 
 Devil-upon-two-sticks, when he lifted the roofs of 
 Madrid at night, scarcely did more for his friend, 
 than was here done for us in the bright sunshine 
 and open air. The keys that were to be made use of 
 in this journey, to gain us a passage through many a 
 tower, stair and postern, were in the hands of the 
 authorities, whose subordinates we never failed to 
 coax into good-humor. 
 
 But a more important, and in one sense more 
 fruitful place for us, was the Council-House, named 
 from the Romans. In its lower vault-like halls we 
 liked but too well to lose ourselves. We obtained 
 an entrance, too, into the large and very simple ses- 
 sion-room of the Council. The walls as well as the 
 arched ceiling were white, though wainscoted to a 
 certain height, and the whole was without a trace of 
 painting, or any kind of carved work; only, high up 
 on the middle wall, might be read this brief inscrip- 
 tion : 
 
 "One man's word is no man's word, 
 Justice needs that both be heard." 
 i68 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 After the most ancient fashion, benches were 
 ranged around the wainscoting, and raised one step 
 above the floor for the accommodation of the mem- 
 bers of the assembly. This readily suggested to us 
 why the order of rank in our senate was distributed 
 by benches. To the left of the door, on the opposite 
 corner, sat Schdffen; in the corner itself the Schult- 
 heiss, who alone had a small table before him; those 
 of the second bench sat in the space to his left as far 
 as the wall to where the windows were ; while along 
 the windows ran the third bench, occupied by the 
 craftsmen. In the midst of the hall stood a table 
 for the registrar (Protoculfiihrer). 
 
 Once within the Romero we even mingled with 
 the crowd at the audiences of the burgomasters. 'But 
 whatever related to the election and coronation of the 
 Emperors possessed a greater charm. We managed 
 to gain the favor of the keepers, so as to be allowed 
 to mount the new gay imperial staircase, which was 
 painted in fresco, and on other occasions closed with 
 a grating. The election-chamber, with its purple 
 hangings and admirably-fringed gold borders, filled 
 us with awe. The representations of animals on 
 which little children or genii, clothed in the imperial 
 ornaments and laden with the insignia of the Em- 
 pire, made a curious figure, were observed by us with 
 great attention; and we even hoped that we might 
 live to see, some time or other, a coronation with our 
 own eyes. They had great difficulty to get us out of 
 
 169 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 the great imperial hall, when we had been once for- 
 tunate enough to steal in ; and we reckoned him our 
 truest friend who, while we looked at the half- 
 lengths of all the emperors painted around at a cer- 
 tain height, would tell us something of their deeds. 
 
 We listened to many a legend of Charlemagne. 
 But that which was historically interesting for us be- 
 gan with Rudolph of Hapsburg, who, by his cour- 
 age, put an end to such violent commotions. Charles 
 the Fourth also attracted our notice. We had al- 
 ready heard of the Golden Bull, and of the statutes 
 for the administration of criminal justice. We knew, 
 too, that he had not made the Frankforters suffer for 
 their adhesion to his noble rival. Emperor Gunther 
 of Schwarzburg. We heard Miximilian praised 
 both as a friend to mankind, and to the townsmen, 
 his subjects, and were also told that it had been 
 prophesied of him he would be the last Emperor of 
 a German house; which unhappily came to pass, as 
 after his death the choice wavered only between the 
 King of Spain, (afterward) Charles V., and the 
 King of France, Francis I. With some anxiety it 
 was added, that a similar prophecy, or rather inti- 
 mation, was once more in circulation; for it was ob- 
 vious that there was room left for the portrait of only 
 one more emperor — a circumstance which, though 
 seemingly accidental, filled the patriotic with con- 
 cern. 
 
 Having once entered upon this circuit, we did 
 
 170 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 not fail to repair to the cathedral, and there visit the 
 grave of that brave Gunther, so much prized both 
 by friend and foe. The famous stone which for- 
 merly covered it is set up in the choir. The door 
 close by, leading into the conclave, remained long 
 shut against us, until we at last managed, through the 
 higher authorities, to gain access to this celebrated 
 place. But we should have done better had we con- 
 tinued as before to picture it merely in our imagina- 
 tion ; for we found this room, which is so remarkable 
 in German history, where the most powerful princes 
 were accustomed to meet for an act so momentous, 
 in no respect worthily adorned, and even disfigured 
 with beams, poles, scaffolding, and similar lumber, 
 which people had wanted to put out of the way. 
 The imagination, for that very reason, was the more 
 excited and the heart elevated, when we soon after 
 received permission to be present in the Council- 
 House, at the exhibition of the Golden Bull to some 
 distinguished strangers. 
 
 The Boy then heard, with much curiosity, what 
 his own family, as well as other older relations and 
 acquaintances, liked to tell and repeat, viz., the his- 
 tories of the two last coronations, which had fol- 
 lowed close upon each other; for there was no Frank- 
 forter of a certain age who would not have regarded 
 these two events, and their attendant circumstances, 
 as the crowning glory of his whole life. Splendid 
 as had been the coronation of Charles Seventh, dur- 
 
 171 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ing which particularly the French Ambassadors had 
 given magnificent feasts at great cost and with dis- 
 tinguished taste, the results were all the more afflict- 
 ing to the good emperor, who could not preserve his 
 capital Munich, and was compelled in some degree 
 to implore the hospitality of his imperial towns. 
 
 If the coronation of Francis First was not so 
 strikingly splendid as the former one, it was digni- 
 fied by the presence of the Empress Maria Theresa, 
 whose beauty appears to have created as much im- 
 pression on the men, as the earnest and noble form 
 and the blue eyes of Charles Seventh on the women. 
 At any rate, the sexes rivalled each other in giving 
 to the attentive Boy a highly favorable opinion of 
 both these personages. All these descriptions and 
 narratives were given in a serene and quiet state of 
 mind; for the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had, for the 
 moment, put an end to all feuds; and they spoke at 
 their ease of past contests, as well as of their former 
 festivities — the battle of Dettingen, for instance, and 
 other remarkable events of by-gone years; and all 
 that was important or dangerous seemed, as gener- 
 ally happens when a peace has been concluded, to 
 have occurred only to afford entertainment to pros- 
 perous and unconcerned people. 
 
 Half a year had scarcely passed away in this 
 narrow patriotism before the fairs began, which al- 
 ways produced an incredible ferment in the heads of 
 all children. The erection, in so short a time, of so 
 
 172 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 many booths, creating a new town within the old one, 
 the roll and crush, the unloading and unpacking of 
 wares, excited from the very first dawn of conscious- 
 ness an insatiable active curiosity and a boundless 
 desire for childish property, which the Boy with in- 
 creasing years endeavored to gratify, in one way or 
 another, as far as his little purse permitted. At the 
 same time he obtained a notion of what the world 
 produces, what it wants, and what the inhabitants of 
 its different parts exchange with each other. 
 
 These great epochs, which came round regularly 
 in spring and autumn, were announced by curious 
 solemnities, which seemed the more dignified be- 
 cause they vividly brought before us the old time, 
 and what had come down from it to ourselves. On 
 Escort-day, the whole population were on their legs, 
 thronging to the Fahrgasse, to the bridge, and be- 
 yond Sachsenhausen; all the windows were occu- 
 pied, though nothing unusual took place on that day; 
 the crowd seeming to be there only for the sake of 
 jostling each other, and the spectators merely to look 
 at one another; for the real occasion of their coming 
 did not begin till nightfall, and was then rather taken 
 upon trust than seen with the eyes. 
 
 The affair was thus: in those old, unquiet times, 
 when every one did wrong according to his pleasure, 
 or helped the right as his liking led him, traders 
 on their way to the fairs were so wilfully beset and 
 harassed by waylayers, both of noble and ignoble 
 
 173 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 birth, that princes and other persons of power caused 
 their people to be accompanied to Frankfort by an 
 armed escort. Now, the burghers of the imperial 
 city would yield no rights pertaining to themselves 
 or their district; they went out to meet the advanc- 
 ing party; and thus contests often arose as to how far 
 the escort should advance, or whether it had a right 
 to enter the city at all. But, as this took place, not 
 only in regard to matters of trade and fairs, but also 
 *when high personages came, in times of peace or 
 war, and especially on the days of election; and as 
 the affair often came to blows when a train which 
 was not to be endured in the city strove to make its 
 way in along with its lord, many negotiations had 
 from time to time been resorted to, and many tem- 
 porary arrangements concluded, though always with 
 reservations of rights on both sides. The hope had 
 not been relinquished of composing once for all a 
 quarrel that had already lasted for centuries, inas- 
 much as the whole institution, on account of which 
 it had been so long and often so hotly contested, might 
 be looked upon as nearly useless, or at least as super- 
 fluous. 
 
 Meanwhile, on those days, the city cavalry in sev- 
 eral divisions, each having a commander in front, 
 rode forth from different gates and found on a certain 
 spot some troopers or hussars of the persons entitled 
 to an escort, who with their leaders were well re- 
 ceived and entertained. They stayed till toward 
 
 174 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 evening, and then rode back to the city, scarcely visi- 
 ble to the expectant crowd, many a city knight not 
 being in a condition to manage his horse, or keep 
 himself in the saddle. The most important bands re- 
 turned by the bridge-gate, where the pressure was 
 consequently the strongest. Last of all, just as night 
 fell, the Nuremberg post-coach arrived, escorted in 
 the same way, and always containing, as the people 
 fancied, in pursuance of custom, an old woman. Its 
 arrival, therefore, was a signal for all the urchins to 
 break out into an ear-splitting shout, though it was 
 utterly impossible to distinguish any one of the pas- 
 sengers within. The throng that pressed after the 
 coach through the bridge-gate was quite incredible, 
 and perfectly bewildering to the senses. The houses 
 nearest the bridge were those, therefore, most in de- 
 mand among spectators. 
 
 Another more singular ceremony, by which the 
 people were excited in broad daylight, was the 
 Piper's-court (Pfeifergericht) . It commemorated 
 those early time when important larger trading- 
 towns endeavored, if not to abolish tolls altogether, 
 at least to bring about a reduction of them, as they 
 increased in proportion with trade and industry. 
 They were allowed this privilege by the Emperor 
 who needed their aid, when it was in his power to 
 grant it, but commonly only for one year; so that it 
 had to be annually renewed. This was effected by 
 means of symbolical gifts, which were presented be- 
 
 1/5 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 fore the opening of St. Bartholomew's Fair to the 
 imperial magistrate [Schultheiss)^ who might have 
 sometimes been the chief toll-gatherer; and, for the 
 sake of a more imposing show, the gifts were offered 
 when he was sitting in full court with the Schoffen. 
 But when the chief magistrate afterward came to be 
 no longer appointed by the Emperor, and was elected 
 by the city itself, he still retained these privileges; 
 and thus both the immunities of the cities from toll, 
 and the ceremonies by which the representatives from 
 Worms, Nuremberg, and Old Bamberg once ac- 
 knowledged the ancient favor, had come down to our 
 times. The day before Ladyday, an open court was 
 proclaimed. In an inclosed space in the great Im- 
 perial Hall, the Schofifen took their elevated seats; a 
 step higher, sat the Schultheiss in the midst of them; 
 while below on the right hand, were the procurators 
 of both parties invested with plenipotentiary powers. 
 The Actuarius begins to read aloud the weighty 
 judgments reserved for this day; the lawyers demand 
 copies, appeal, or do whatever else seems necessary. 
 All at once a singular sort of music announces, if we 
 may so speak, the advent of former centuries. It 
 proceeds from three pipers, one of whom plays an 
 old shaivn, another a sackbut, and the third a pom- 
 mer, or oboe. They wear blue mantles trimmed 
 with gold, having the notes made fast to their sleeves, 
 and their heads covered. Having thus left their inn 
 at ten o'clock, followed by the deputies and their at- 
 
 ■76 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 tendants, and stared at by all, natives and strangers, 
 they enter the hall. The law proceedings are stayed 
 — the pipers and their train halt before the railing — 
 the deputy steps in and stations himself in front of the 
 Schultheiss. The emblematic presents, which were 
 required to be precisely the same as in the old prece- 
 dents consisted commonly of the staple wares of the 
 city offering them. Pepper passed, as it were, for 
 everything else; and, even on this occasion, the 
 deputy brought a handsomely turned wooden goblet 
 filled with pepper. Upon it lay a pair of gloves, 
 curiously slashed, stitched, and tasseled with silk — a 
 token of a favor granted and received — such as the 
 Emperor himself made use of in certain cases. Along 
 with this was a white staff, which in former times 
 was not easily dispensable in judicial proceedings. 
 Some small pieces of silver money were added; and 
 the city of Worms brought an old felt hat, which was 
 always redeemed again, so that the same one had 
 been a witness of these ceremonies for many years. 
 
 After the deputy had made his address, handed 
 over his present, and received from the Schultheiss 
 assurance of continued favor, he quitted the inclosed 
 circle, the pipers blew, the train departed as it had 
 come, the court pursued its business, until the second 
 and at last the third deputy had been introduced. 
 For each came some time after the other; partly that 
 the pleasure of the public might thus be prolonged, 
 aad partly because they were always the same anti- 
 
 177 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 quated virtuosi whom Nuremberg, for itself and its 
 co-cities, had undertaken to maintain and produce 
 annually at the appointed place. 
 
 We children were particularly interested in this 
 festival, because we were not a little flattered to see 
 our grandfather in a place of so much honor; and be- 
 cause commonly, on the self-same day, we used to 
 visit him, quite modestly, in order that we might, 
 when my grandmother had emptied the pepper into 
 her spice box, lay hold of a cup or small rod, a pair 
 of gloves or an old Rdder Albus. These symbolical 
 ceremonies, restoring antiquity as if by magic, could 
 not be explained to us without leading us back into 
 past times and informing us of the manners, customs, 
 and feelings of those early ancestors who were so 
 strangely made present to us, by pipers and deputies 
 seemingly risen from the dead, and by tangible gifts, 
 which might be possessed by ourselves. 
 
 These venerable solemnities were followed, in 
 the fine season, by many festivals, delightful for us 
 children, which took place in the open air, outside of 
 the city. On the right shore of the Maine going 
 down, about half an hour's walk from the gate, there 
 rises a sulphur-spring, neatly inclosed and sur- 
 rounded by aged lindens. Not far from it stands the 
 Good-People's-Court, formerly a hospital erected for 
 the sake of the waters. On the commons around, the 
 herds of cattle from the neighborhood were collected 
 on a certain day of the year; and the herdsmen, to- 
 
 178 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 gether with their sweethearts, celebrated a rural fes- 
 tival, with dancing and singing, with all sorts of 
 pleasure and clownishness. On the other side of the 
 city lay a similar but larger common, likewise graced 
 with a spring and still finer lindens. Thither, at 
 Whitsuntide, the flocks of sheep were driven; and, at 
 the same time, the poor, pale orphan children were 
 allowed to come out of their walls into the open air; 
 for the thought had not yet occurred that these desti- 
 tute creatures, who must some time or other help 
 themselves through the world, ought soon to be 
 brought in contact with it; that instead of being kept 
 in dreary confinement, they should rather be accus- 
 tomed to serve and to endure; and that there was 
 every reason to strengthen them physically and mor- 
 ally from their infancy. The nurses and maids, al- 
 ways ready to take a walk, never failed to carry or 
 conduct us to such places, even in our first years; so 
 that these rural festivals belong to the earliest im- 
 pressions that I can recall. 
 
 Meanwhile, our house had been finished, and that 
 too in tolerably short time, because everything had 
 been judiciously planned and prepared, and the need- 
 ful money provided. We now found ourselves all 
 together again, and felt comfortable : for, when a 
 well-considered plan is once carried out, we forget 
 the various inconveniences of the means that were 
 necessary to its accomplishment. The building, for 
 a private residence, was roomy enough; light and 
 
 179 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 cheerful throughout, with broad staircases, agreeable 
 parlors, and a prospect of the gardens that could be 
 enjoyed easily from several of the windows. The 
 internal completion, and what pertained to mere 
 ornament and finish, was gradually accomplished, 
 and served at the same time for occupation and 
 amusement. 
 
 The first thing brought into order was my father's 
 collection of books, the best of which, in calf and 
 half-calf binding, were to ornament the Vv^alls of his 
 office and study. He possessed the beautiful Dutch 
 editions of the Latin classics, which for the sake of 
 outward uniformity he had endeavored to procure all 
 in quarto; and also many other works relating to 
 Roman antiquities, and the more elegant jurispru- 
 dence. The most eminent Italian poets were not 
 wanting, and for Tasso he showed a great predilec- 
 tion. There were also the best and most recent Trav- 
 els; and he took great delight in correcting and com- 
 pleting Keyssler and Nemeiz from them. Nor had 
 he omitted to surround himself with all needful as- 
 sistants to learning, such as dictionaries of various 
 languages, and encyclopedias of science and art, 
 which with much else adapted to profit and amuse- 
 ment, might be consulted at will. 
 
 The other half of this collection, in neat parch- 
 ment bindings, with very beautifully written titles, 
 was placed in a separate attic. The acquisition of 
 new books, as well as their binding and arrangement, 
 
 i8o 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 he pursued with great composure and love of order: 
 and he was much influenced in his opinion by the 
 critical notices that ascribed particular merit to any 
 work. His collection of juridical treatises was an- 
 nually increased by some volumes. 
 
 Next, the pictures, which in the old house had 
 hung about promiscuously, were now collected and 
 symmetrically hung on the walls of a cheerful room 
 near the study, all in black frames, set off with gilt 
 mouldings. My father had a principle, which he of- 
 ten and strongly expressed, that one ought to employ 
 the living Masters, and to spend less upon the de- 
 parted, in the estimation of whom prejudice greatly 
 concurred. He had the notion that it was precisely 
 the same with pictures a§ with Rhenish wines, which, 
 though age may impart to them a higher value, can 
 be produced in any coming year of just as excellent 
 quality as in years past. After the lapse of some 
 time, the new wine also becomes old, quite as valu- 
 able and perhaps more delicious. This opinion he 
 chiefly confirmed by the observation that many old 
 pictures seemed to derive their chief value for lovers 
 of art from the fact that they had become darker and 
 browner; and that the harmony of tone in such pic- 
 tures was often vaunted. My father, on the other 
 hand, protested that he had no fear that the new pic- 
 tures would not also turn black in time, though 
 whether they were likely to gain anything by this 
 he was not so positive. 
 
 i8i 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 In pursuance of these principles, he employed for 
 many years the whole of the Frankfort artists : — the 
 painter HlRT^ who excelled in animating oak and 
 beech woods, and other so-called rural scenes, with 
 cattle; Trautmann, who had adopted Rembrandt 
 as his model, and had attained great perfection in in- 
 closed lights and reflections, as well as in effective 
 conflagrations, so that he was once ordered to paint a 
 companion-piece to a Rembrandt; SCHUTZ, who dili- 
 gently elaborated landscapes of the Rhine country, in 
 the manner of SachTLEBENS; and JUNKER, who exe- 
 cuted with great purity flower and fruit pieces, still 
 life, and figures quietly employed, after the models 
 of the Dutch. But now, by the new arrangement, by 
 more convenient room, and still more by the ac- 
 quaintance of a skilful artist, our love of art was 
 again quickened and animated. This artist was See- 
 KATZ^ a pupil of Brinkmann, court-painter at Darm- 
 stadt, whose talent and character will be more mi- 
 nutely unfolded in the sequel. 
 
 In this way, the remaining rooms were finished, 
 according to their several purposes. Cleanliness and 
 order prevailed throughout. Above all, the large 
 panes of plate-glass contributed toward a perfect 
 lightness, which had been wanting in the old house 
 for many causes, but chiefly on account of the panes, 
 which were for the most part round. My father was 
 cheerful on account of the success of his undertaking, 
 and if his good humor had not been often interrupted 
 
 182 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 because the diligence and exactness of the mechanics 
 did not come up to his wishes, a happier life than 
 ours could not have been conceived, since much good 
 partly arose in the family itself, and partly flowed 
 from without. 
 
 But an extraordinary event deeply disturbed the 
 Boy's peace of mind, for the first time. On the ist of 
 November, 1755, the earthquake at Lisbon took 
 place, and spread a prodigious alarm over the world, 
 long accustomed to peace and quiet. A great and 
 magnificent capital, which was, at the same time, a 
 trading and mercantile city, is smitten, without warn- 
 ing, by a most fearful calamity. The earth trembles 
 and totters, the sea roars up, ships dash together, 
 houses fall in, and over them churches and towers, 
 the royal palace is in part swallowed by the waters, 
 the bursting land seems to vomit flames, since smoke 
 and fire are seen everywhere amid the ruins. Sixty 
 thousand persons, a moment before in ease and com- 
 fort, fall together, and he is to be deemed most for- 
 tunate who is no longer capable of a thought or feel- 
 ing about the disaster. The flames rage on, and with 
 them rage a troop of desperadoes, before concealed, 
 or set at large by the event. The wretched survivors 
 are exposed to pillage, massacre, and every outrage: 
 and thus, on all sides, Nature asserts her boundless 
 capriciousness. 
 
 Intimations of this event had spread over wide 
 regions more quickly than the authentic reports: 
 
 183 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 slight shocks had been felt in many places : in many 
 springs, particularly those of a mineral nature, an 
 unusual receding of the waters had been remarked; 
 and so much the greater was the effect of the accounts 
 themselves, which were rapidly circulated, at first in 
 general terms, but finally with dreadful particulars. 
 Hereupon, the religious were neither wanting in re- 
 flections, nor the philosophic in grounds for consola- 
 tion, nor the clergy in warnings. So complicated an 
 event arrested the attention of the world for a long 
 time; and, as additional and more detailed accounts 
 of the extensive effects of this explosion came from 
 every quarter, the minds already aroused by the mis- 
 fortunes of strangers, began to be more and more 
 anxious about themselves and their friends. Perhaps 
 the demon of terror had never so speedily and power- 
 fully diffused his terrors over the earth. 
 
 The Boy, who was compelled to put up with fre- 
 quent repetitions of the whole matter, was not a little 
 staggered. God, the Creator and Preserver of 
 Heaven and Earth, whom the explanation of the first 
 article of the Creed declared so wise and benignant, 
 having given both the just and the unjust a prey to 
 the same destruction, had not manifested Himself, 
 by any means, in a fatherly character. In vain the 
 young mind strove to resist these impressions. It was 
 the more impossible, as the wise and scripture- 
 learned could not themselves agree as to the light in 
 which such a phenomenon should be regarded. 
 
 184 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 The next summer gave a closer opportunity of 
 knowing directly that angry God, of whom the Old 
 Testament records so much. A sudden hail-storm, 
 accompanied by thunder and lightning, violently 
 broke the new panes at the back of our house, which 
 looked toward the west, damaged the new furniture, 
 destroyed some valuable books and other things of 
 worth, and was the more terrible to the children, 
 as the whole household, quite beside themselves, 
 dragged them into a dark passage, where, on their 
 knees, with frightful groans and cries, they thought 
 to conciliate the wrathful Deity. Meanwhile, my 
 father, who was alone self-possessed, forced open and 
 unhinged the window-frames, by which we saved 
 much glass, but made a broader inlet for the rain that 
 followed the hail, so that after we were finally 
 quieted, we found ourselves in the rooms and on the 
 stairs completely surrounded by floods and streams 
 of water. 
 
 These events, startling as they were on the whole, 
 did not greatly interrupt the course of instruction 
 which my father himself had undertaken to give us 
 children. He had passed his youth in the Cobourg 
 Gymnasium, which stood as one of the first among 
 German educational institutions. He had there laid 
 a good foundation in languages, and other matters 
 reckoned part of a learned education, had subse- 
 quently applied himself to jurisprudence at Leipzig, 
 and had at last taken his degree at Giessen. His dis- 
 
 185 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 sertation, '^Electa de aditione Hereditatis/' which 
 had been earnestly and carefully written, is yet cited 
 by jurists with approval. 
 
 It is a pious wish of all fathers to see what theyj 
 have themselves failed to attain, realized in their 
 sons, as if in this way they could live their lives over 
 again, and, at last, make a proper use of their early 
 experience. Conscious of his acquirements, with the 
 certainty of faithful perseverance, and distrusting the 
 teachers of the day, my father undertook to instruct 
 his own children, allowing them to take particular 
 lesson from particular masters only so far as seemed 
 absolutely necessary. A pedagogical dilettantism 
 was already beginning to show itself everywhere. 
 The pedantry and heaviness of the masters appointed 
 in the public schools had probably given rise to this 
 evil. Something better was sought for, but it was 
 forgotten how defective all instruction must be, 
 which is not given by persons who are teachers by 
 profession. 
 
 My father had prospered in his own career toler- 
 ably according to his wishes: I was to follow the 
 same course, only more easily, and much further. He 
 prized my natural endowments the more, because he 
 was himself wanting in them ; for he had acquired 
 everything only by means of unspeakable diligence, 
 pertinacity, and repetition. He often assured me, 
 early and late, both in jest and earnest, that with my 
 talents he would have deported himself very differ- 
 
 i86 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 ently, and would not have turned them to such small 
 account. 
 
 By means of a ready apprehension, practice, and 
 a good memory, I very soon outgrew the instructions 
 which my father and the other teachers were able to 
 give, without being thoroughly grounded in any- 
 thing. Grammar displeased me, because I regarded 
 it as a mere arbitrary law; the rules seemed ridicu- 
 lous, inasmuch as they were invalidated by so many 
 exceptions, which had all to be learned by them- 
 selves. And if the first Latin work had not been in 
 rhyme, I should have got on but badly in that; but as 
 it was, I hummed and sang it to myself readily 
 enough. In the same way we had a Geography in 
 memory-verses, in which the most wretched doggerel 
 best served to fix the recollection of that which was 
 to be retained ; e.g. — 
 
 Upper-Yssel has many a fen, 
 Which makes it hateful to all men. 
 
 The forms and inflections of language I caught 
 with ease; and I also quickly unravelled what lay in 
 the conception of a thing. In rhetoric, composition, 
 and such matters, no one excelled me, although I was 
 often put back for faults of grammar. Yet these 
 were the attempts that gave my father particular 
 pleasure, and for which he rewarded me with many 
 presents of money, considerable for such a lad. 
 
 My father taught my sister Italian in the same 
 room in which I had to commit Cellarius to mem- 
 
 187 
 
 Vol. 15—7 
 
Scliool Days and College Life 
 
 ory. As I was soon ready with my task, and was yet 
 obliged to sit quiet, I listened with my book before 
 me, and very readily caught the Italian, which struck 
 me as an agreeable softening of Latin. 
 
 Other precocities, with respect to memory and 
 the power to combine, I possessed in common with 
 those children who thus acquire an early reputation. 
 For that reason my father could scarcely wait for me 
 to go to college. He very soon declared that I must 
 study jurisprudence in Leipzig, for which he re- 
 tained a strong predilection, and I was afterward to 
 visit some other university and take my degree. As 
 for this second one he was indifferent which I might 
 choose, except that he had for some reason or other 
 a disinclination to Gottingen, to my disappointment, 
 since it was precisely there that I had placed such 
 confidence and high hopes. 
 
 He told me further, that I was to go to Wetzlar 
 and Ratisbon as well as to Vienna, and thence toward 
 Italy, although he repeatedly mentioned that Paris 
 should first be seen, because after coming out of Italy 
 nothing else could be pleasing. 
 
 These tales of my future youthful travels, often as 
 they were repeated, I listened to eagerly, the more 
 since they always led to accounts of Italy, and at last 
 to a description of Naples. His otherwise serious and 
 dry manner seemed on these occasions to relax and 
 quicken, and thus a passionate wish awoke in us chil- 
 dren to participate in the paradise he described. 
 
 i88 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 Private lessons, which now gradually multiplied, 
 were shared with the children of the neighbors. This 
 learning in common did not advance me; the teachers 
 followed their routine; and the rudeness, sometimes 
 the ill-nature, of my companions, interrupted the 
 brief hours of study with tumult, vexation, and dis- 
 turbance. Chrestomathies, by which learning is 
 made pleasant and varied, had not yet reached us. 
 Cornelius Nepos, so dry to young people, the New 
 Testament which was much too easy, and which by 
 preaching and religious instructions had been ren- 
 dered even common-place, Cellarius and Pasor could 
 impart no kind of interest; on the other hand, a cer- 
 tain rage for rhyme and versification, a consequence 
 of reading the prevalent German poets, took com- 
 plete possession of us. Me it had seized much 
 earlier, as I had found it agreeable to pass from the 
 rhetorical to the poetical treatment of subjects. 
 
 We boys held a Sunday assembly where each of 
 us was to produce original verses. And here I was 
 struck by something strange, which long caused me 
 uneasiness. My poems, whatever they might be, al- 
 ways seemed to me the best. But I soon remarked, 
 that my competitors who brought forth very lame 
 affairs, were in the same condition, and thought no 
 less of themselves. Nay, what appeared yet more 
 suspicious, a good lad (though in such matters alto- 
 gether unskilful), whom I liked in other respects, 
 but who had his rhymes made by his tutor, not only 
 
 189 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 regarded these as the best, but was thoroughly per- 
 suaded they were his own, as he always maintained 
 in our confidential intercourse. Now, as this illu- 
 sion and error was obvious to me, the question one 
 day forced itself upon me, whether I myself might 
 not be in the same state, whether those poems were 
 not really better than mine, and whether I might not 
 justly appear to those boys as mad as they to me? 
 This disturbed me much and long; for it was alto- 
 gether impossible for me to find any external cri- 
 terion of the truth; I even ceased from producing, 
 until at length I was quieted by my own light tem- 
 perament, and the feeling of my own powers, and 
 lastly by a trial of skill — started on the spur of the 
 moment by our teachers and parents, who had noted 
 our sport — in which I came off well and won gen- 
 eral praise. 
 
 All that has been hitherto recorded indicates that 
 happy and easy condition in which nations exist dur- 
 ing a long peace. But nowhere probably is such a 
 beautiful time enjoyed in greater comfort than in 
 cities living under their own laws, and large enough 
 to include a considerable number of citizens, and so 
 situated as to enrich them by trade and commerce. 
 Strangers find it to their advantage to come and go, 
 and are under a necessity of bringing profit in order 
 to acquire profit. Even if such cities rule but a small 
 territory, they are the better qualified to advance 
 their internal prosperity, as their external re- 
 
 190 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 lations expose them to no costly undertakings or 
 alliances. 
 
 Thus,' the Frankforters passed a series of pros- 
 perous years during my childhood; but scarcely, on 
 the 28th of August, 1756, had I completed my 
 seventh year, than that world-renowned war broke 
 out, which was also to exert great influence upon the 
 next seven years of my life. Frederick the Second, 
 King of Prussia, had fallen upon Saxony, with sixty 
 thousand men; and instead of announcing his in- 
 vasion by a declaration of war, he followed it up with 
 a manifesto, composed by himself, as it was said, 
 which explained the causes that had moved and justi- 
 fied him in so monstrous a step. The world, which 
 saw itself appealed to not merely as spectator but as 
 judge, immediately split into two parties, and our 
 family was an image of the great whole. 
 
 My grandfather, who, as Schoff of Frankfort, 
 had carried the coronation canopy over Francis the 
 First, and had received from the Empress a heavy 
 gold chain with her likeness, took the Austrian side 
 along with some of his sons-in-law and daughters. 
 My father having been nominated to the imperial 
 council by Charles the Seventh, and sympathizing 
 sincerely in the fate of that unhappy monarch, leaned 
 toward Prussia, with the other and smaller half of 
 the family. Our meetings, which had been held on 
 Sundays for many years uninterruptedly, were very 
 soon disturbed. The misunderstandings so common 
 
 191 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 among relatives by marriage, now first found a form 
 in which they could be expressed. Contention, dis- 
 cord, silence, and separation ensued. My grand- 
 father, otherwise a serene, quiet, and easy man, be- 
 came impatient. The women vainly endeavored to 
 smother the flames; and after some unpleasant scenes, 
 my father was the first to quit the society. At home 
 now we rejoiced undisturbed in the Prussian vic- 
 tories, which were commonly announced with great 
 glee by our vivacious aunt. Every other interest was 
 forced to give way to this, and we passed the rest of 
 the year in perpetual agitation. The occupation of 
 Dresden, the moderation of the king at the outset, his 
 slow but secure advances, the victory at Lowositz, the 
 capture of the Saxons, were so many triumphs for our 
 party. Everything that could be alleged for the ad- 
 vantage of our opponents was denied or depreciated; 
 and as the members of the family on the other side 
 did the same, they could not meet in the streets with- 
 out disputes arising, as in Romeo and Juliet. 
 
 Thus I also was then a Prussian in my views, or, 
 to speak more correctly, a Fritzian; since what cared 
 we for Prussia! It was the personal character of the 
 great king that worked upon all hearts. I rejoiced 
 with my father in our conquests, readily copied the 
 songs of triumph, and almost more willingly the lam- 
 poons directed against the other party, poor as the 
 rhymes might be. 
 
 As the eldest grandson and godchild, I had dined 
 
 192 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 every Sunday since my infancy with my grandfather 
 and grandmother, and the hours so spent had been 
 the most delightful of the whole week. But now I 
 relished no morsel that I tasted, because I was com- 
 pelled to hear the most horrible slanders of my hero. 
 Here blew another wind, here sounded another tone 
 than at home. My liking and even my respect for 
 my grandfather and grandmother fell off. I could 
 mention nothing of this to my parents, but avoided 
 the matter, both on account of my own feelings, and 
 because I had been warned by my mother. In this 
 way I was thrown back upon myself; and as in my 
 sixth year, after the earthquake at Lisbon, the good- 
 ness of God had become to me in some measure suspi- 
 cious, so I began now, on account of Frederick the 
 Second, to doubt the justice of the public. My heart 
 was naturally inclined to reverence, and it required 
 a great shock to stagger my faith in anything that 
 was venerable. 
 
 But alas! they had commended good man- 
 ners and a becoming deportment to us, not for 
 their own sake, but for the sake of the peo- 
 ple. What will people say? was always the 
 cry, and I thought that the people must be right 
 good people, and would know how to judge 
 of anything and everything. But my experience 
 went just to the contrary. The greatest and most 
 signal services were defamed and attacked; the no- 
 blest deeds, if not denied, were at least misrepre- 
 
 193 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 sented and diminished; and this base injustice was 
 done to the only man who was manifestly elevated 
 above all his contemporaries, and who daily proved 
 what he was able to do — and that, not by the popu- 
 lace, but by distinguished men, as I took my grand- 
 father and uncles to be. That parties existed, and 
 that he himself belonged to a party, had never en- 
 tered into the conceptions of the Boy. He, therefore, 
 believed himself all the more right, and dared hold 
 his own opinion for the better one, since he and those 
 of like mind appreciated the beauty and other good 
 qualities of Maria Theresa, and even did not grudge 
 the Emperor Francis his love of jewelry and money. 
 That Count Daun was often called an old dozer, they 
 thought justifiable. 
 
 But now I consider the matter more closely, 1 
 trace here the germ of that disregard and even dis- 
 dain of the public, which clung to me for a whole 
 period of my life, and only in later days was brought 
 within bounds by insight and cultivation. Suffice it to 
 say, that the perception of the injustice of parties had 
 even then a very unpleasant, nay, an injurious effect 
 upon the Boy, as it accustomed him to separate him- 
 self from beloved and highly-valued persons. The 
 quick succession of battles and events left the parties 
 neither quiet nor rest. We ever found a malicious de- 
 light in reviving and re-sharpening those imaginary 
 evils and capricious disputes; and thus we continued 
 to tease each other, until the occupation of Frank- 
 
 194 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 fort by the French some years afterward, brought 
 real inconvenience into our homes. 
 
 Although to most of us the important events oc- 
 curring in distant parts served only for topics of ar- 
 dent controversy, there were others who perceived 
 the seriousness of the times, and feared that the sym- 
 pathy of France might open a scene of war in our 
 own vicinity. They kept us children at home more 
 than before, and strove in many ways to occupy and 
 amuse us. With this view, the puppet-show be- 
 queathed by our grandmother was again brought 
 forth, and arranged in such a way that the spectators 
 sat in my gable room, while the persons managing 
 and performing, as well as the theatre itself as far as 
 the proscenium, found a place in the room adjoining. 
 We were allowed, as a special favor, to invite first 
 one and then another of the neighbors' children as 
 spectators, and thus at the outset I gained many 
 friends; but the restlessness inherent in children, did 
 not suffer them to remain long a patient audience. 
 They interrupted the play, and we were compelled to 
 seek a younger public, which could at any rate be 
 kept in order by the nurses and maids. The original 
 drama to which the puppets had been specially 
 adapted, we had learned by heart, and in the begin- 
 ning this was exclusively performed. Soon growing 
 weary of it, however, we changed the dresses and 
 decorations, and attempted various other pieces, 
 which were indeed on too grand a scale for so narrow 
 
 195 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 a stage. Although this presumption spoiled and 
 finally quite destroyed what we performed, such 
 childish pleasures and employments nevertheless ex- 
 ercised and advanced in many ways my power of in- 
 vention and representation, my fancy and a certain 
 technical skill, to a degree which in any other way 
 could not perhaps have been secured in so short a 
 time, in so confined a space, and at so little expense. 
 
 I had early learned to use compasses and ruler, 
 because all the instructions they gave me in geometry 
 were forthwith put into practice, and I occupied my- 
 self greatly with pasteboard-work. I did not stop at 
 geometrical figures, little boxes, and such things, but 
 invented pretty pleasure-houses adorned with pilas- 
 ters, steps, and flat roofs. However, but little of this 
 was completed. 
 
 Far more persevering was I, on the other hand, 
 in arranging, with the help of our domestic (a tailor 
 by trade) , an armory for the service of our plays and 
 tragedies, which we ourselves performed with de- 
 light when we had outgrown the puppets. My play- 
 fellows, too, prepared for themselves such armories, 
 which they regarded as quite as fine and good as 
 mine; but I had made provision not for the wants 
 of one person only, and could furnish several of the 
 little band with every requisite, and thus made my- 
 self more and more indispensable to our little circle. 
 That such games tended to factions, quarrels, and 
 blows, and commonly came to a sad end in tumult 
 
 196 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 and vexation, may easily be supposed. In such cases 
 certain of my companions generally took part with 
 me, while others sided against me; though many 
 changes of party occurred. One single boy, whom I 
 will call Pylades, urged by the others, once only left 
 my party, but could scarcely for a moment maintain 
 his hostile position. We were reconciled amid many 
 tears, and for a long time afterward kept faithfully 
 together. 
 
 To him, as well as other well-wishers, I could 
 render myself very agreeable by telling tales, which 
 they most delighted to hear when I was the hero of 
 my own story. It greatly rejoiced them to know that 
 such wonderful things could befall one of their own 
 playfellows; nor was it any harm that they did not 
 understand how I could find time and space for such 
 adventures, as they must have been pretty well aware 
 of all my comings and goings, and how I was occu- 
 pied the entire day. Not the less necessary was it 
 for me to select the localities of these occurrences, if 
 not in another world, at least in another spot; and yet 
 all was told as having taken place only to-day or 
 yesterday. They rather, therefore, deceived them- 
 selves than were imposed upon by me. If I had not 
 gradually learned, in accordance with the instincts of 
 my nature, to work up these visions and conceits into 
 artistic forms, such vain-glorious beginnings could 
 not have gone on without producing evil conse- 
 quences for myself in the end. 
 
 197 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Considering this impulse more closely, we may 
 see in it that presumption with which the poet au- 
 thoritatively utters the greatest improbabilities, and 
 requires every one to recognize as real whatever may 
 in any way seem to him, the inventor, as true. 
 
 But what is here told only in general terms, and 
 by way of reflection, will perhaps become more ap- 
 parent and interesting by means of an example. I 
 subjoin, therefore, one of these tales, which, as I often 
 had to repeat it to my comrades, still hovers entire in 
 my imagination and memory. 
 
 A boy's legend 
 
 On the night before Whit Sunday, not long 
 since, I dreamed that I stood before a mirror, en- 
 gaged with the new summer clothes which my dear 
 parents had given me for the holiday. The dress 
 consisted, as you know, of shoes of polished leather, 
 with large silver buckles, fine cotton stockings, black 
 nether garments of serge, and a coat of green baracan 
 with gold buttons. The waistcoat of gold cloth was 
 cut out of my father's bridal waistcoat. My hair had 
 been frizzled and powdered, and my curls stuck out 
 from my head like little wings; but I could not finish 
 dressing myself, because I kept confusing the differ- 
 ent articles, the first always falling off as soon as I 
 was about to put on the next. In this dilemma, a 
 young and handsome man came to me, and greeted 
 me in the friendliest manner. "O! you are welcome!" 
 
 198 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 said I, "I am very glad to see you here." "Do you 
 know me, then?" replied he, smiling. "Why not?" 
 was my no less smiling answer; "you are Mercury — I 
 have often enough seen you represented in pictures." 
 "I am, indeed," replied he; "and am sent to you by 
 the gods on an important errand. Do you see these 
 three apples?" — he stretched forth his hand, and 
 showed me three apples, which it could hardly hold, 
 and which were as wonderfully beautiful as they 
 were large, the one of a red, the other of a yellow, the 
 third of a green color. One could not help thinking 
 they were precious stones made into the form of fruit. 
 I would have snatched them, but he drew back, and 
 said : "You must know, in the first place, that they are 
 not for you. You must give them to the three hand- 
 somest youths of the city, who then, each according to 
 his lot, will find wives to the utmost of their wishes. 
 Take them, and success to you!" said he, as he de- 
 parted, leaving the apples in my open hands. They 
 appeared to me to have become still larger. I held 
 them up at once against the light and found them 
 quite transparent; but soon they expanded upward, 
 and became three beautiful little ladies, about as 
 large as middle-sized dolls, whose clothes were of the 
 colors of the apples. They glided gently up my fin- 
 gers, and when I was about to catch at them, to make 
 sure of one at least, they had already soared high and 
 far, and I had to put up with the disappointment. I 
 stood there all amazed and petrified, holding up my 
 
 199 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 hands and staring at my fingers, as if there were still 
 something on them to see. Suddenly I beheld, upon 
 the very tips, a most lovely girl dancing, smaller than 
 those, but pretty and lively, and as she did not fly 
 away like the others, but remained dancing, now on 
 one finger-point, now on another, I regarded her for 
 a long while with admiration. And, as she pleased 
 me so much, I thought in the end I could catch her, 
 and made as I fancied a very adroit grasp. But at 
 the moment I felt such a blow on my head, that I fell 
 down stunned, and did not awake from my stupor 
 till it was time to dress myself and go to church. 
 
 During the service I often recalled those images 
 to mind, and also when I was eating dinner at my 
 grandfather's table. In the afternoon, I wished to 
 visit some friends, partly to show myself in my new 
 dress, with my hat under my arm and my sword 
 by my side, and partly to return their visits. I found 
 no one at home, and, as I heard that they were gone 
 to the gardens, I resolved to follow them, and pass 
 the evening pleasantly. My way led toward the in- 
 trenchments, and I came to the spot which is rightly 
 called the Bad Wall; for it is never quite safe from 
 ghosts there. I walked slowly, and thought of my 
 three goddesses, but especially of the little nymph; 
 and often held up my fingers, in hopes she might be 
 kind enough to balance herself there again. With 
 such thoughts I was proceeding, when I saw in the 
 wall on my left hand a little gate, which I did not 
 
 200 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 remember to have ever noticed before. It looked 
 low, but its pointed arch would have allowed the tall- 
 est man to enter. Arch and wall were chiselled out 
 in the handsomest way, both by mason and sculptor; 
 but it was the door itself which first properly at- 
 tracted my attention. The old brown wood, though 
 slightly ornamented, was crossed with broad bands of 
 brass, wrought both in relief and intaglio. The foli- 
 age on these, with the most natural birds sitting in it, 
 I could not sufficiently admire. But, what seemed 
 most remarkable, no keyhole could be seen, no latch, 
 no knocker; and from this I conjectured that the door 
 could be opened only from within. I was not in er- 
 ror; for when I went nearer, in order to touch the 
 ornaments, it opened inward, and there appeared a 
 man whose dress was somewhat long, wide, and sin- 
 gular. A venerable beard enveloped his chin, so that 
 I was inclined to think him a Jew. But he, as if he 
 had divined my thoughts, made the sign of the Holy 
 Cross, by which he gave me to understand that he 
 was a good Catholic Christian. "Young gentleman, 
 how came you here, and what are you doing?" — he 
 said to me, with a friendly voice and mannei. "I 
 am admiring," I replied, "the workmanship of this 
 door; for I have never seen anything like it, except 
 in some small pieces in the collections of amateurs." 
 "I am glad," he answered, "that you like such works. 
 The door is much more beautiful inside. Come in, 
 if you like." My heart, in some degree, failed me. 
 
 20I 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 The mysterious dress of the porter, the seclusion, and 
 a something, I know not what, that seemed to be in 
 the air, oppressed me. I paused, therefore, under 
 the pretext of examining the outside still longer; and 
 at the same time I cast stolen glances into the garden, 
 for a garden it was which had opened before me. 
 Just inside the door I saw a space. Old linden trees, 
 standing at regular distances from each other, en- 
 tirely covered it with their thickly interwoven 
 branches, so that the most numerous parties, during 
 the hottest of the day, might have refreshed them- 
 selves in the shade. Already I had stepped upon the 
 threshold, and the old man contrived gradually to 
 allure me on. Properly speaking, I did not resist; 
 for I had always heard that a prince or sultan in such 
 a case must never ask whether there be danger at 
 hand. I had my sword by my side, too; and could I 
 not soon have finished with the old man, in case of 
 hostile demonstrations? I therefore entered per- 
 fectly reassured; the keeper closed the door, which 
 bolted so softly that I scarcely heard it. He now 
 showed me the workmanship on the inside, which in 
 truth was still more artistic than the outside, ex- 
 plained it to me, and at the same time manifested 
 particular good-will. Being thus entirely at my ease, 
 I let myself be guided in the shaded space by the 
 wall, that formed a circle, where I found much to 
 admire. Niches tastefully adorned with shells, 
 corals, and pieces of ore, poured a profusion of water 
 
 202 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 from the mouths of Tritons into marble basins. Be- 
 tween them were aviaries and other lattice-work, in 
 which squirrels frisked about, guinea-pigs ran hither 
 and thither, with as many other pretty little creatures 
 as one could wish to see. The birds called and sang 
 to us as we advanced; the starlings particularly chat- 
 tered the silliest stuff. One always cried, Paris! 
 Paris! and the other Narcissus! Narcissus! as plainly 
 as a schoolboy can say them. The old man seemed to 
 continue looking at me earnestly while the birds 
 called out thus, but I feigned not to notice it, and had 
 in truth no time to attend to him; for I could easily 
 perceive that we went round and round, and that this 
 shaded space was in fact a great circle, which in- 
 closed another much more important. Indeed we 
 had actually reached the small door again, and it 
 seemed as though the old man would let me out. But 
 my eyes remained directed toward a golden railing, 
 which seemed to hedge round the middle of this 
 wonderful garden, and which I had found means 
 enough of observing in our walk, although the old 
 man managed to keep me always close to the wall, 
 and therefore pretty far from the centre. And now, 
 just as he was going to the door, I said to him, with 
 a bow: "You have been so extremely kind to me, that 
 I would fain venture to make one more request be- 
 fore I part from you. Might I not look more closely 
 at that golden railing, which appears to inclose in a 
 very wide circle the interior of the garden?" "Very 
 
 203 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 willingly," replied he: "but in that case you must 
 submit to some conditions." "In what do they con- 
 sist?" I asked hastily. "You must leave here your 
 hat and sword, and must not let go my hand while I 
 accompany you." "Most willingly," I replied; and 
 laid my hat and sword on the nearest stone bench. 
 Immediately he grasped my left hand with his right, 
 held it fast, and led me with some force straight for- 
 ward. When we reached the railing, my wonder 
 changed into amazement. On a high socle of marble 
 stood innumerable spears and partisans, ranged be- 
 neath each other, joined by their strangely orna- 
 mented points, and forming a complete circle. I 
 looked through the intervals, and saw just behind a 
 gently flowing piece of water, bounded on both sides 
 by marble, and displaying in its clear depths a multi- 
 tude of gold and silver fish, which moved about now 
 slowly and now swiftly, now alone and now in shoals. 
 I would also fain have looked beyond the canal, 
 to see what there was in the heart of the garden. But 
 I found, to my great sorrow, that the other side of the 
 water was bordered by a similar railing, and with so 
 much art, that to each interval on this side exactly 
 fitted a spear or partisan on the other. These and the 
 other ornaments rendered it impossible for one to 
 see through, stand as one would. Besides, the old 
 man, who still held me fast, prevented me from mov- 
 ing freely. My curiosity, meanwhile, after all that 
 I had seen, increased more and more; and I took 
 
 204 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 heart to ask the old man whether one could not pass 
 over. "Why not?" returned he, "but on new condi- 
 tions." When I asked him what these were, he gave 
 me to understand that I must put on other clothes. 
 I was satisfied to do so; he led me back toward the 
 wall, into a small neat room, on the sides of which 
 hung many kinds of garments, all of which seemed 
 to approach the oriental costume. I soon changed 
 my dress. He confined my powdered hair under a 
 many colored net, after having to my horror violently 
 dusted it out. Now standing before a great mirror, 
 I found myself quite handsome in my disguise, and 
 pleased myself better than in my formal Sunday 
 clothes. I made gestures and leaped as I had seen 
 the dancers do at the Fair-theatre. In the midst of 
 this I looked in the glass, and saw by chance the im- 
 age of a niche which was behind me. On its white 
 ground hung three green cords, each of them twisted 
 up in a way which from the distance I could not 
 clearly discern. I therefore turned round rather 
 hastily, and asked the old man about the niche as 
 well as the cords. He very courteously took a cord 
 down, and showed it to me. It was a band of green 
 silk of moderate thickness; the ends of which joined 
 by green leather with two holes in it, gave it the ap- 
 pearance of an instrument for no very desirable pur- 
 pose. The thing struck me as suspicious, and I asked 
 the old man the meaning. He answered me very 
 quietly and kindly: "This is for those who abuse the 
 
 205 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 confidence which is here readily shown them." He 
 hung the cord again in its place, and immediately de- 
 sired me to follow him; for this time he did not hold 
 me, and so I walked freely beside him. 
 
 My chief curiosity now was to discover where the 
 gate and bridge, for passing through the railing and 
 over the canal, might be; since as yet I had not been 
 able to find anything of the kind. I therefore 
 watched the golden fence very narrowly as we has- 
 tened toward it. But in a moment my sight failed; 
 lances, spears, halberds, and partisans, began unex- 
 pectedly to rattle and quiver, and this strange move- 
 ment ended in all the points sinking toward each 
 other, just as if two ancient hosts, armed with pikes, 
 were about to charge. The confusion to the eyes, the 
 clatter to the ears, was hardly to be borne; but in- 
 finitely surprising was the sight when falling per- 
 fectly level, they covered the circle of the canal, and 
 formed the most glorious bridge that one can im- 
 agine. For now a most variegated garden parterre 
 met my sight. It was laid out in curvilinear beds, 
 which, looked at together, formed a labyrinth of or- 
 naments; all with green borders of a low woolly 
 plant, which I had never seen before; all with 
 flowers, each division of different colors, which being 
 likewise low and close to the ground, allowed the 
 plan to be easily traced. This delicious sight, which 
 I enjoyed in the full sunshine, quite riveted my eyes. 
 But I hardly knew where I was to set my foot; for 
 
 206 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 the serpentine paths were most delicately laid with 
 blue sand, which seemed to form upon the earth a 
 darker sky, or a sky seen in the water: and so I 
 walked for a while beside my conductor, with my 
 eyes fixed upon the ground, until at last I perceived 
 that, in the middle of this round of beds and flowers, 
 there was a great circle of cypresses or poplar-like 
 trees, through which one could not see, because the 
 lowest branches seemed to spring out of the ground. 
 My guide, without taking me directly the shortest 
 way, led me nevertheless immediately toward that 
 centre : and how was I astonished, when on entering 
 the circle of high trees, I saw before me the peristyle 
 of a magnificent garden-house, which seemed to have 
 similar prospects and entrances on the other sides! 
 The heavenly music which streamed from the build- 
 ing transported me still more than this model of 
 architecture. I fancied that I heard now a lute, now 
 a harp, now a guitar, and now something tinkling, 
 which did not belong to any of these instruments. 
 The door which we approached opened soon after a 
 light touch by the old man. But how was I amazed, 
 when the portress, who came out, perfectly resem- 
 bled the delicate girl who had danced upon my fin- 
 gers in the dream! She greeted me as if we were 
 already acquainted, and invited me to walk in. The 
 old man remained behind, and I went with her 
 through a short passage, arched and finely orna- 
 mented, to the middle hall, the splendid dome-like 
 
 207 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ceiling of which attracted my gaze on my entrance, 
 and filled me with astonishment. Yet my eye could 
 not linger long on this, being allured down by a more 
 charming spectacle. On a carpet, directly under 
 the middle of the cupola, sat three women, in a tri- 
 angle, clad in three different colors; one red, the 
 other yellow, the third green. The seats were gilt, 
 and the carpet was a perfect flower-bed. In their 
 arms lay the three instruments which I had been able 
 to distinguish from the outside; for being disturbed 
 by my arrival, they had stopped their playing. "Wel- 
 come!" said the middle one, who sat with her face to 
 the door, in a red dress, and with the harp, "Sit 
 down by Alerte, and listen, if you are a lover of 
 music." 
 
 Now first I remarked that there was a rather long 
 bench placed obliquely before them, on which lay a 
 mandoline. The pretty girl took it up, sat down, and 
 drew me to her side. Now also I looked at the sec- 
 ond lady on my right. She wore the yellow dress, 
 and had the guitar in her hand; and if the harp- 
 player was dignified in form, grand in features, and 
 majestic in her deportment, one might remark in the 
 guitar-player an easy grace and cheerfulness. She 
 was a slender blonde — while the other was adorned 
 by dark brown hair. The variety and accordance of 
 their music could not prevent me from remarking 
 the third beauty, in the green dress, whose lute-play- 
 ing was for me at once touching and striking. She 
 
 208 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 was the one who seemed to notice me the most, and to 
 direct her music to me; only I could not make up my 
 mind about her; for she appeared to me now tender, 
 now whimsical, now frank, now self-willed, accord- 
 ing as she changed her mien and mode of playing. 
 Sometimes she seemed to wish to move me, some- 
 times to teaze me ; but do what she would, she got lit- 
 tle out of me; for my little neighbor, by whom I sat 
 elbow to elbow, had gained me entirely to herself; 
 and while I clearly saw in those three ladies the 
 Sylphides of my dream, and recognized the colors of 
 the apples, I conceived that I had no cause to detain 
 them. The pretty little maiden I would rather have 
 captured, if I had not but too feelingly remembered 
 the blow which she had given me in my dream. 
 Hitherto she had remained quite quiet with her man- 
 doline; but when her mistresses had ceased, they 
 commanded her to perform some pleasant little 
 piece. Scarcely had she jingled off some dancing 
 tune, in a most exciting manner, than she sprang up; 
 I did the same. She played and danced; I was hur- 
 ried on to accompany her steps, and we executed a 
 kind of little ballet, with which the ladies seemed sat- 
 isfied; for as soon as we had done, they commanded 
 the little girl to refresh me with something nice till 
 supper should come in. I had indeed forgotten that 
 there was anything in the world beyond this para- 
 dise. Alerte led me back immediately into the pas- 
 sage by which I had entered. On one side of it she 
 
 209 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 had two well-arranged rooms. In that in which she 
 lived, she set before me oranges, figs, peaches, and 
 grapes; and I enjoyed with great gusto both the fruits 
 of foreign lands and those of our own not yet in sea- 
 son. Confectionery there was in profusion; she filled, 
 too, a goblet of polished crystal with foaming wine; 
 but I had no need to drink, as I had refreshed my- 
 self with the fruits. "Now we will play," said she, 
 and led me into the other room. Here all looked like 
 a Christmas fair; but such costly and exquisite things 
 were never seen in a Christmas booth. There were 
 all kinds of dolls, dolls' clothes, and dolls' furniture; 
 kitchens, parlors, and shops, and single toys in- 
 numerable. She led me round to all the glass cases, 
 in which these ingenious works were preserved. But 
 she soon closed again the first cases, and said: "That 
 is nothing for you, I know well enough. Here," she 
 said, "we could find building materials, walls and 
 towers, houses, palaces, churches, to put together a 
 great city. But this does not entertain me. We will 
 take something else, which will be pleasant alike to 
 both of us." Then she brought out some boxes, in 
 which I saw an army of little soldiers piled one upon 
 the other, of which I must needs confess that I had 
 never seen anything so beautiful. She did not leave 
 me time to examine them closely in detail, but took 
 one box under her arm, while I seized the other. — 
 "We will go," she said, "upon the golden bridge. 
 There one plays best with soldiers; the lances give 
 
 2IO 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 at once the direction in which the armies are to be 
 opposed to each other." We had now reached the 
 golden trembling floor; and below me I could hear 
 the waters gurgle, and the fishes splash, while I 
 knelt down to range my columns. All, as I now saw, 
 were cavalry. She boasted that she had the Queen of 
 the Amazons as leader of her female host. I, on the 
 contrary, found Achilles and a very stately Grecian 
 cavalry. The armies stood facing each other, and 
 nothing could have been seen more beautiful. They 
 were not flat leaden horsemen like ours, but man and 
 horse were round and solid, and most finely wrought; 
 nor could one conceive how they kept their balance, 
 for they stood of themselves, without a support for 
 their feet. 
 
 Both of us had inspected our hosts with much 
 self-complacency, when she announced the onset. 
 We had found ordnance in our chests, viz., little 
 boxes full of well-polished agate balls. With these 
 we were to fight against each other from a certain 
 distance, while, however, it was an express condition 
 that we should not throw with more force than was 
 necessary to upset the figures, as none of them were 
 to be injured. Now, the cannonade began on both 
 sides, and at first it succeeded to the satisfaction of us 
 both. But when my adversary observed that I aimed 
 better than she, and might in the end win the victory, 
 which depended on the majority of pieces remaining 
 upright, she came nearer, and her girlish way of 
 
 211 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 throwing had then the desired result. She pros- 
 trated a multitude of my best troops, and the more 
 I protested the more eagerly did she throw. This 
 at last vexed me, and I declared that I would do the 
 same. In fact, I not only went nearer, but in my 
 rage threw with much more violence, so that it was 
 not long before a pair of her little centauresses flew 
 in pieces. In her eagerness she did not instantly no- 
 tice it, but I stood petrified when the broken figures 
 joined together again of themselves; Amazon and 
 horse became again one whole, and also perfectly 
 close, set up a gallop from the golden bridge under 
 the lime-trees, and running swiftly backward and for- 
 ward, were lost in their career, I know not how, in 
 the direction of the wall. My fair opponent had 
 hardly perceived this, when she broke out into loud 
 weeping and lamentation, and exclaimed that I had 
 caused her an irreparable loss, which was far greater 
 than could be expressed. But I, by this time pro- 
 voked, was glad to annoy her, and blindly flung a 
 couple of the remaining agate balls with force into 
 the midst of her army. Unhappily I hit the queen, 
 who had hitherto, during our regular game, been 
 excepted. She flew in pieces, and her nearest offi- 
 cers were also shivered. But they swiftly set them- 
 selves up again, and started off like the others, gal- 
 loping very merrily about under the lime-trees, and 
 disappearing against the wall. My opponent scolded 
 and abused me ; but being now in full play, I stooped 
 
 212 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 to pick up some agate balls which rolled about upon 
 the golden lances. It was my fierce desire to de- 
 stroy her whole army. She, on the other hand, not 
 idle, sprang at me, and gave me a box on the ear 
 which made my head ring again. Having always 
 heard that a hearty kiss was the proper response to 
 a girl's box of the ear, I took her by the ears, and 
 kissed her repeatedly. But she gave such a pierc- 
 ing cry as frightened even me; I let her go, and it 
 was fortunate that I did so; for in a moment I knew 
 not what was happening to me. The ground be- 
 neath me began to quake and rattle; I soon remarked 
 that the railings again set themselves in motion ; but 
 I had no time to consider, nor could I get a footing 
 so as to fly. I feared every instant to be pierced, for 
 the partisans and lances, which had lifted themselves 
 up, were already slitting my clothes. It is sufficient 
 to say that, I know not how it was, hearing and sight 
 failed me, and I recovered from my swoon and terror 
 at the foot of a lime-tree, against which the pikes in 
 springing up had thrown me. As I awoke, my an- 
 ger awakened also, and violently increased when I 
 heard from the other side the gibes and laughter of 
 my opponent, who had probably reached the earth 
 somewhat more softly than I. Thereupon I sprang 
 up, and as I saw the little host, with its leader 
 Achilles, scattered around me, having been driven 
 over with me by the rising of the rails, I seized the 
 hero first and threw him against a tree. His resusci- 
 
 213 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 tation and flight now pleased me doubly, a malicious 
 pleasure combining with the prettiest sight in the 
 world; and I was on the point of sending all the 
 other Greeks after him, when suddenly hissing wa- 
 ters spurted at me on all sides, from stones and walls, 
 from ground and branches; and wherever I turned 
 dashed against me crosswise. 
 
 My light garment was in a short time wet 
 through; it was already rent, and I did not hesitate 
 to tear it entirely off my body. I cast away my slip- 
 pers, and one covering after another. Nay, at last 
 I found it very agreeable to let such a shower-bath 
 play over me in the warm day. Now, being quite 
 naked, I walked gravely along between these wel- 
 come waters, where I thought to enjoy myself for 
 some time. My anger cooled, and I wished for 
 nothing more than a reconciliation with my little 
 adversary. But, in a twinkling the water stopped, 
 and I stood drenched upon the saturated ground. 
 The presence of the old man, who appeared before 
 me unexpectedly, was by no means welcome; I could 
 have wished, if not to hide, at least to clothe myself. 
 The shame, the shivering, the effort to cover myself 
 in some degree, made me cut a most piteous figure. 
 The old man employed the moment in venting the 
 severest reproaches against me. "What hinders 
 me," he exclaimed, "from taking one of the green 
 cords, and fitting it, if not to your neck, to your 
 back?" This threat I took in very ill part. "Re- 
 
 214 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 frain," I cried, "from such words, even from such 
 thoughts, for otherwise you and your mistresses will 
 be lost." "Who then are you," he asked in de- 
 fiance, "who dare speak thus?" "A favorite of the 
 gods," I said, "on whom it depends whether those 
 ladies shall find worthy husbands and pass a happy 
 life, or be left to pine and wither in their magic cell." 
 The old man stepped some paces back. "Who has 
 revealed that to you?" he inquired, with astonish- 
 ment and concern. "Three apples," I said — "three 
 jewels." "And what reward do you require?" he 
 exclaimed. "Before all things, the little creature," 
 I replied, "who has brought me into this accursed 
 state." The old man cast himself down before me, 
 without shrinking from the wet and miry soil ; then 
 he arose without being wetted, took me kindly by the 
 hand, led me into the hall, clad me again quickly, 
 and I was soon once more decked out and frizzled 
 in my Sunday fashion. The porter did not speak 
 another word; but before he let me pass the entrance, 
 he stopped me, and showed me some objects on the 
 wall over the way, while, at the same time, he pointed 
 backward to the door. I understood him; he wished 
 to imprint the objects on my mind, that I might the 
 more certainly find the door, which had unex- 
 pectedly closed behind me. I now took good notice 
 of what was opposite to me. Above a high wall rose 
 the boughs of extremely old nut-trees, and partly cov- 
 ered the cornice at the top. The branches reached 
 
 215 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 down to a stone tablet, the ornamented border of 
 which I could perfectly recognize, though I could 
 not read the inscription. It rested on the top-stone 
 of a niche, in which a finely-wrought fountain 
 poured water from cup to cup into a great basin, that 
 formed, as it were, a little pond, and disappeared in 
 the earth. Fountain, inscription, nut-trees, all stood 
 directly one above another; I would paint it as I 
 saw it. 
 
 Now, it may well be conceived how I passed this 
 evening and many following days, and how often I 
 repeated to myself this story, which even I could 
 hardly believe. As soon as it was In any degree pos- 
 sible, I went again to the Bad Wall, at least to re- 
 fresh my remembrance of these signs, and to look at 
 the precious door. But, to my great amazement, I 
 found all changed. Nut-trees, indeed, overtopped 
 the wall, but they did not stand immediately in con- 
 tact. A tablet also was inserted in the wall, but far 
 to the right of the trees, without ornament, and with 
 a legible inscription. A niche with a fountain was 
 found far to the left, but with no resemblance what- 
 ever to that which I had seen; so that I almost be- 
 lieved that the second adventure was, like the first, 
 a dream; for of the door there is not the slightest 
 trace. The only thing that consols me is the obser- 
 vation, that these three objects seem always to change 
 their places. For in repeated visits to the spot, I 
 think I have noticed that the nut-trees have moved 
 
 216 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 somewhat nearer together, and that the tablet and 
 the fountain seem likewise to approach each other. 
 Probably, when all is brought together again, the 
 door, too, will once more be visible ; and I will do my 
 best to take up the thread of the adventure. Whether 
 I shall be able to tell you what further happens, or 
 whether it will be expressly forbidden me, I cannot 
 say. 
 
 This tale, of the truth of which my playfellows 
 vehemently strove to convince themselves, received 
 great applause. Each of them visited alone the place 
 described, without confiding it to me or the others, 
 and discovered the nut-tr^es, the tablet, and the 
 spring, though always at a distance from each other; 
 as they at last confessed to me afterward, because it 
 is not easy to conceal a secret at that early age. But 
 here the contest first arose. One asserted that the ob- 
 jects did not stir from the spot and always main- 
 tained the same distance: a second averred that they 
 did move, and that, too, away from each other: a 
 third agreed with the latter as to the first point of 
 their moving, though it seemed to him that the nut- 
 tree, tablet, and fountain rather drew near together: 
 while a fourth had something still more wonderful 
 to announce, v/hich was, that the nut-trees were in 
 the middle, but that the tablet and the fountain were 
 on sides opposite to those which I had stated. With 
 
 217 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 respect to the traces of the little door they also va- 
 ried. And thus they furnished me an early instance 
 of the contradictory views men can hold and main- 
 tain in regard to matters quite simple and easily 
 cleared up. As I obstinately refused the continua- 
 tion of my tale, a repetition of the first part was often 
 desired. I was on my guard, however, not to change 
 the circumstances much, and by the uniformity of the 
 narrative I converted the fable into truth in the 
 minds of my hearers. 
 
 Yet I was averse to falsehood and dissimulation, 
 and altogether by no means frivolous. Rather, on 
 the contrary, the inward earnestness with which I 
 had early begun to consider myself and the world, 
 was seen even in my exterior, and I was frequently 
 called to account, often in a friendly way, and often 
 in raillery, for a certain dignity which I had as- 
 sumed. For, although good and chosen friends 
 were certainly not wanting to me, we were always 
 a minority against those who found pleasure in as- 
 sailing us with wanton rudeness, and who indeed 
 often awoke us in no gentle fashion from that legend- 
 ary and self-complacent dreaming in which we — I 
 by inventing, and my companions by sympathizing — 
 were too readily absorbed. Thus we learned once 
 more, that instead of sinking into effeminacy and fan- 
 tastic delights, there was reason rather for harden- 
 ing ourselves, in order either to bear or to counter- 
 act inevitable evils. 
 
 218 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 Among the stoical exercises which I cultivated, 
 as earnestly as it was possible for a lad, was even 
 the endurance of bodily pain. Our teachers often 
 treated us very unkindly and unskilfully, with blows 
 and cuffs, against which we hardened ourselves all 
 the more as obstinacy was forbidden under the se- 
 verest penalties. A great many of the sports of 
 youth, moreover, depend on a rivalry in such endur- 
 ances; as, for instance, when they strike each other 
 alternately, with two fingers or the whole fist, till the 
 limbs are numbed, or when they bear the penalty of 
 blows, incurred in certain games, with more or less 
 firmness; when in wrestling or scuffling they do not 
 let themselves be perplexed by the pinches of a half- 
 conquered opponent; or finally, when they suppress 
 the pain inflicted for the sake of teasing, and even 
 treat with indifference the nips and ticklings with 
 which young persons are so active toward each other. 
 Thus we gain a great advantage, of which others 
 cannot speedily deprive us. 
 
 But as I made a sort of boast of this impassive- 
 ness, the importunity of the others was increased; 
 and, since rude barbarity knows no limits, it man- 
 aged to force me beyond my bounds. Let one case 
 suffice for several. It happened once that the teacher 
 did not come for the usual hour of instruction. As 
 long as we children were all together, we enter- 
 tained ourselves quite agreeably; but when my ad- 
 herents, after waiting long enough, went away, and 
 
 219 
 
 Vol. 15—8 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 I remained alone with three of my enemies, these 
 took it into their heads to torment me, to shame me, 
 and to drive me away. Having left me an instant in 
 the room, they came back with switches, which they 
 had made by quickly cutting up a broom. I noted 
 their design, and as I supposed the end of the hour 
 near, I at once resolved not to resist them till the 
 clock struck. They began, therefore, without re- 
 morse, to lash my legs and calves in the cruellest 
 fashion. I did not stir, but soon felt that I had mis- 
 calculated, and that such pain greatly lengthened 
 the minutes. My wrath grew with my endurance, 
 and at the first stroke of the hour, I grasped the one 
 who least expected it by the hair behind, hurled him 
 to the earth in an instant, pressing my knee upon his 
 back; the second, a younger and weaker one, who at- 
 tacked me from behind, I drew by the head under 
 my arm, and almost throttled him with the pressure. 
 The last, and not the weakest, still remained ; and my 
 left hand only was left for my defence. 'But I seized 
 him by the clothes, and with a dexterous twist on my 
 part, and an over precipitate one on his, I brought 
 him down and struck his face on the ground. They 
 were not wanting in bites, pinches, and kicks, but I 
 had nothing but revenge in my limbs as well as in my 
 heart. With the advantage which I had acquired, 
 I repeatedly knocked their heads together. At last 
 they raised a dreadful shout of murder, and we were 
 soon surrounded by all the inmates of the house. The 
 
 220 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 switches scattered around, and my legs, which I had 
 bared of the stockings, soon bore witness for me. 
 They put ofif the punishment, and let me leave the 
 house; but I declared that in future, on the slightest 
 offence, I would scratch out the eyes, tear off the 
 ears, of any one of them, if not throttle him. 
 
 This event, though, as usually happens in child- 
 ish affairs, it was soon forgotten, and even laughed 
 over, was yet the cause that these instructions in com- 
 mon became fewer, and at last entirely ceased. I 
 was thus again, as formerly, kept more at home, 
 where I found my sister Cornelia, who was only one 
 year younger than myself, a companion always grow- 
 ing more agreeable. 
 
 Much inconvenience as the quartering of the 
 French had occasioned us, we had become so accus- 
 tomed to it, that we could not fail to miss it, nor 
 could we children fail to feel as if the house were de- 
 serted. Moreover it was not decreed that we should 
 again attain perfect family unity. New lodgers 
 were already agreed upon, and after some sweeping 
 and scouring, planing and rubbing with bees'-wax. 
 painting and varnishing, the house was completely 
 restored again. The chancery-director Moritz, with 
 his family, very worthy friends of my parents, moved 
 in. He was not a native of Frankfort, but an able 
 jurist and man of business, and managed the legal 
 affairs of many small princes, counts, and lords. I 
 never saw him otherwise than cheerful and pleasant, 
 
 221 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 and diligent with his law papers. His wife and chil- 
 dren, gentle, quiet, and benevolent, did not indeed 
 increase the sociableness of our house, for they kept 
 to themselves; but a stillness, a peace returned, which 
 we had not enjoyed for a long time. I now again 
 occupied my attic room, in which the ghosts of the 
 many pictures sometimes hovered before me, while 
 I strove to frighten them away by labor and study. 
 
 The Counsellor of Legation Moritz, a brother of 
 the chancellor, came from this time often to our 
 house. He was even more a man of the world, had 
 a handsome figure, while his manners were easy and 
 agreeable. He also managed the affairs of different 
 persons of rank, and on occasions of meetings of cred- 
 itors and imperial commissions frequently came into 
 contact with my father. They had a high opinion 
 of each other, and commonly stood on the side of the 
 creditors, though they were generally obliged to per- 
 ceive, much to their vexation, that a majority of the 
 agents on such occasions are usually gained over to 
 the side of the debtors. The counsellor of legation 
 readily communicated his knowledge, was a friend 
 to the mathematics, and as these did not occur in his 
 present course of life, he made himself a pleasure 
 by helping me on in this branch of study. I was 
 thus enabled to finish my architectural sketches more 
 accurately than heretofore, and to profit more by the 
 instruction of a drawing-master, who now also occu- 
 pied us an hour every day. 
 
 222 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 This good old man was indeed only half an artisr. 
 We were obliged to draw and combine strokes, from 
 which eyes and noses, lips and ears, nay, at last, whole 
 faces and heads, were to arise, but of natural or artis- 
 tic forms there was no thought. We were tormented 
 a long while with this quia pro quo of the human fig- 
 ure, and when the so-called Passions of Le Brun 
 were given us to copy, it was supposed at last that we 
 had made great progress. But even these carica- 
 tures did not improve us. Then we went ofif to land- 
 scapes, foliage, and all the things which in ordinary 
 instruction are practiced without consistency or meth- 
 od. Finally we dropped into close imitation and 
 neatness of strokes, without troubling ourselves about 
 the merit or taste of the original. 
 
 In these attempts our father led the way in an 
 exemplary manner. He had never drawn, but he 
 was unwilling to remain behind now that his chil- 
 dren pursued this art, and would give, even in his 
 old age, an example how they should proceed in 
 their youth. Several heads, therefore, of Piazetta, 
 from his well-known sheets in small octavo, he 
 copied with an English lead-pencil upon the finest 
 Dutch paper. In these he not only observed the 
 greatest clearness of outline, but most accurately imi- 
 tated the hatching of the copper-plate with a light 
 hand — only too slightly, as in his desire to avoid 
 hardness he brought no keeping into his sketches. 
 Yet they were always soft and accurate. His unre- 
 
 223 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 laxing and untiring assiduity went so far, that he 
 drew the whole considerable collection number by 
 number, while we children jumped from one head 
 to another, and chose only those that pleased us. 
 
 About this time the long-debated project, long 
 under consideration, for giving us lessons in music, 
 was carried into effect; and the last impulse to it cer- 
 tainly deserves mention. It was settled that we 
 should learn the harpsichord; but there was always 
 a dispute about the choice of a master. At last I 
 went once accidentally into the room of one of my 
 companions, who was just taking his lesson on the 
 harpsichord, and found the teacher a most charming 
 man. For each finger of the right and left hand 
 he had a nickname, by which he indicated in the 
 merriest way when it was to be used. The black 
 and white keys were likewise symbolically desig- 
 nated, and even the tones appeared under figurative 
 names. Such a motley company worked most pleas- 
 antly together. Fingering and time seemed to be- 
 come perfectly easy and obvious, and while the 
 scholar was put into the best humor, everything else 
 succeeded beautifully. 
 
 Scarcely had I reached home, than I importuned 
 my parents to set about the matter in good earnest at 
 last, and give us this incomparable man for our mas- 
 ter on the harpsichord. They hesitated, and made 
 inquiries; they indeed heard nothing bad of the 
 teacher; but, at the same time, nothing particularly 
 
 224 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 good. Meanwhile I had informed my sister of all 
 the droll names; we could hardly wait for the lesson, 
 and succeeded in having the man engaged. 
 
 The reading of the notes began first, but as no 
 jokes occurred here, we comforted ourselves with the 
 hope that when we went to the harpsichord, and the 
 fingers were needed, the jocular method would com- 
 mence. But neither keys nor fingering seemed to af- 
 ford opportunity for any comparisons. Dry as the 
 notes were, with their strokes on and between the 
 five lines, the black and white keys were no less so : 
 and not a syllable was heard either of "thumbling," 
 "pointerling," or "goldfinger," while the counte- 
 nance of the man remained as imperturbable during 
 his dry teaching as it had been before during his dry 
 jests. My sister reproached me most bitterly for 
 having deceived her, and actually believed that it 
 was all an invention of mine. But I was myself con- 
 founded and learned little, though the man at once 
 went regularly enough to work; for I kept always 
 expecting that the former jokes would make their 
 appearance, and so consoled my sister from one day 
 to another. They did not reappear, however, and I 
 should never have been able to explain the riddle if 
 another accident had not solved it for me. 
 
 One of my companions came in during a lesson, 
 and at once all the pipes of the humorous jet d'eau 
 were opened; the "thumblings" and "pointerlings," 
 the "pickers" and "stealers," as he used to call the fin- 
 
 225 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 gers, the "falings" and "galings," meaning "f" and 
 "g," the "fielings" and "gielings," meaning "f" and 
 "g" sharp, became once more extant, and made the 
 most wonderful manikins. My young friend could 
 not leave off laughing, and was rejoiced that one 
 could learn in such a merry manner. He vowed that 
 he would give his parents no peace until they had 
 given him such an excellent man for a teacher. 
 
 And thus the way to two arts was early enough 
 opened to me, according to the principles of a mod- 
 ern theory of education, merely by good luck, and 
 without any conviction that I should be furthered 
 therein by a native talent. My father maintained 
 that everybody ought to learn drawing; for which 
 reason, he especially venerated the Emperor Maxi- 
 milian, by whom this had been expressly commanded. 
 He therefore held me to it more steadily than to 
 music, which, on the other hand, he especially rec- 
 ommended to my sister, and even out of the hours 
 for lessons kept her fast, during a good part of the 
 day, at her harpsichord. 
 
 But the more I was in this way made to press 
 on, the more I wished to press forward of myself, 
 and my hours of leisure were employed in all sorts 
 of curious occupations. From my earliest years I 
 felt a love for the investigation of natural things. 
 It is often regarded as an instinct of cruelty that chil- 
 dren like at last to break, tear, and devour objects 
 with which for a long time they have played, and 
 
 226 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 which they have handled in various manners. Yet 
 even in this way is manifested the curiosity, the de- 
 sire of learning how such things hang together, how 
 they look within. I remember that as a child, I 
 pulled flowers to pieces to see how the leaves were in- 
 serted into the calyx, or even plucked birds to observe 
 how the feathers were inserted into the wings. Chil- 
 dren are not to be blamed for this, when even our 
 naturalists believe they get their knowledge oftener 
 by separation and division than by union and com- 
 bination — more by killing than by making alive. 
 
 An armed loadstone, very neatly sewed up in 
 scarlet cloth, was one day destined to experience the 
 effects of this spirit of inquiry. For the secret force 
 of attraction which it exercised not only on the little 
 iron bar attached to it, but which was of such a kind 
 that it could gain strength and could daily bear a 
 heavier weight — this mysterious virtue had so ex- 
 cited my admiration, that for a long time I was 
 pleased with merely staring at its operation. But 
 at last I thought I might arrive at some nearer reve- 
 lation by tearing away the external covering. This 
 was done, but I became no wiser in consequence, as 
 the naked iron taught me nothing further. This also 
 I took off, and I held in my hand the mere stone, 
 with which I never grew weary of making experi- 
 ments of various kinds on filings and needles — ex- 
 periments from which my youthful mind drew no 
 further advantage beyond that of a varied experi- 
 
 227 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ence. I could not manage to reconstruct the whole 
 arrangement; the parts were scattered, and I lost the 
 wondrous phenomenon at the same time with the ap- 
 paratus. 
 
 Nor was I more fortunate in putting together an 
 electrical machine. A friend of the family, whose 
 youth had fallen in the time when electricity occu- 
 pied all minds, often told us how as a child he had 
 desired to possess such a machine, had got together 
 the principal requisites, and by the aid of an old 
 spinning-wheel and some medicine bottles, had pro- 
 duced tolerable results. As he readily and fre- 
 quently repeated the story, and imparted to us some 
 general information on electricity, we children found 
 the thing very plausible, and long tormented our- 
 selves with an old spinning-wheel and some medicine 
 bottles, without producing even the smallest result. 
 We nevertheless adhered to our belief, and were 
 much delighted when at the time of the fair, among 
 other rarities, magical and legerdemain tricks, an 
 electrical machine performed its marvels, which, like 
 those of magnetism, were at that time already very 
 numerous. 
 
 The want of confidence in the public method of 
 instruction was daily increasing. People looked 
 about for private tutors, and because single families 
 could not afiford the expense, several of them united 
 to attain their object. Yet the children seldom 
 agreed, the young man had not sufficient authority, 
 
 228 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 and after frequently repeated vexations, there were 
 only angry partings. It is not surprising, therefore, 
 that other arrangements were thought of which 
 should be more permanent as well as more advan- 
 tageous. 
 
 The thought of establishing boarding-schools 
 (Pensionen) had arisen from the necessity which 
 every one felt for having the French language taught 
 and communicated orally. My father had brought 
 up a young person who had been his footman, valet, 
 secretary, and, in short, successively all in all. This 
 man, whose name was Pfeil, spoke French well. 
 After he had married, and his patrons had to think 
 of a situation for him, they hit upon the plan of mak- 
 ing him establish a boarding-school, which extended 
 gradually into a small academy, in which everything 
 necessary, and at last even Greek and Latin, were 
 taught. The extensive connections of Frankfort 
 caused young French and English men to be brought 
 to this establishment, that they might learn German 
 and be otherwise cultivated. Pfeil, who was a man 
 in the prime of life, and of the most wonderful en- 
 ergy and activity, superintended the whole very laud- 
 ably, and as he could never be employed enough, and 
 was obliged to keep music-teachers for his scholars, 
 he set about music on the occasion, and practiced the 
 harpsichord with such zeal that, without having pre- 
 viously touched a note, he very soon played with 
 perfect readiness and spirit. He seemed to have 
 
 229 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 adopted my father's maxim, that nothing can more 
 cheer and excite young people than when at mature 
 years one declares one's self again a learner, and at 
 an age when new accomplishments are acquired with 
 difficulty, one endeavors, nevertheless, by zeal and 
 perseverance, to excel the younger, who are more fa- 
 vored by nature. 
 
 By this love of harpsichord-playing Pfeil was led 
 to the instruments themselves, and while he hoped 
 to obtain the best, came into connection with Fred- 
 erici of Gera, whose instruments were celebrated far 
 and wide. He took a number of them on sale, and 
 had now the joy of seeing not only one piano, but 
 many, set up in his residence, and of practicing and 
 being heard upon them. 
 
 The vivacity of this man brought a great rage for 
 music into our house. My father remained on last- 
 ing good terms with him up to certain points of dis- 
 pute. A large piano of Frederici was purchased 
 also for us, which I, adhering to my harpsichord, 
 hardly touched, but which so much increased the 
 troubles of my sister, as, to do proper honor to the 
 new instrument, she had to spend some time longer 
 every day in practice; while my father as overseer, 
 and Pfeil as a model and encouraging friend, alter- 
 nately took their positions at her side. 
 
 A singular taste of my father caused much incon- 
 venience to us children. This was the cultivation of 
 silk, of the advantages of which, when it should be 
 
 230 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 more widely extended, he had a high opinion. Some 
 acquaintances at Hanau, where the breeding of the 
 worms was carried on with great care, gave him the 
 immediate impulse. At the proper season, the eggs 
 were sent to him from that place, and as soon as the 
 mulberry-trees showed sufficient leaves, they had to 
 be stripped, and the scarcely visible creatures were 
 most diligently tended. Tables and stands, with 
 boards, were set up in a garret chamber, to afford 
 them more room and sustenance; for they grew rap- 
 idly, and after their last change of skin were so vo- 
 racious, that it was scarcely possible to get leaves 
 enough to feed them ; nay, they had to be fed day and 
 night, as everything depends upon there being no 
 deficiency of nourishment when the great and won- 
 drous change is about to take place in them. If the 
 weather was favorable, this business might indeed 
 be regarded as a pleasant amusement; but if the cold 
 set in, so that the mulberry-trees suffered, it was ex- 
 ceedingly troublesome. Still more unpleasant was 
 it when rain fell during the last epoch, for these 
 creatures cannot at all endure moisture, and the wet 
 leaves had to be carefully wiped and dried, which 
 could not always be done quite perfectly; and for 
 this, or perhaps some other reason also, various dis- 
 eases came among the flock, by which the poor things 
 were swept off in thousands. The corruption which 
 ensued produced a smell really pestilential, and be- 
 cause the dead and diseased had to be taken away and 
 
 231 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 separated from the healthy, the business was indeed 
 extremely wearisome and repulsive, and caused 
 many an unhappy hour to us children. 
 
 After we had one year passed the finest weeks of 
 the spring and summer in tending the silk-worms, we 
 were obliged to assist our father in another business, 
 which, though simpler, was no less troublesome. The 
 Roman views, which, bound by black rods at the top 
 and bottom, had hung for many years on the walls 
 of the old house, had become very yellow, through 
 the light, dust, and smoke, and not a little unsightly 
 through the flies. If such uncleanliness was not to be 
 tolerated in the new house, yet, on the other hand, 
 these pictures had gained in value to my father, in 
 consequence of his longer absence from the places 
 represented. For in the outset such copies only 
 serve to refresh and vivify the impressions shortly 
 before received. They seem trifling in comparison, 
 and at the best only a melancholy substitute. But 
 as the remembrance of the original forms fades more 
 and more, the copies imperceptibly assume their 
 place, they become as dear to us as those once were, 
 and what we at first contemned, now gains esteem 
 and affection. Thus it is with all copies, and par- 
 ticularly with portraits. No one is easily satisfied 
 with the counterfeit of an object still present, but 
 how we value every silhouette of one who is absent 
 or departed. 
 
 In short, with this feeling of his former extrava- 
 
 232 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 gance, my father wished that these engravings might 
 be restored as much as possible. It was well known 
 that this could be done by bleaching; and the opera- 
 tion, always critical with large plates, was under- 
 taken under rather unfavorable circumstances. For 
 the large boards on which the smoked engravings 
 were moistened and exposed to the sun, stood in the 
 gutters before the garret windows, leaning against 
 the roof, and were therefore liable to many acci- 
 dents. The chief point was, that the paper should 
 never thoroughly dry, but must be kept constantly 
 moist. This was the duty of my sister and myself; 
 and the idleness, which would have been otherwise 
 so desirable, was excessively annoying, on account of 
 the tedium and impatience, and the watchfulness 
 which allowed of no distraction. The end, how- 
 ever, was attained, and the bookbinder who fixed 
 each sheet upon thick paper, did his best to match 
 and repair the margins, which had been here and 
 there torn by our inadvertence. All the sheets to- 
 gether were bound in a volume, and for this time 
 preserved. 
 
 That we children might not be wanting in every 
 variety of life and learning, a teacher of the English 
 language must announce himself just at this time, 
 who pledged himself to teach English to anybody 
 not entirely raw in languages, within four weeks; 
 and to advance him to such a degree that, with some 
 diligence, he could help himself further. His price 
 
 ^33 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 was moderate, and he was indifferent as to the num- 
 ber of scholars at one lesson. My father instantly 
 determined to make the attempt, and took lessons, in 
 connection with my sister and myself, from this ex- 
 peditious master. The hours were faithfully kept; 
 there was no want of repeating our lessons; other 
 exercises were neglected rather than this, during the 
 four weeks; and the teacher parted from us, and we 
 from him, with satisfaction. As he remained longer 
 in the town, and found many employers, he came 
 from time to time to look after us and to help us, 
 grateful that we had been among the first who placed 
 confidence in him, and proud to be able to cite us as 
 examples to the others. 
 
 My father, in consequence of this, entertained a 
 new anxiety that English might neatly stand in the 
 series of my other studies in languages. Now, I will 
 confess that it became more and more burdensome 
 for me to take my occasions for study now from this 
 grammar or collection of examples, now from that; 
 now from one author, now from another, and thus 
 to divert my interest in a subject every hour. It oc- 
 curred to me, therefore, that I might despatch all at 
 once, and I invented a romance of six or seven broth- 
 ers and sisters, who, separated from each other and 
 scattered over the world, should communicate with 
 each other alternately as to their conditions and feel- 
 ings. The eldest brother gives an account in good 
 German of all the manifold objects and incidents 
 
 234 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 of his journey. The sister, in a ladylike style, with 
 short sentences and nothing but stops, much as Sieg- 
 wart was afterward written, answers now him, now 
 the other brothers, partly about domestic matters, 
 and partly about affairs of the heart. One brother 
 studies theology, and writes a very formal Latin, 
 to which he often adds a Greek postscript. To an- 
 other brother, holding the place of mercantile clerk 
 at Hamburgh, the English correspondence naturally 
 falls, while a still younger one at Marseilles has the 
 French. For the Italian was found a musician, on 
 his first trip into the world; while the youngest of 
 all, a sort of pert nestling, had applied himself to 
 Jew-German, the other languages having been cut 
 ofif from him, and by means of his frightful cyphers 
 brought the rest of them into despair, and my parents 
 into a hearty laugh at the good notion. 
 
 I sought for matter to fill up this singular form 
 by studying the geography of the countries in which, 
 my creations resided, and by inventing for those dry 
 localities all sorts of human incidents, which had 
 some affinity with the characters and employments 
 of my heroes. Thus my exercise-books became much 
 more voluminous, my father was better satisfied, and 
 I was much sooner made aware of the acquirements 
 and the sort of readiness in which I was wanting. 
 
 Now, as such things once begun have no end and 
 no limits, so it happened in the present case; for, 
 while I strove to attain the odd Jew-German, and to 
 
 ^3S 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 write it as well as I could read it, I soon discovered 
 that I ought to know Hebrew, from which alone the 
 modern corrupted dialect could be derived and han- 
 dled with any certainty. I consequently explained 
 the necessity of my learning Hebrew to my father, 
 and earnestly besought his consent, for I had a still 
 higher object. Everywhere I heard it said that to 
 understand the Old as well as the New Testament, 
 the original languages were requisite. The latter I 
 could read quite easily, because, that there might be 
 no want of exercise even on Sundays, the so-called 
 Epistles and Gospels had, after church, to be recited, 
 translated, and in some measure explained. I now 
 designed doing the same thing with the Old Testa- 
 ment, the peculiarities of which had always espe- 
 cially interested me. 
 
 My father, who did not like to do anything by 
 halves, determined to request the rector of our Gym- 
 nasium, one Dr. Albrecht, to give me private les- 
 sons weekly, until I should have acquired what was 
 most essential in so simple a language, for he hoped 
 that if it would not be despatched as soon as English 
 was learned, it could at least be managed in double 
 the time. 
 
 Rector Albrecht was one of the most original fig- 
 ures in the world, short, broad, but not fat, ill-shaped 
 without being deformed — in short, an i^sop in gown 
 and wig. His more than seventy-years-old face was 
 completely twisted into a sarcastic smile, while his 
 
 236 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 eyes always remained large, and though red, were 
 always brilliant and intelligent. He lived in the old 
 cloister of the Barefoot Friars, the seat of the Gym- 
 nasium. Even as a child, I had often visited him in 
 company with my parents, and had, with a kind of 
 trembling delight, glided through the long dark pas- 
 sages, the chapels transformed into reception-rooms, 
 the place broken up and full of stairs and corners. 
 Wilthout annoying me, he questioned me familiarly 
 whenever we met, and praised and encouraged me. 
 One day, on the changing of the pupil's places after 
 a public examination, he saw me standing as a mere 
 spectator, not far from his chair, while he distributed 
 the silver praemia virtutis et diligentiae. I was prob- 
 ably gazing very eagerly upon the little bag out of 
 which he drew the medals; he nodded to me, de- 
 scended a step, and handed me one of the silver 
 pieces. My joy was great, although others thought 
 that this gift bestowed upon a boy not belonging to 
 the school was out of all order. But for this the good 
 old man cared but little, having always played the 
 eccentric, and that in a striking manner. He had a 
 very good reputation as a schoolmaster, and under- 
 stood his business, although age no more allowed him 
 to practice it thoroughly. But almost more than by 
 his own infirmities was he hindered by greater cir- 
 cumstances, and, as I already knew, he was satisfied 
 neither with the consistory, the inspectors, the clergy, 
 nor the teachers. To his natural temperament which 
 
 237 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 inclined to satire, and the watching for faults and de- 
 fects, he allowed free play, both in his programs and 
 his public speeches, and as Lucian was almost the 
 only writer whom he read and esteemed, he spiced 
 all that he said and wrote with biting ingredients. 
 
 Fortunately for those with whom he was dissatis- 
 fied, he never went directly to work, but only jeered 
 at the defects which he wanted to reprove, with hints, 
 allusions, classic passages, and Scripture texts. His 
 delivery, moreover — he always read his discourses — 
 was unpleasant, unintelligible, and, above all, was of- 
 ten interrupted by a cough, but more frequently by a 
 hollow paunch-convulsing laugh, with which he was 
 wont to announce and accompany the biting passages. 
 This singular man I found to be mild and obliging 
 when I began to take lessons from him. I now went 
 to him daily at six o'clock in the evening, and always 
 experienced a secret pleasure when the outer door 
 closed behind me, and I had to thread the long dark 
 cloister-passage. We sat in his library at a table cov- 
 ered with oil-cloth, a much-read Lucian never quit- 
 ting his side. 
 
 In spite of all my willingness, I did not get at 
 the matter without difficulty, for my teacher could 
 not suppress certain sarcastic remarks as to the real 
 truth about Hebrew. I concealed from him my de- 
 signs upon Jew-German, and spoke of a better under- 
 standing of the original text. He smiled at this, and 
 said I should be satisfied if I only learned to read. 
 
 238 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 This vexed me in secret, and I concentrated all my 
 attention when we came to the letters. I found an 
 alphabet something like the Greek, of which the 
 forms were easy, and the names, for the most part, 
 not strange to me. All this I had soon comprehended 
 and retained, and supposed we should now go to 
 reading. That this was done from right to left I was 
 well aware. But now, all at once appeared a new 
 army of little characters and signs, of points and 
 strokes of all sorts, which were in fact to represent 
 vowels. At this I wondered the more, as there were 
 manifestly vowels in the larger alphabet, and the 
 others only appeared to be hidden under strange ap- 
 pellations. It was also taught, that the Jewish na- 
 tion, so long as it flourished, actually were satisfied 
 with the first signs, and knew no other way to write 
 and read. Most willingly then would I have gone 
 on along this ancient, and, as it seemed to me, easier 
 path; but my worthy declared rather sternly, that we 
 must go by the grammar as it had been approved and 
 composed. Reading without these points and strokes^ 
 he said, was a very hard undertaking, and could be 
 accomplished only by the learned, and those who 
 were well practiced. I must therefore make up my 
 mind to learn these little characters; but the matter 
 became to me more and more confused. Now, it 
 seemed, some of the first and larger primitive letters 
 had no value in their places, in order that their little 
 after-born kindred might not stand there in vain. 
 
 239 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Now they indicated a gentle breathing, now a gut- 
 tural more or less rough, and now served as mere 
 equivalents. But, finally, when one fancied that one 
 had well noted everything, some of these person- 
 ages, both great and small, were rendered inopera- 
 tive, so that the eyes always had very much, and the 
 lips very little to do. 
 
 As that of which I already knew the contents had 
 now to be stuttered in a strange gibberish, in which 
 a certain snuffle and gargle were not a little com- 
 mended as something unattainable, I in a certain 
 degree deviated from the matter, and diverted my- 
 self in a childish way with the singular names of 
 these accumulated signs. There were "emperors," 
 "kings," and "dukes," which, as accents, governing 
 here and there, gave me not a little entertainment. 
 But even these shallow jests soon lost their charm. 
 Nevertheless, I was indemnified, inasmuch as by 
 reading, translating, repeating, and committing to 
 memory, the substance of the book came out more 
 vividly, and it was this, properly, about which I de- 
 sired to be enlightened. Even before this time the 
 contradiction between tradition and the actual and 
 possible had appeared to me very striking, and I had 
 often put my private tutors to a non-plus with the 
 sun which stood still on Gibeon, and the moon in the 
 vale of Ajalon, to say nothing of other improbabili- 
 ties and incongruities. Everything of this kind was 
 now awakened, while, in order to master the He- 
 
 240 
 
Education of Goethe 
 
 brew, I occupied myself exclusively with the Old 
 Testament, and studied it, though no longer in Luth- 
 er's translation, but in the literal version of Sebas- 
 tian Schmid, printed under the text which my father 
 had procured for me. Here, unfortunately, our les- 
 sons began to be defective, so far as practice in the 
 language was concerned. Reading, interpreting, 
 grammar, transcribing, and the repetition of words, 
 seldom lasted a full half hour; for I immediately 
 began to aim at the sense of the matter, and, though 
 we were still engaged in the first book of Moses, to 
 utter several things suggested to me by the later 
 books. At first the good old man tried to restrain 
 me from such digressions, but at last they seemed to 
 entertain him also. It was impossible for him to 
 suppress his characteristic cough and chuckle, and 
 although he carefully avoided giving me any in- 
 formation that might have compromised himself, my 
 importunity was not relaxed; nay, as I cared more 
 to set forth my doubts than to learn their solution, 
 I grew constantly more vivacious and bold, seeming 
 justified by his deportment. Yet I could get noth- 
 ing out of him, except that ever and anon he would 
 exclaim, with his peculiar shaking laugh, "Ah! mad 
 fellow! ah! mad boy!" 
 
 Still, my childish vivacity, which scrutinized the 
 Bible on all sides, may have seemed to him tolerably 
 serious and worthy of some assistance. He there- 
 fore referred me, after a time, to the large English 
 
 241 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Biblical work which stood in his library, and in 
 which the interpretation of difficult and doubtful 
 passages was attempted in an intelligent and judi- 
 cious manner. By the great labors of German di- 
 vines the translation had obtained advantages over 
 the original. The different opinions were cited, and 
 at last a kind of reconciliation was attempted, so that 
 the dignity of the book, the ground of religion, and 
 the human understanding might in some degree co- 
 exist. Now, as often as toward the end of the lesson 
 I came out with my usual questions and doubts, so 
 often did he point to the repository. I took the vol- 
 ume, he let me read, turned over his Lucian, and 
 when I made any remarks on the book, his ordinary 
 laugh was the only answer to my sagacity. In the 
 long summer days he let me sit as long as I could 
 read, many times alone; after a time he suffered me 
 to take one volume after another home with me. 
 
 242 
 
SCHOOL-TIME 
 
 nrOM TULLIVER'S sufferings during the first 
 ^ quarter he was at King's Lorton, under the dis- 
 tinguished care of the Rev. Walter Stelling, were 
 rather severe. At Mr. Jacobs's academy life had 
 not presented itself to him as a difHcult problem: 
 there were plenty of fellows to play with, and Tom 
 being good at all active games — fighting especially 
 — had that precedence among them which appeared 
 to him inseparable from the personality of Tom Tul- 
 liver. Mr. Jacobs himself, familiarly known as Old 
 Goggles, from his habit of wearing spectacles, im- 
 posed no painful awe; and if it was the property of 
 snufify old hypocrites like him to write like copper- 
 plate and surround their signatures with arabesques, 
 to spell without forethought, and to spout "my name 
 is Norval" without bungling, Tom, for his part, was 
 rather glad he was not in danger of those mean ac- 
 complishments. He was not going to be a snuffy 
 schoolmaster — he; but a substantial man like his 
 father, who used to go hunting when he was younger, 
 and rode a capital black mare — as pretty a bit of 
 horse-flesh as ever you saw: Tom had heard what 
 her points were a hundred times. He meant to go 
 hunting, too, and to be generally respected. When 
 people were growing up, he considered, nobody in- 
 
 243 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 quired about their writing and spelling: when he 
 was a man, he should be master of everything and 
 do just as he liked. It had been very difficult for 
 him to reconcile himself to the idea that his school- 
 time was to be prolonged, and that he was not to be 
 brought up to his father's business, which he had 
 always thought extremely pleasant, for it was noth- 
 ing but riding about, giving orders, and going to 
 market; and he thought that a clergyman would give 
 him a great many Scripture lessons, and probably 
 make him learn the Gospel and Epistle on a Sunday 
 as well as the Collect. But in the absence of specific 
 information, it was impossible for him to imagine 
 that school and a schoolmaster would be something 
 entirely different from the academy of Mr. Jacobs. 
 So, not to be at a deficiency, In case of his finding 
 genial companions, he had taken care to carry with 
 him a small box of percussion caps; not that there 
 was anything particular to be done with them, but 
 they would serve to impress strange boys with a sense 
 of his familiarity with guns. Thus poor Tom, 
 though he saw very clearly through Maggie's illu- 
 sions, was not without illusions of his own, which 
 were to be cruelly dissipated by his enlarged expe- 
 rience at King's Lorton. 
 
 He had not been there a fortnight before it was 
 evident that life, complicated not only with the Latin 
 grammar but with a new standard of English pro- 
 nunciation, was a very difficult business, made all 
 
 244 
 
School-Time 
 
 the more obscure by a thick mist of bashfulness. 
 Tom, as you have observed, was never an exception 
 among boys for ease of address; but the difficulty of 
 enunciating a monosyllable in reply to Mr. and Mrs. 
 Stelling v^as so great, that he even dreaded to be 
 asked at the table whether he would have more pud- 
 ding. As to the percussion-caps, he had almost re- 
 solved, in the bitterness of his heart, that he would 
 throw them into a neighboring pond; for not only 
 was he the solitary pupil, but he began to have a cer- 
 tain scepticism about guns, and a general sense that 
 this theory of life was undermined. For Mr. Stell- 
 ing thought nothing of guns, or horses either, ap- 
 parently; and yet it was impossible for Tom to des- 
 pise Mr. Stelling as he had despised Old Goggles. 
 If there was anything that was not thoroughly gen- 
 uine about Mr. Stelling, it lay quite beyond Tom's 
 power to detect it: it is only by a wide comparison of 
 facts that the wisest full-grown man can distinguish 
 well-rolled barrels from more supernal thunder. 
 
 Mr. Stelling was a well-sized, broad-chested man, 
 not yet thirty, with flaxen hair standing erect, and 
 large lightish-gray eyes, which were always very wide 
 open; he had a sonorous bass voice, and an air of 
 defiant self-confidence Inclining to brazenness. He 
 had entered on his career with great vigor, and in- 
 tended to make a considerable impression on his fel- 
 low-men. The Rev. Walter Stelling was not a man 
 who would remain among the "inferior clergy" all 
 
 245 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 his life. He had a true British determination to 
 push his way in the world. As a schoolmaster, in 
 the first place; for there were capital masterships of 
 grammar-schools to be had, and Mr. Stelling meant 
 to have one of them. But as a preacher also, for he 
 meant always to preach in a striking manner, so as to 
 have his congregation swelled by admirers from 
 neighboring parishes, and to produce a great sensa- 
 tion whenever he took occasional duty for a brother 
 clergyman of minor gifts. The style of preaching 
 he had chosen was the extemporaneous, which was 
 held little short of the miraculous in rural parishes 
 like King's Lorton. Some passages of Massillon and 
 and Bourdaloue, which he knew by heart, were really 
 very effective when rolled out in Mr. Stelling's deep- 
 est tones; but as comparatively feeble appeals of his 
 own were delivered in the same manner, they were 
 often thought quite as striking by his hearers. Mr. 
 Stelling's doctrine was of no particular school ; if any- 
 thing, it had a tinge of evangelicalism, for that was 
 "the telling thing" just then in the diocese to which 
 King's Lorton belonged. In short, Mr. Stelling was 
 a man who meant to rise in his profession, and to rise 
 by merit, clearly, since he had no interest beyond 
 what might be promised by a problematic relation- 
 ship to a great lawyer who had not yet become Lord 
 Chancellor. A clergyman who has such vigorous 
 intentions naturally gets a little into debt at start- 
 ing; it is not to be expected that he will live in the 
 
 246 
 
School-Time 
 
 style of a man who means to be a poor curate all his 
 life, and if the few hundreds Mr. Timpson advanced 
 toward his daughter's fortune did not suffice for the 
 purchase of handsome furniture, together with a 
 stock of wine, a grand piano, and the laying out of 
 a superior flower-garden, it followed in the most rig- 
 orous manner, either that these things must be pro- 
 cured by some other means, or else that the Rev. Mr. 
 Stelling must go without them — which last alterna- 
 tive would be an absurd procrastination of the fruits 
 of success, where success was certain. Mr. Stelling 
 was so broad-chested and resolute that he felt equal 
 to anything; he would become celebrated by shaking 
 the consciences of his hearers, and he would by-and- 
 by edit a Greek play, and invent several new read- 
 ings. He had not yet selected the play, for, having 
 been married little more than two years, his leisure 
 time had been much occupied with attentions to Mrs. 
 Stelling; but he had told that fine woman what he 
 meant to do some day, and she felt great confidence 
 in her husband, as a man who understood everything 
 of that sort. 
 
 But the immediate step to future success was to 
 bring on Tom Tulliver during this first half-year; 
 for, by a singular coincidence, there had been some 
 negotiation concerning another pupil from the same 
 neighborhood, and it might further a decision in 
 Mr. Stelling's favor, if it were understood that 
 young Tulliver, who, Mr. Stelling observed in con- 
 
 247 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 jugal privacy, was rather a rough cub, had made pro- 
 digious progress in a short time. It was on this 
 ground that he was severe with Tom about his les- 
 sons : he was clearly a boy whose powers would never 
 be developed through the medium of the Latin gram- 
 mar, without the application of some sternness. Not 
 that Mr. Stelling was a harsh-tempered or unkind 
 man — quite the contrary : he was jocose with Tom at 
 table, and corrected his provincialisms and his de- 
 portment in the most playful manner; but poor Tom 
 was only the more cowed and confused by this 
 double novelty, for he had never been used to jokes 
 at all like Mr. Stelling's; and for the first time in 
 his life he had a painful sense that he was all wrong 
 somehow. When Mr. Stelling said, as the roast- 
 beef was being uncovered, "Now, Tulliver! which 
 would you rather decline, roast-beef or the Latin for 
 it?"— Tom, to whom in his coolest moment a pun 
 would have been a hard nut, was thrown into a state 
 of embarrassed alarm that made everything dim to 
 him except the feeling that he would rather not have 
 anything to do with Latin; of course he answered, 
 "Roast-beef," whereupon there followed much laugh- 
 ter and some practical joking with the plates, from 
 which Tom gathered that he had in some mysterious 
 way refused beef, and, in fact, made himself appear 
 "a silly." If he could have seen a fellow-pupil un- 
 dergo these painful operations and survive them in 
 good spirits, he might sooner have taken them as a 
 
 248 
 
School-Time 
 
 matter of course. But there are two expensive forms 
 of education, either of which a parent may procure 
 for his son by sending him as solitary pupil to a 
 clergyman : one is, the enjoyment of the reverend 
 gentleman's undivided neglect: the other is, the en- 
 durance of the reverend gentleman's undivided at- 
 tention. It was the latter privilege for which Mr. 
 Tulliver paid a high price in Tom's initiatory months 
 at King's Lorton. 
 
 That respectable miller and malster had left Tom 
 behind, and driven homeward in a state of great 
 mental satisfaction. He considered that it was a 
 happy moment for him when he had thought of ask- 
 ing Riley's advice about a tutor for Tom. Mr. Stell- 
 ing's eyes were so wide open, and he talked in such 
 an off-hand, matter-of-fact way — answering every 
 difficult slow remark of Mr. TuUiver's with, "I see, 
 my good sir, I see;" "To be sure, to be sure;" "You 
 want your son to be a man who will make his way in 
 the world," — that Mr. Tulliver was delighted to find 
 in him a clergyman whose knowledge was so ap- 
 plicable to the every-day affairs of this life. Ex- 
 cept Counsellor Wylde, whom he had heard at the 
 last sessions, Mr. Tulliver thought the Rev. Mr. 
 Stelling was the shrewdest fellow he had ever met 
 with— not unlike Wylde, in fact: he had the same 
 way of sticking his thumbs in the armholes of his 
 waistcoat. Mr. Tulliver was not by any means an 
 exception in mistaking brazenness for shrewdness: 
 
 249 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 most laymen thought Stelling shrewd, and a man of 
 remarkable powers generally: it was chiefly by his 
 clerical brethren that he was considered rather a 
 dull fellow. But he told Mr. TuUiver several stories 
 about "Swing" and incendiarism, and asked his ad- 
 vice about feeding pigs in so thoroughly secular 
 and judicious a manner, with so much polished glib- 
 ness of tongue, that the miller thought here was the 
 very thing he wanted for Tom. He had no doubt 
 this first-rate man was acquainted with every branch 
 of information, and knew exactly what Tom must 
 learn in order to become a match for the lawyers — 
 which poor Mr. TuUiver himself did not know, and 
 so was necessarily thrown for self-direction on this 
 wide kind of inference. It is hardly fair to laugh 
 at him, for I have known much more highly in- 
 structed persons than he make inferences quite as 
 wide, and not at all wiser. 
 
 As for Mrs. TuUiver — finding that Mrs. Stell- 
 ing's views as to the airing of linen and the frequent 
 recurrence of hunger in a growing boy, entirely co- 
 incided with her own; moreover, that Mrs. Stelling, 
 though so young a woman, and only anticipating her 
 second confinement, had gone through very nearly 
 the same experience as herself with regard to the be- 
 havior and fundamental character of the monthly 
 nurse — she expressed great contentment to her hus- 
 band, when they drove away, at leaving Tom with a 
 woman who, in spite of her youth, seemed quite 
 
 250 
 
School-Time 
 
 sensible and motherly, and asked advice as prettily as 
 could be. 
 
 "They must be very well off, though," said Mrs. 
 TuUiver, "for everything's as nice as can be all over 
 the house, and that watered silk she had on cost a 
 pretty penny. Sister Pullet has got one like it." 
 
 "Ah," said Mr. Tulliver, "he's got some income 
 besides the curacy, I reckon. Perhaps her father al- 
 lows 'em something. There's Tom 'uU be another 
 hundred to him, and not much trouble, either, by his 
 own account: he says teaching comes natural to him. 
 That's wonderful, now," added Mr. Tulliver, turn- 
 ing his head on one side, and giving his horse a 
 meditative tickling on the flank. 
 
 Perhaps it was because teaching came naturally 
 to Mr. Stelling, that he set about it with that uni- 
 formity of method and independence of circum- 
 stances, which distinguish the actions of animals un- 
 derstood to be under the immediate teaching of na- 
 ture. Mr. Broderip's amiable beaver, as that charm- 
 ing naturalist tells us, busied himself as earnestly in 
 constructing a dam, in a room up three pairs of 
 stairs in London, as if he had been laying his founda- 
 tion in a stream or lake in Upper Canada. It was 
 "Binny's" function to build: the absence of water or 
 of possible progeny was an accident for which he 
 was not accountable. With the same unerring in- 
 stinct Mr. Stelling set to work at his natural method 
 of instilling the Eton Grammar and Euclid into the 
 
 ^ Vol. 15-9 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 mind of Tom Tulliver. This, he considered, was 
 the only basis of solid instruction: all other means of 
 education were mere charlatanism, and could pro- 
 duce nothing better than smatterers. Fixed on this 
 firm basis, a man might observe the display of vari- 
 ous or special knowledge made by irregularly edu- 
 cated people, with a pitying smile: all that sort of 
 thing was very well, but it was impossible these peo- 
 ple could form sound opinions. In holding this con- 
 viction Mr. Stelling was not biased, as some tutors 
 have been, by the excessive accuracy or extent of his 
 own scholarship : and as to his views about Euclid, 
 no opinion could have been freer from personal par- 
 tiality. Mr. Stelling was very far from being led 
 astray by enthusiasm, either religious or intellectual; 
 on the other hand, he had no secret belief that every- 
 thing was humbug. He thought religion was a 
 very excellent thing and Aristotle a great authority, 
 and deaneries and prebends useful institutions, and 
 Great Britain the providential bulwark of Protestant- 
 ism, and faith in the unseen a great support to af- 
 flicted minds: he believed in all these things as the 
 Swiss hotel-keeper believes in the beauty of the 
 scenery around him, and in the pleasure it gives to 
 artistic visitors. And in the same way Mr. Stelling 
 believed in his method of education : he had no 
 doubt that he was doing the very best thing for Mr. 
 Tulliver's boy. Of course, when the miller talked 
 of "mapping" and "summing" in a vague and diffi- 
 
 252 
 
School-Time 
 
 dent manner, Mr. Stelling had set his niind at rest by 
 an assurance that he understood what was wanted; 
 for how was it possible the good man could form 
 any reasonable judgment about the matter? Mr. Stell- 
 ing's duty was to teach the lad in the only right way 
 — indeed, he knew no other: he had not wasted his 
 time in the acquirement of anything abnormal. 
 
 He very soon set down poor Tom as a thoroughly 
 stupid lad; for though by hard labor he could get 
 particular declensions into his brain, anything so 
 abstract as the relation between cases and termina- 
 tions could by no means get such a lodgment there as 
 to enable him to recognize a chance genitive or da- 
 tive. This struck Mr. Stelling as something more 
 than natural stupidity; he suspected obstinacy, or, at 
 any rate, indifference, and lectured Tom severely on 
 his want of thorough application. "You feel no in- 
 terest in what you're doing, sir," Mr. Stelling would 
 say, and the reproach was painfully true. Tom had 
 never found any difficulty in discerning a pointer 
 from a setter, when once he had been told the dis- 
 tinction, and his perceptive powers were not at all 
 deficient. I fancy they were quite as strong as those 
 of the Rev. Mr. Stelling; for Tom could predict 
 with accuracy what number of horses were canter- 
 ing behind him, he could throw a stone right into the 
 centre of a given ripple, he could guess to a fraction 
 how many lengths of his stick it would take to reach 
 across the playground, and could draw almost per- 
 
 ^-S3 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 feet squares on his slate without any measurement. 
 But Mr. Stelling took no note of these things: he 
 only observed that Tom's faculties failed him before 
 the abstractions hideously symbolized to him in the 
 pages of the Eton Grammar, and that he was in a 
 state bordering on idiocy with regard to the demon- 
 stration that two given triangles must be equal — 
 though he could discern with great promptitude and 
 certainty the fact that they were equal. Whence 
 Stelling concluded that Tom's brain being peculiarly 
 impervious to etymology and demonstrations, was 
 peculiarly in need of being plowed and harrowed by 
 these patent implements: it was his favorite meta- 
 phor, that the classics and geometry constituted that 
 culture of the mind which prepared it for the re- 
 ception of any subsequent crop. I say nothing 
 against Mr. Stelling's theory: if we are to have one 
 regimen for all minds, his seems to be as good as 
 any other. I only know it turned out as uncom- 
 fortably for Tom Tulliver as if he had been plied 
 with cheese in order to remedy a gastric weakness 
 which prevented him from digesting it. It is as- 
 tonishing what a different result one gets by chang- 
 ing the metaphor! Once call the brain an intellect- 
 ual stomach, and one's ingenious conception of the 
 classics and geometry as plows and harrows seem to 
 settle nothing. But then it is open to some one else 
 to follow great authorities, and call the mind a sheet 
 of white paper or a mirror, in which case one's 
 
 254 
 
School-Time 
 
 knowledge of the digestive process becomes quite 
 irrelevant. It was doubtless an ingenious idea to 
 call the camel the ship of the desert, but it would 
 hardly lead one far in training that useful beast. O 
 Aristotle! if you had had the advantage of being "the 
 freshest modern" instead of the greatest ancient, 
 would you not have mingled your praise of metaphor- 
 ical speech, as a sign of high intelligence, with a 
 lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself 
 in speech without metaphor — that we can so seldom 
 declare what a thing is, except by saying it is some- 
 thing else? 
 
 Tom Tulliver, being abundant in no form of 
 speech, did not use any metaphor to declare his views 
 as to the nature of Latin : he never called it an in- 
 strument of torture; and it was not until he had got 
 on some way in the next half-year, and in the Delec- 
 tus, that he was advanced enough to call it a "bore" 
 and "beastly stuff." At present, in relation to this 
 demand that he should learn Latin declensions and 
 conjugations, Tom was in a state of as blank un- 
 imaginativeness concerning the cause and tendency 
 of his sufferings, as if he had been an innocent shrew- 
 mouse imprisoned in the split trunk of an ash tree in 
 order to cure lameness in cattle. It is doubtless al- 
 most incredible to instructed minds of the present 
 day that a boy of twelve, not belonging strictly to 
 "the masses," who are now understood to have the 
 monopoly of mental darkness, should have had no 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 distinct idea how there came to be such a thing as 
 Latin on this earth : yet so it was with Tom. It would 
 have taken a long while to make conceivable to him 
 that there ever existed a people who bought and sold 
 sheep and oxen, and transacted the everyday affairs 
 of life, through the medium of this language, and 
 still longer to make him understand why he should 
 be called upon to learn it, when its connection with 
 those affairs had become entirely latent. So far as 
 Tom had gained any acquaintance with the Romans 
 at Mr. Jacobs's academy, his knowledge was strictly 
 correct, but it went no further than the fact that they 
 were "in the New Testament": and Mr. Stelling was 
 not the man to enfeeble and emasculate his pupil's 
 mind by simplifying and explaining, or to reduce the 
 tonic effect of etymology by mixing it with smatter- 
 ing, extraneous information, such as is given to girls. 
 Yet, strange to say, under this vigorous treatment 
 Tom became more like a girl than he had ever been 
 in his life before. He had a large share of pride, 
 which had hitherto found itself very comfortable in 
 the world, despising Old Goggles, and reposing in 
 the sense of unquestioned rights: but now this same 
 pride met with nothing but bruises and crushings. 
 Tom was too clear-sighted not to be aware that Mr. 
 Stelling's standard of things was quite different, was 
 certainly something higher in the eyes of the world 
 than that of the people he had been living among, 
 and that, brought in contact with it, he, Tom TuUi- 
 
 256 
 
School-Time 
 
 ver, appeared uncouth and stupid : he was by no 
 means indifferent to this, and his pride got into an 
 uneasy condition which quite nullified his boyish 
 self-satisfaction, and gave him something of the girl's 
 susceptibility. He was of a very firm, not to say 
 obstinate disposition, but there was no brute-like re- 
 bellion and recklessness in his nature: the human 
 sensibilities predominated, and if it had occurred to 
 him that he could enable himself to show some quick- 
 ness at his lessons, and so acquire Mr. Stelling's ap- 
 probation, by standing on one leg for an inconven- 
 ient length of time, or rapping his head moderately 
 against the wall, or any voluntary action of that sort, 
 he would certainly have tried it. But no — Tom had 
 never heard that these measures vi/ould brighten the 
 understanding, or strengthen the verbal memory; 
 and he was not given to hypothesis and experiment. 
 It did occur to him that he could perhaps get some 
 help by praying for it; but as the prayers he said 
 every evening were forms learned by heart, he rather 
 shrank from the novelty and irregularity of intro- 
 ducing an extempore passage on a topic of petition 
 for which he was not aware of any precedent. But 
 one day, when he had broken down, for the fifth 
 time, in the supines of the third conjugation, and 
 Mr. Stelling, convinced that this must be careless- 
 ness, since it transcended the bounds of possible stu- 
 pidity, had lectured him very seriously, pointing out 
 that if he failed to seize the present golden oppor- 
 
 257 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 tunity of learning supines, he would have to regret 
 it when he became a man — Tom, more miserable 
 than usual, determined to try his sole resource; and 
 that evening, after his usual form of prayer for his 
 parents and "little sister" (he had begun to pray for 
 Maggie when she was a baby), and that he might be 
 able always to keep God's commandments, he added, 
 in the same low whisper, "and please to make me al- 
 ways remember my Latin." He paused a little to 
 consider how he should pray about Euclid — whether 
 he should ask to see what it meant, or whether there 
 was any other mental state which would be more ap- 
 plicable to the case. But at last he added — "And 
 make Mr. Stelling say I shan't do Euclid any more. 
 Amen." 
 
 The fact that he got through his supines without 
 mistake the next day encouraged him to persevere in 
 this appendix to his prayers, and neutralized any 
 scepticism that might have arisen from Mr. Stell- 
 ing's continued demand for Euclid. But his faith 
 broke down under the apparent absence of all help 
 when he got into the irregular verbs. It seemed 
 clear that Tom's despair under the caprices of the 
 present tense did not constitute a nodus worthy of 
 interference, and since this was the climax of his 
 difficulties, where was the use of praying for help 
 any longer? He made up his mind to this conclu- 
 sion in one of his dull, lonely evenings, which he 
 spent in the study, preparing his lessons for the mor- 
 
 258 
 
School-Time 
 
 row. His eyes were apt to get dim over the page — 
 though he hated crying, and was ashamed of it. He 
 couldn't help thinking with some affection even of 
 Spouncer, whom he used to fight and quarrel with; 
 he would have felt at home with Spouncer, and in a 
 condition of superiority. And then the mill, and the 
 river, and Yap pricking up his ears, ready to obey 
 the least sign when Tom said, "Hoigh!" would all 
 come before him in a sort of calenture, when his fin- 
 gers played absently in his pocket with his great 
 knife and his coil of whipcord, and other relics of 
 the past. Tom, as I said, had never been so much 
 like a girl in his life before, and at that epoch of 
 irregular verbs his spirit was further depressed by a 
 new means of mental development which had been 
 thought of for him out of school hours. Mrs. Stell- 
 ing had lately had her second baby, and as nothing 
 could be more salutary for a boy than to feel himself 
 useful, Mrs. Stelling considered she was doing Tom 
 a service by setting him to watch the little cherub 
 Laura while the nurse was occupied with the sickly 
 baby. It was quite a pretty employment for Tom to 
 take little Laura out in the sunniest hour of the au- 
 tumn day — it would help to make him feel that Lor- 
 ton Parsonage was a home for him, and that he was 
 one of the family. The little cherub Laura, not be- 
 ing an accomplished walker at present, had a ribbon 
 fastened round her waist, by which Tom held her as 
 if she had been a little dog during the minutes in 
 
 ^59 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 which she chose to walk; but as these were rare, he 
 was for the most part carrying this fine child round 
 and round the garden, within sight of Mrs. Stell- 
 ing's window — according to orders. If any one con- 
 siders this unfair and even oppressive toward Tom, 
 I beg him to consider that there are feminine virtues 
 which are with difficulty combined, even if they are 
 not incompatible. When the wife of a poor curate 
 contrives, under all her disadvantages, to dress ex- 
 tremely well, and to have a style of coififure which 
 requires that her nurse shall occasionally officiate as 
 lady's-maid — when, moreover, her dinner-parties and 
 her drawing-room show that effort at elegance and 
 completeness of appointment to which ordinary 
 women might imagine a large income necessary, it 
 would be unreasonable to expect of her that she 
 should employ a second nurse or even act as a nurse 
 herself. Mr. Stelling knew better; he saw that his 
 wife did wonders already, and was proud of her: it 
 was certainly not the best thing in the world for 
 young Tulliver's gait to carry a heavy child, but he 
 had plenty of exercise in long walks with himself, 
 and next half-year Mr. Stelling would see about 
 having a drilling-master. Among the many means 
 whereby Mr. Stelling intended to be more fortunate 
 than the bulk of his fellow-men, he had entirely 
 given up that of having his own way in his own 
 house. What then? he had married "as kind a little 
 soul as ever breathed," according to Mr. Riley, who 
 
 260 
 
School-Time 
 
 had been acquainted with Mrs. Stelling's blond ring- 
 lets and smiling demeanor throughout her maiden 
 life, and on the strength of that knowledge would 
 have been ready any day to pronounce that whatever 
 domestic differences might arise in her married life 
 must be entirely Mr. Stelling's fault. 
 
 If Tom had had a worse disposition, he would 
 certainly have hated the little cherub, Laura; but he 
 was too kind-hearted a lad for that — there was too 
 much in him of the fibre that turns to true manliness, 
 and to protecting pity for the weak. I am afraid he 
 hated Mrs. Stelling, and contracted a lasting dislike 
 to pale blond ringlets and broad plaits, as directly 
 associated with haughtiness of manner, and a fre- 
 quent reference to other people's "duty." But he 
 couldn't help playing with little Laura, and liking 
 to amuse her: he even sacrificed his percussion caps 
 for her sake, in despair of their ever serving a 
 greater purpose — thinking the small flash and bang 
 would delight her, and thereby drawing down on 
 himself a rebuke from Mrs. Stelling for teaching 
 her child to play with fire. Laura was a sort of play- 
 fellow — and oh, how Tom longed for playfellows! 
 In his secret heart he yearned to have Maggie with 
 him, and was almost ready to dote on her exasperat- 
 ing acts of f orgetf ulness ; though, when he was at 
 home, he always represented it as a great favor on 
 his part to let Maggie trot by his side on his pleas- 
 ure excursions. 
 
 261 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 And before this dreary half-year was ended, 
 Maggie actually came. Mrs. Stelling had given a 
 general invitation for the little girl to come and stay 
 with her brother: so when Mr. Tulliver drove over 
 to King's Lorton late in October, Maggie came too, 
 with the sense that she was taking a great journey, 
 and beginning to see the world. It was Mr. TuUi- 
 ver's first visit to see Tom, for the lad must learn not 
 to think too much about home. 
 
 "Well, my lad," he said to Tom, when Mr. Stell- 
 ing left the room to announce the arrival to his wife, 
 and Maggie had begun to kiss Tom freely, "you look 
 rarely! School agrees with you." 
 
 Tom wished he had looked rather ill. 
 
 "I don't think I am well, father," said Tom; "I 
 wish you'd ask Mr. Stelling not to let me do Euclid 
 — it brings on the toothache, I think." 
 
 (The toothache was the only malady to which 
 Tom had ever been subject.) 
 
 "Euclid, my lad — why, what's that?" said Mr. 
 Tulliver. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know: it's definitions, and axioms 
 and triangles, and things. It's a book I've got to 
 learn in — there's no sense in it." 
 
 "Go, go!" said Mr. Tulliver, reprovingly, "you 
 mustn't say so. "You must learn what your master 
 tells you. He knows what is right for you to learn." 
 
 "77/ help you now, Tom," said Maggie, with a 
 little air of patronizing consolation. "I've come to 
 
 262 
 
School -Time 
 
 stay ever so long, if Mrs. Stelling asks me. I've 
 brought my box and my pinafores, haven't I, 
 father?" 
 
 "Fow help me, you little silly thing!" said Tom, 
 in such high spirits at this announcement that he 
 quite enjoyed the idea of confounding Maggie by 
 showing her a page of Euclid. "I should like to see 
 you doing one of my lessons! Why, I learn Latin 
 too! Girls never learn such things. They're too 
 silly." 
 
 "I know what Latin is very well," said Maggie 
 confidently. "Latin's a language. There are Latin 
 words in the dictionary. There's bonus, a gift." 
 
 "Now, you're just wrong there. Miss Maggie!" 
 said Tom, secretly astonished. "You think you're 
 very wise! But 'bonus' means 'good,' as it happens 
 — bonus, bona, bonum." 
 
 "Well, that's no reason why it shouldn't mean 
 'gift,' " said Maggie stoutly. "It may mean several 
 things — almost every word does. There's 'lawn,' — 
 it means the grass-plot, as well as the stuff pocket- 
 handkerchiefs are made of." 
 
 "Well done, little 'un," said Mr. Tulliver, laugh- 
 ing, while Tom felt rather disgusted with Maggie's 
 knowingness, though beyond measure cheerful at the 
 thought that she was going to stay with him. Her 
 conceit would soon be overawed by the actual in- 
 spection of his books. 
 
 Mrs. Stelling, in her pressing invitation, did not 
 
 263 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 mention a longer time than a week for Maggie's stay; 
 but Mr. Stelling, who took her between his knees, 
 and asked her where she stole her dark eyes from, in- 
 sisted that she must stay a fortnight. Maggie thought 
 Mr. Stelling was a charming man, and Mr. TuUiver 
 was quite proud to leave his little wench where she 
 would have an opportunity of showing her clever- 
 ness to appreciating strangers. So it was agreed that 
 she should not be fetched home till the end of the 
 fortnight. 
 
 "Now, then, come with me into the study, Mag- 
 gie," said Tom, as their father drove away. "What 
 do you shake and toss your head now for, you silly?" 
 he continued; for though her hair was now under a 
 new dispensation, and was brushed smoothly behind 
 her ears, she seemed still in imagination to be tossing 
 it out of her eyes. "It makes you look as if you were 
 crazy." 
 
 "Oh, I can't help that," said Maggie, impatiently. 
 "Don't tease me, Tom. Oh, what books!" she ex- 
 claimed, as she saw the bookcases in the study, "How 
 I should like to have as many books as that!" 
 
 "Why, you couldn't read one of 'em," said Tom, 
 triumphantly. "They're all Latin." 
 
 "No, they aren't, said Maggie. "I can read the 
 
 back of this 'History of the Decline and Fall of 
 
 the Roman Empire.' " 
 
 "Well, what does that mean? You don't know," 
 said Tom, wagging his head. 
 
 264 
 
School-Time 
 
 "But I could soon find out," said Maggie, scorn- 
 fully. 
 
 "Why, how?" 
 
 "I should look inside, and see what it was about." 
 
 "You'd better not, Miss Maggie," said Tom, see- 
 ing her hand on the volume. "Mr. Stelling lets no- 
 body touch his books without leave, and I shall catch 
 it, if you take it out." 
 
 "Oh, very well ! Let me see all your books, then," 
 said Maggie turning to throw her arms round Tom's 
 neck, and rub his cheek with her small round nose. 
 
 Tom, in the gladness of his heart at having dear 
 old Maggie to dispute with and crow over again, 
 seized her round the waist, and began to jump with 
 her round the large library table. Away they 
 jumped with more and more vigor, till Maggie's 
 hair flew from behind her ears, and twirled about 
 like an animated mop. But the revelations round the 
 table became more and more irregular in their 
 sweep, till at last reaching Mr. Stelling's reading- 
 stand, they sent it thundering down with its heavy 
 lexicons to the floor. Happily it was the ground- 
 floor, and the study was a one-storied wing to the 
 house, so that the downfall made no alarming reson- 
 ance, though Tom stood dizzy and aghast for a few 
 minutes, dreading the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Stelling. 
 
 "Oh, I say, Maggie," said Tom at last, lifting up 
 the stand, "we must keep quiet here, you know. If 
 
 16^ 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 we break anything, Mrs. Stelling'U make us cry 
 peccavi." 
 
 "What's that?" said Maggie. 
 
 "Oh, it's the Latin for a good scolding," said 
 Tom, not without some pride in his knowledge. 
 
 "Is she a cross woman?" said Maggie. 
 
 "I believe you!" said Tom, with an emphatic nod. 
 
 "I think all women are crosser than men," said 
 Maggie, "Aunt Glegg's a great deal crosser than 
 Uncle Glegg, and mother scolds me more than father 
 does." 
 
 "Well, you II be a woman some day," said Tom, 
 "so you needn't talk." 
 
 "But I shall be a clever woman," said Maggie, 
 with a toss. 
 
 "Oh, I dare say, and a nasty conceited thing. 
 Everybody'll hate you." 
 
 "But you oughtn't to hate me, Tom: it'll be very 
 wicked of you, for I shall be your sister." 
 
 "Yes, but if you're a disagreeable thing I shall 
 hate you." 
 
 "Oh, but, Tom, you won't! I shan't be disagree- 
 able. I shall be very good to you — and I shall be 
 good to everybody. You won't hate me really, will 
 you, Tom?" 
 
 "Oh, bother! never mind! Come, it's time for 
 me to learn my lessons. See here! what I've got to 
 do," said Tom, drawing Maggie toward him and 
 showing her his theorem, while she pushed her hair 
 
 266 
 
School-Time 
 
 behind her ears, and prepared herself to prove her 
 capability of helping him in Euclid. She began to 
 read with full confidence in her own powers, but 
 presently, becoming quite bewildered, her face 
 flushed with irritation. It was unavoidable — she 
 must confess her incompetency, and she was not fond 
 of humiliation. 
 
 "It's nonsense!" she said, "and very ugly stuff — 
 nobody need want to make it out." 
 
 "Ah, there now, Miss Maggie!" said Tom, draw- 
 ing the book away, and wagging his head at her, "you 
 see you're not so clever as you thought you were." 
 
 "Oh," said Maggie, pouting, "I dare say I could 
 make it out, if I'd learned what goes before, as you 
 have." 
 
 "But that's what you just couldn't. Miss Wis- 
 dom," said Tom. "For it's all the harder when you 
 know what goes before: for then you've got to say 
 what definition 3. is, and what axiom V. is. 'But get 
 along with you now: I must go on with this. Here's 
 the Latin Grammar. See what you can make of that." 
 
 Maggie found the Latin Grammar quite soothing 
 after her mathematical mortification; for she de- 
 lighted in new words, and quickly found that there 
 was an English Key at the end, which would make 
 her very wise about Latin, at slight expense. She 
 presently made up her mind to skip the rules in the 
 Syntax — the examples became so absorbing. These 
 mysterious sentences, snatched from an unknown 
 
 267 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 context — like strange horns of beasts, and leaves of 
 unknown plants, brought from some far-off region — 
 gave boundless scope to her imagination, and were 
 all the more fascinating because they were in a pe- 
 culiar tongue of their own, which she could learn to 
 interpret. It was really very interesting — the Latin 
 Grammar that Tom had said no girls could learn: 
 and she was proud because she found it interesting. 
 The most fragmentary examples were her favorites. 
 Mors omnibus est communis would have been jejune, 
 only she liked to know the Latin; but the fortunate 
 gentleman whom every one congratulated because he 
 had a son "endowed with such a disposition" afforded 
 her a great deal of pleasant conjecture, and she was 
 quite lost in the "thick grove penetrable by no star," 
 when Tom called out — 
 
 "Now, then, Magsie, give us the Grammar!" 
 
 "Oh, Tom, it's such a pretty book!" she said, as 
 she jumped out of the large arm-chair to give it him ; 
 "it's much prettier than the Dictionary. I could 
 learn Latin very soon. I don't think it's at all 
 hard." 
 
 "Oh, I know what you've been doing," said Tom, 
 "you've been reading the English at the end. Any 
 donkey can do that." 
 
 Tom seized the book and opened it with a deter- 
 mined and business-like air, as much as to say that he 
 had a lesson to learn which no donkeys would find 
 themselves equal to. Maggie, rather piqued, turned 
 
 268 
 
School-Time 
 
 to the bookcases to amuse herself with puzzling out 
 the titles. 
 
 Presently Tom called to her: "Here, Magsie, 
 
 come and hear if I can say this. Stand at that end of 
 
 he table, where Mr. Stelling sits when he hears me." 
 
 Maggie obeyed, and took the open book. 
 
 "Where do you begin, Tom?" 
 
 "Oh, I begin at ^Appellativa arborum/ because I 
 say all over again what I've been learning this week." 
 
 Tom sailed along pretty well for three lines; and 
 Maggie was beginning to forget her office of 
 prompter in speculating as to what mas could mean, 
 which came twice over, when he stuck fast at Sunt 
 etiam volucrum. 
 
 "Don't tell me, Maggie; Sunt etiam volucrum — 
 Sunt etiam volucrum. ut ostrea, cetus '' 
 
 "No," said Maggie, opening her mouth and 
 shaking her head. 
 
 ^^Sunt etiam volucrum," said Tom, very slowly, 
 as if the next words might be expected to come sooner 
 when he gave them this strong hint that they were 
 waited for. 
 
 "C, e, u," said Maggie, getting impatient. 
 
 "Oh, I know — hold your tongue," said Tom. 
 
 Ceu passer, hirundo; Ferarum ferarum " 
 
 Tom took his pencil and made several hard dots with 
 it on his book-cover ''ferarum " 
 
 Oh, dear, oh, dear, Tom," said Maggie, what a 
 
 time you are! Ut "" 
 
 2,69 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "C7/, ostrea " 
 
 "No, no," said Maggie, "m^ tigris " 
 
 "Oh, yes, now I can do," said Tom; "it was tigris, 
 vulpes, I'd forgotten: ut tigris, vulpes; et Piscium." 
 
 With some further stammering and repetition, 
 Tom got through the next few lines. 
 
 "Now, then," he said, "the next is what I've just 
 learned for to-morrow. Give me hold of the book a 
 minute." 
 
 After some whispered gabbling, assisted by the 
 beating of his fist on the table, Tom returned the 
 book. 
 
 ^^Mascula nomina in a'' he began. 
 
 "No, Tom," said Maggie, "that doesn't come 
 next. It's Nomen non creskens genittivo '^ 
 
 ^^Creskens genittivo f^ exclaimed Tom, with a 
 derisive laugh, for Tom had learned this omitted 
 passage for his yesterday's lesson, and a young gen- 
 tleman does not require an intimate or extensive ac- 
 quaintance with Latin before he can feel the pitiable 
 absurdity of a false quantity. ^^Creskens genittivo/ 
 What a little silly you are, Maggie!" 
 
 "Well, you needn't laugh, Tom, for you didn't re- 
 member it at all. I'm sure it's spelled so; how was 
 I to know?" 
 
 "Phee-e-e-h! I told you girls couldn't learn 
 Latin. It's Nomen non crescens genitivo — '''' 
 
 "Very well, then," said Maggie, pouting. "I can 
 say that as well as you can. And you don't mind 
 
 270 
 
School-Time 
 
 your stops. For you ought to stop twice as long at a 
 semicolon as you do at a comma, and you make the 
 longest stops where there ought to be no stop at all." 
 
 "Oh, well, don't chatter. Let me go on." 
 
 They were presently fetched to spend the rest of 
 the evening in the drawing-room, and Maggie be- 
 came so animated with Mr. Stelling, who, she felt 
 sure, admired her cleverness, that Tom was rather 
 amazed and alarmed at her audacity. But she was 
 suddenly subdued by Mr. Stelling^s alluding to a lit- 
 tle girl of whom he had heard that she once ran away 
 to the gypsies. 
 
 "What a very odd little girl that must be!" said 
 Mrs. Stelling, meaning to be playful — but a playful- 
 ness that turned on her supposed oddity was not at all 
 to Maggie's taste. She feared that Mr. Stelling, af- 
 ter all, did not think much of her, and went to bed in 
 rather low spirits. Mrs. Stelling, she felt, looked at 
 her as if she thought her hair was very ugly because 
 it hung down straight behind. 
 
 Nevertheless it was a very happy fortnight to 
 Maggie this visit to Tom. She was allowed to be in 
 the study while he had his lessons, and in her various 
 readings got very deep into the examples in the Latin 
 Grammar. The astronomer who hated women gen- 
 erally, caused her so much puzzling speculation that 
 she one day asked Mr. Stelling if all astronomers 
 hated women, or whether it was only this particular 
 astronomer. But forestalling his answer, she said : 
 
 271 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "I suppose it's all astronomers: because, you 
 know, they live up in high towers, and if the women 
 came there, they might talk and hinder them from 
 looking at the stars." 
 
 Mr. Stelling liked her prattle immensely, and 
 they were on the best terms. She told Tom she 
 should like to go to school to Mr. Stelling, as he did, 
 and learn just the same things. She knew she could 
 do Euclid, for she had looked into it again, and she 
 saw what ABC meant: they were the names of the 
 lines. 
 
 "I'm sure you couldn't do it now," said Tom; 
 "and I'll just ask Mr. Stelling if you could." 
 
 "I don't mind," said the little conceited minx. 
 "I'll ask him myself." 
 
 "Mr. Stelling," she said, that same evening when 
 they were in the drawing-room, "couldn't I do 
 Euclid, and all Tom's lessons, if you were to teach me 
 instead of him?" 
 
 "No; you couldn't," said Tom, indignantly. 
 "Girls can't do Euclid: can they, sir?" 
 
 "They can pick up a little of everything, I dare 
 say," said Mr. Stelling. "They've a great deal of 
 superficial cleverness; but can't go far into anything. 
 They're quick and shallow." 
 
 Tom, delighted with this verdict, telegraphed his 
 triumph by wagging his head at Maggie, behind Mr. 
 Stelling's chair. As for Maggie, she had hardly ever 
 been so mortified. She had been so proud to be 
 
 272 
 
School-Time 
 
 called "quick" all her little life, and now it appeared 
 that this quickness was the brand of inferiority. It 
 would have been better to be slow, like Tom. 
 
 "Ha, ha! Miss Maggie!" said Tom, when they 
 were alone; "you see it's not such a fine thing to be 
 quick. You'll never go far into anything, you 
 know." 
 
 And Maggie was so oppressed by this dreadful 
 destiny that she had no spirit for a retort. 
 
 But when this small apparatus of shallow quick- 
 ness was fetched away in the gig by Luke, and the 
 study was once more quite lonely for Tom, he missed 
 her grievously. He had really been brighter, and 
 had got through his lessons better, since she had been 
 there; and she had asked Mr. Stelling so many ques- 
 tions about the Roman Empire, and whether there 
 really ever was a man who said, in Latin, "I would 
 not buy it for a farthing or a rotten nut," or whether 
 that had only been turned into Latin, that Tom had 
 actually come to a dim understanding of the fact that 
 there had once been people upon the earth vv^ho were 
 so fortunate as to know Latin without learning it 
 through the medium of the Eton Grammar. This 
 luminous idea was a great addition to his historical 
 acquirements during this half-year, which were 
 otherwise confined to an epitomized history of the 
 Jews. 
 
 But the dreary half-year did come to an end. 
 How glad Tom was to see the last yellow leaves 
 
 273 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 fluttering before the cold wind! The dark after- 
 noons, and the first December snow, seemed to him 
 far livelier than the August sunshine; and that he 
 might make himself the surer about the flight of 
 days that were carrying him homeward, he stuck 
 twenty-one sticks deep in a corner of the garden, 
 when he was three weeks from the holidays, and 
 pulled one up every day with a great wrench, throw- 
 ing it to a distance with a vigor of will which would 
 have carried it to limbo, if it had been in the nature 
 of sticks to travel so far. 
 
 But it was worth purchasing, even at the heavy 
 price of the Latin grammar — the happiness of seeing 
 the bright light in the parlor at home, as the gig 
 passed noiselessly over the snow-covered bridge: the 
 happiness of passing from the cold air to the warmth 
 and the kisses and the smiles of that familiar hearth, 
 where the pattern of the rug and the grate and the 
 fire-iron were "first ideas" that it was no more possi- 
 ble to criticise than the solidity and extension of mat- 
 ter. There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in 
 those scenes where we were born, where objects be- 
 came dear to us before we had known the labor of 
 choice, and where the outer world seemed only an 
 extension of our own personality: we accepted and 
 loved it as we accepted our own sense of existence and 
 our own limbs. Very commonplace, even ugly, that 
 furniture of our early home might look if it were put 
 up at auction; an improved taste in upholstery scorns 
 
 274 
 
School-Time 
 
 it; and is it not the striving after something better 
 and better in our surroundings, the grand character- 
 istic that distinguishes man from the brute — or, to 
 satisfy a scrupulous accuracy of definition, that dis- 
 tinguishes the British man from the foreign brute? 
 But heaven knows where that striving might lead us, 
 if our affections had not a trick of twining round 
 those old inferior things — if the loves and sanctities 
 of our life had no deep immovable roots in memory. 
 One's delight in an elderberry bush overhanging the 
 confused leafage of a hedgerow bank, as a more glad- 
 dening sight than the finest cistus or fuchsia spread- 
 ing itself on the softest undulating turf, is an entirely 
 unjustifiable preference to a nursery-gardener, or to 
 any of those severely regulated minds who are free 
 from the weakness of any attachment that does not 
 rest on a demonstrable superiority of qualities. And 
 there is no better reason for preferring this elder- 
 berry bush than that it stirs an early memory — that it 
 is no novelty in my life, speaking to me merely 
 through my present sensibilities to form and color, 
 but the long companion of my existence, that wove it- 
 self into my joys when joys were vivid. 
 
 It was a cold, wet January day on which Tom 
 went back to school; a day quite in keeping with this 
 severe phase of his destiny. If he had not carried in 
 his pocket a parcel of sugar-candy and a small Dutch 
 doll for little Laura, there would have been no ray of 
 expected pleasure to enliven the general gloom. But 
 
 275 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 he liked to think how Laura would put out her lips 
 and her tiny hands for the bits of sugar-candy; and, 
 to give the keenness to these pleasures of imagination, 
 he took out the parcel, made a small hole in the pa- 
 per, and bit off a crystal or two, which had so solac- 
 ing an effect under the confined prospect and damp 
 odors of the gig-umbrelia, that he repeated the proc- 
 ess more than once in his way. 
 
 "Well, TuUiver, we're glad to see you again," 
 said Mr. Stelling, heartily. "Take off your wrap- 
 pings and come into the study till dinner. You 
 will find a bright fire there, and a new com- 
 panion." 
 
 Tom felt in an uncomfortable flutter as he took off 
 his woollen comforter and other wrappings. He had 
 seen Philip Wakem at St. Ogg's, but had always 
 turned his eyes away from him as quickly as possible. 
 He would have disliked having a deformed boy for 
 his companion, even if Philip had not been the son of 
 a bad man. And Tom did not see how a bad man's 
 son could be very good. His own father was a good 
 man, and he would readily have fought any one who 
 said the contrary. He was in a state of mingled em- 
 barrassment and defiance as he followed Mr. Stelling 
 to the study. 
 
 "Here is a new companion for you to shake hands 
 with, Tulliver," said that gentleman on entering the 
 study — "Master Philip Wakem. I shall leave you to 
 make acquaintance by yourselves. You already know 
 
 276 
 
School-Time 
 
 something of each other, I imagine, for you are 
 neighbors at home." 
 
 Tom looked confused and awkward, while Philip 
 rose and glanced at him timidly. Tom did not like 
 to go up and put out his hand, and he was not 
 prepared to say, "How do you do?" on so short a 
 notice. 
 
 Mr. Stelling wisely turned away, and closed the 
 door behind him : boys' shyness only wears off in the 
 absence of their elders. 
 
 Philip was at once too proud and too timid to 
 walk toward Tom. He thought, or rather felt, that 
 Tom had an aversion to looking at him: every one, 
 almost, disliked looking at him; and his deformity 
 was more conspicuous when he vs^alked. So they re- 
 mained without shaking hands or even speaking, 
 while Tom went to the fire and warmed himself, 
 every now and then casting furtive glances at Philip, 
 who seemed to be drawing absently first one object 
 and then another on a piece of paper he had before 
 him. He had seated himself again, and as he drew, 
 was thinking what he could say to Tom, and trying 
 to overcome his own repugnance to making the first 
 advances. 
 
 Tom began to look oftener and longer at Philip's 
 face, for he could see it without noticing the hump, 
 and it was really not a disagreeable face — very old- 
 looking, Tom thought. He wondered how much 
 older Philip was than himself. An anatomist — even 
 
 277 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 a mere physiognomist — would have seen that the de- 
 formity of Philip's spine was not a congenital hump, 
 but the result of an accident in infancy; but you do 
 not expect from Tom any acquaintance with such 
 distinctions: to him, Philip was simply a humpback. 
 He had a vague notion that the deformity of Wak- 
 em's son had some relation to the lawyer's rascality, 
 of which he had so often heard his father talk with 
 hot emphasis; and he felt, too, a half-admitted fear 
 of him as probably a spiteful fellow, who not being 
 able to fight you, had cunning ways of doing you a 
 mischief by the sly. There was a humpback tailor 
 in the neighborhood of Mr. Jacobs's academy who 
 was considered a very unamiable character, and who 
 was much hooted after by public-spirited boys solely 
 on the ground of his unsatisfactory moral qualities; 
 so that Tom was not without a basis of fact to go 
 upon. Still, no face could be more unlike that ugly 
 tailor's than this melancholy boy's face; the brown 
 hair round it waved and curled at the ends like a 
 girl's. Tom thought that truly pitiable. This Wak- 
 em was a pale, puny fellow, and it was quite clear 
 that he would not be able to play at anything worth 
 speaking of: but he handled his pencil in an enviable 
 manner, and was apparently making one thing after 
 another without any trouble. What was he drawing? 
 Tom was quite warm now, and wanted something 
 new to be going forward. It was certainly more 
 agreeable to have an ill-natured humpback as a com- 
 
 278 
 
School-Time 
 
 panion than to stand looking out of the study window 
 at the rain, and kicking his foot against the wash- 
 board in solitude; something would happen every 
 day — "a quarrel or something"; and Tom thought he 
 should rather like to show Philip that he had better 
 not try his spiteful tricks on him. He suddenly 
 walked across the hearth, and looked over Philip's 
 paper. 
 
 "Why, that's a donkey with panniers — and a span- 
 iel, and partridges in the corn!" he exclaimed, his 
 tongue being completely loosed by surprise and ad- 
 miration. "O my buttons! I wish I could draw like 
 that. I'm to learn drawing this half — I wonder if I 
 shall learn to make dogs and donkeys?" 
 
 "Oh, you can do them without learning," said 
 Philip; "I never learned drawing!" 
 
 "Never learned?" said Tom in amazement. 
 "Why, when I make dogs and horses, and those 
 things, the heads and the legs won't come right; 
 though I can see how they ought to be very well. I 
 can make houses and all sorts of chimneys — chimneys 
 going all down the wall, and windows in the roof, 
 and all that. But I dare say I could do dogs and 
 horses if I was to try more," he added, reflecting that 
 Philip might falsely suppose that he was going to 
 "knock under," if he were too frank about the imper- 
 fection of his accomplishments. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Philip, "it's very easy. You've 
 only to look well at things, and draw them over and 
 
 279 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 over again. What you do wrong once, you can alter 
 the next time." 
 
 "But haven't you been taught anything?^^ said 
 Tom, beginning to have a puzzled suspicion that 
 Philip's crooked back might be the source of remark- 
 able faculties. "I thought you'd been to school a 
 long while. 
 
 "Yes," said Philip, smiling, "I've been taught 
 Latin, and Greek, and mathematics, and writing, and 
 such things." 
 
 "Oh, but I say, you don't like Latin, though, do 
 you?" said Tom, lowering his voice confidently. 
 
 "Pretty well; I don't care much about it," said 
 Philip. 
 
 "Ah, but perhaps you haven't got into the Propria 
 quae maribus/^ said Tom, nodding his head side- 
 ways, as much as to say, "that was the test: it was easy 
 talking till you came to that." 
 
 Philip felt some bitter complacency in the prom- 
 ising stupidity of this well-made active-looking boy; 
 but made polite by his own extreme sensitiveness, as 
 well as by his desire to conciliate, he checked his in- 
 clination to laugh, and said, quietly: 
 
 "I've done with the grammar; I don't learn that 
 any more." 
 
 "Then you won't have the same lessons as I 
 shall?" said Tom, with a sense of disappointment. 
 
 "No; but I dare say I can help you. I shall be 
 very glad to help you if I can." 
 
 280 
 
School-Time 
 
 Tom did not say "Thank you," for he was quite ab- 
 sorbed in the thought that Wakem's son did not seem 
 so spiteful a fellow as might have been expected. 
 
 "I say," he said, presently, "do you love your 
 father?" 
 
 "Yes," said Philip, coloring deeply; "don't you 
 love yours?" 
 
 "Oh, yes 1 only wanted to know," said Tom, 
 
 rather ashamed of himself, now he saw Philip col- 
 oring and looking uncomfortable. He found much 
 difficulty in adjusting his attitude of mind toward the 
 son of Lawyer Wakem, and it had occurred to him 
 that if Philip disliked his father, that fact might go 
 some way toward clearing up his perplexity. 
 
 "Shall you learn drawing now?" he said, by way 
 of changing the subject. 
 
 "No," said Philip. "My father wishes me to give 
 all my time to other things now." 
 
 "What! Latin, and Euclid, and those things?" 
 said Tom. 
 
 "Yes," said Philip, who had left ofif using his pen- 
 cil, and was resting his head on one hand, while Tom 
 was leaning forward on both elbows, and looking 
 with increasing admiration at the dog and the 
 donkey. 
 
 "And you don't mind that?" said Tom, with 
 strong curiosity. 
 
 "No; I like to know what everybody else knows. 
 I can study what I like by and by." 
 
 281 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ''I can't think why anybody should learn Latin," 
 said Tom. "It's no good." 
 
 "It's part of the education of a gentleman," said 
 Philip. "All gentlemen learn the same things." 
 
 "What! Do you think Sir John Crake, the mas- 
 ter of the harriers, knows Latin?" said Tom, who had 
 often thought he should like to resemble Sir John 
 Crake. 
 
 "He learned it when a boy, of course," said 
 Philip. "But I dare say he's forgotten it." 
 
 "Oh, well, I can do that, then," said Tom, not 
 with any epigrammatic intention, but with serious 
 satisfaction at the idea that, as far as Latin was con- 
 cerned, there was no hindrance to his resembling Sir 
 John Crake. "Only you're obliged to remember it 
 while you're at school, else you've got to learn ever 
 so many lines of 'Speaker.' Mr. Stelling's very par- 
 ticular — did you know? He'll have you up ten 
 times if you say 'nam' for 'jam'— — he won't let you 
 go a letter wrong, / can tell you." 
 
 "Oh, I don't mind," said Philip, unable to choke 
 a laugh; "I can remember things easily. And there 
 are some lessons I'm very fond of. I am very fond of 
 Greek history, and everything about the Greeks. I 
 should like to have been a Greek and fought the 
 Persians, and then have come home and have writ- 
 ten tragedies, or else have been listened to by every- 
 body for my wisdom, like Socrates, and have died a 
 grand death." (Philip, you perceive, was not with- 
 
 282 
 
School-Time 
 
 out a wish to impress the well-made barbarian with 
 a sense of his mental superiority.) 
 
 "Why, were the Greeks great fighters?" said 
 Tom, who saw a vista in this direction. "Is there 
 anything like David, and Goliath, and Samson, in the 
 Greek history? Those are the only bits I like in the 
 history of the Jews." 
 
 "Oh, there are very fine stories of that sort about 
 the Greeks — about the heroes of early times who 
 killed the wild beasts, as Samson did. And in the 
 'Odyssey' — that's a beautiful poem — there's a more 
 wonderful giant than Goliath — Polypheme, who had 
 only one eye in the middle of his forehead; and 
 Ulysses, a little fellow, but very wise and cunning, 
 got a red-hot pine-tree and stuck it into this one eye, 
 and made him roar like a thousand bulls." 
 
 "Oh, what fun!" said Tom, jumping away from 
 the table, and stamping first with one leg and then 
 the other. "I say, can you tell me all about those 
 stories? Because I shan't learn Greek, you know. 
 
 Shall I?" he added, pausing in his stamping 
 
 with a sudden alarm, lest the contrary might be pos- 
 sible. "Does every gentleman learn Greek? Will 
 
 Mr. Stelling make me begin with it, do you think?" 
 
 "No, I should think not — very likely not," said 
 Philip. "But you may read those stories without 
 knowing Greek. I've got them in English." 
 
 "Oh, but I don't like reading; I'd sooner have 
 you tell them me. But only the fighting ones. My 
 
 283 
 
 ^ Vol. 15—10 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 sister Maggie is always wanting to tell me stories — 
 but they're stupid things. Girls' stories always are. 
 Can you tell many fighting stories?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Philip; "lots of them, besides the 
 Greek stories. I can tell you about Richard Cosur- 
 de-Lion and Saladin, and about William Wallace, 
 and Robert Bruce, and James Douglas — I know no 
 end." 
 
 "You're older than I am, aren't you?" said Tom. 
 
 "Why, how old are you? I'm fifteen." 
 
 "I'm only going in fourteen," said Tom. "But I 
 thrashed all the fellows at Jacobs's — that's where I 
 was before I came here. And I beat 'em all at bandy 
 and climbing. And I wish Mr. Stelling would let 
 us go fishing. 1 could show you how to fish. You 
 could fish, couldn't you? It's only standing, and sit- 
 ting still, you know." 
 
 Tom, in his turn, wished to make the balance dip 
 in his favor. This hunchback must not suppose that 
 his acquaintance with fighting stories put him on a 
 par with an actual fighting hero, like Tom Tulliver. 
 Philip winced under this allusion to his unfitness for 
 active sports, and he answered almost peevishly: 
 
 "I can't bear fishing. I think people look like 
 fools sitting watching a line hour after hour — or else 
 throwing and throwing, and catching nothing." 
 
 "Ah, but you wouldn't say they looked like fools 
 when they landed a big pike, I can tell you," said 
 Tom, who had never caught anything that was "big" 
 
 284 
 
School-Time 
 
 in his life, but whose imagination was on the stretch 
 with indignant zeal for the honor of sport. Wakem's 
 son, it was plain, had his disagreeable points, and 
 must be kept in due check. Happily for the har- 
 mony of this first interview, they were now called to 
 dinner, and Phillip was not allowed to develop fur- 
 ther his unsound views on the subject of fishing. But 
 Tom said to himself, that was just what he should 
 have expected from a hunchback. 
 
 The alternations of feeling in that first dialogue 
 between Tom and Philip continued to mark their 
 intercourse even after many weeks of schoolboy inti- 
 macy. Tom never quite lost the feeling that Philip, 
 being the son of a "rascal," was his natural enemy, 
 never thoroughly overcame his repulsion to Philip's 
 deformity: he was a boy who adhered tenaciously to 
 impressions once received : as with all minds in which 
 mere perception predominates over thought and 
 emotion, the external remained to him rigidly what 
 it was in the first instance. But then, it was impossi- 
 ble not to like Philip's company when he was in a 
 good-humor; he could help one so well in one's Latin 
 exercises, which Tom regarded as a kind of puzzle 
 that could only be found out by a lucky chance ; and 
 he could tell such wonderful fighting stories about 
 Hal of the Wynd, for example, and other heroes who 
 were especial favorites with Tom, because they laid 
 about them with such heavy strokes. He had a very 
 small opinion of Saladin whose cimeter could cut a 
 
 285 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 cushion in two in an instant: who wanted to cut cush- 
 ions? That was a stupid story, and he didn't care to 
 hear it again. But when Robert Bruce, on the black 
 pony, rose in his stirrups, and, lifting his good bat- 
 tle-axe, cracked at once the helmet and the skull of 
 the too hasty knight at Bannockburn, then Tom felt 
 all the exaltation of sympathy, and if he had had a 
 cocoanut at hand, he would have cracked it at once 
 with the poker. Philip in his happier moods in- 
 dulged Tom to the top of his bent, heightening the 
 crash and bang and fury of every fight with all the 
 artillery of epithets and similes at his command. But 
 he was not always in a good humor or happy mood. 
 The slight spurt of peevish susceptibility which had 
 escaped him in their first interview, was a symptom 
 of a perpetually recurring mental ailment — half of 
 it nervous irritability, half of it the heart-bitterness 
 produced by the sense of his deformity. In these fits 
 of susceptibility every glance seemed to him to be 
 charged either with offensive pity or with ill-re- 
 pressed disgust — at the very least it was an indiffer- 
 ent glance, and Philip felt indifference as a child of 
 the south feels the chill air of a northern spring. 
 Poor Tom's blundering patronage when they were 
 out of doors together would sometimes make him 
 turn upon the well-meaning lad quite savagely; and 
 his eyes, usually sad and quiet, would flash with any- 
 thing but playful lightning. No wonder Tom re- 
 tained his suspicions of the humpback. 
 
 286 
 
School-Time 
 
 But Philip's self-taught skill in drawing was an- 
 other link between them; for Tom found, to his 
 disgust, that his new drawing-master gave him no 
 dogs and donkeys to draw, but brooks and rustic 
 bridges and ruins — all with general softness of black- 
 lead surface, indicating that nature, if anything, was 
 rather satiny; and as Tom's feeling for the pictur- 
 esque in landscape was at present quite latent, it is not 
 surprising that Mr. Goodrich's productions seemed 
 to him an uninteresting form of art. Mr. Tulliver, 
 having a vague intention that Tom should be put to 
 some business which included the drawing out of 
 plans and maps, had complained to Mr. Riley, when 
 he saw him at Mudport, that Tom seemed to be 
 learning nothing of that sort; whereupon that oblig- 
 ing adviser had suggested that Tom should have 
 drawing-lessons. Mr. Tulliver must not mind pay- 
 ing extra for drawing: let Tom be made a good 
 draughtsman, and he would be able to turn his pencil 
 to any purpose. So it was ordered that Tom should 
 have drawing-lessons; and whom should Mr. Stell- 
 ing have selected as a master if not Mr. Goodrich, 
 who was considered quite at the head of his profes- 
 sion within a circuit of twelve miles round King's 
 Lorton? By which means Tom learned to make an 
 extremely fine point to his pencil, and to represent 
 landscape with a ''broad generality," which, doubt- 
 less, from a narrow tendency in his mind to details, 
 he thought extremely dull. 
 
 287 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 All this, you remember, happened in those dark 
 ages when there were no schools of design — before 
 schoolmasters were invariably men of scrupulous in- 
 tegrity, and before the clergy were all men of en- 
 larged minds and varied culture. In those less fa- 
 vored days, it is no fable that there were other clergy- 
 men besides Mr. Stelling who had narrow intellects 
 and large wants, and whose income, by a logical con- 
 fusion to which Fortune, being a female as well as 
 blindfold, is peculiarly liable, was proportioned not 
 to their wants but to their intellect — with which in- 
 come has clearly no inherent relation. The problem 
 these gentlemen had to solve was to readjust the pro- 
 portion between their wants and their income; and 
 since wants are not easily starved to death, the sim- 
 pler method appeared to be — to raise their income. 
 There was but one way of doing this; any of those 
 low callings in which men are obliged to do good 
 work at a low price were forbidden to clergymen: 
 was it their fault if their only resource was to turn 
 out very poor work at a high price? Besides, how 
 should Mr. Stelling be expected to know that educa- 
 tion was a delicate and difficult business? any more 
 than an animal endowed with a power of boring a 
 hole through a rock should be expected to have wide 
 views of excavation. Mr. Stelling's facilities had 
 been early trained to boring in a straight line, and he 
 had no faculty to spare. But among Tom's contem- 
 poraries, whose fathers cast their sons on clerical in- 
 
 288 
 
School-Time 
 
 struction to find them ignorant after many days, there 
 were many far less lucky than Tom Tulliver. Edu- 
 cation was almost entirely a matter of luck — usually 
 of ill-luck — in those distant days. The state of mind 
 in which you take a billiard-cue or a dice-box in your 
 hand is one of sober certainty compared with that of 
 old-fashioned fathers, like Mr. Tulliver, when they 
 selected a school or a tutor for their sons. Excellent 
 men who had been forced all their lives to spell on an 
 impromptu-phonetic system, and having carried on 
 a successful business in spite of this disadvantage, had 
 acquired money enough to give their sons a better 
 start in life than they had had themselves, must neces- 
 sarily take their chance as to the conscience and the 
 competence of the schoolmaster whose circular fell 
 in their way, and appeared to promise so much more 
 than they would ever have thought of asking for, in- 
 cluding the return of linen, fork, and spoon. It was 
 happy for them if some ambitious draper of their ac- 
 quaintance had not brought up his son to the Church, 
 and if that young gentleman, at the age of four-and- 
 twenty, had not closed his college dissipations by an 
 imprudent marriage: otherwise, these innocent fa- 
 thers, desirous of doing the best for their offspring, 
 could only escape the draper's son by happening to 
 be on the foundation of a grammar-school as yet un- 
 visited by commissioners, where two or three boys 
 could have, all to themselves, the advantages of a 
 large and lofty building, together with a head-mas- 
 
 289 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ter, toothless, dim-eyed, and deaf, whose erudite in- 
 distinctness and inattention were engrossed by them 
 at the rate of three hundred pounds a head — a ripe 
 scholar, doubtless, when first appointed; but all ripe- 
 ness beneath the sun has a further stage less esteemed 
 in the market. 
 
 Tom TuUiver, then, compared with many other 
 British youths of his time who have since had to 
 scramble through life with some fragments of more 
 or less relevant knowledge, and a great deal of 
 strictly relevant ignorance, was not so very unlucky. 
 Mr. Stelling was a broad-chested healthy man, with 
 the bearing of a gentleman, a conviction that a grow- 
 ing boy required a sufficiency of beef, and a certain 
 hearty kindness in him that made him like to see Tom 
 looking well and enjoying his dinner; not a man of 
 refined conscience, or with any deep sense of the in- 
 finite issues belonging to everyday duties; not quite 
 competent to his high offices; but incompetent gentle- 
 men must live, and without private fortune it is diffi- 
 cult to see how they could all live genteelly if they 
 had nothing to do with education or government. 
 Besides, it was the fault of Tom's mental constitution 
 that his faculties could not be nourished on the sort of 
 knowledge Mr. Stelling had to communicate. A boy 
 born with a deficient power of apprehending signs 
 and abstractions must suffer the penalty of his con- 
 genital deficiency, just as if he had been born with 
 one leg shorter than the other. A method of educa- 
 
 290 
 
Schooi-Time 
 
 tion sanctioned by the long practice of our venerable 
 ancestors was not to give way before the exceptional 
 dulness of a boy who was merely living at the time 
 then present. And Mr. Stelling was convinced that 
 a boy so stupid at signs and abstractions must be 
 stupid at everything else, even if that reverend gen- 
 tleman could have taught him everything else. It 
 was the practice of our venerable ancestors to apply 
 that ingenious instrument the thumb-screw, and to 
 tighten and tighten it in order to elicit non-existent 
 facts! they had a fixed opinion to begin with, that the 
 facts were existent, and what had they to do but 
 to tighten the thumb-screw? In like manner, Mr. 
 Stelling had a fixed opinion that all boys with any 
 capacity could learn what it was the only regular 
 thing to teach : if they were slow, the thumb-screw 
 must be tightened — the exercises must be insisted on 
 with increased severity, and a page of Virgil be 
 awarded as a penalty, to encourage and stimulate a 
 too languid inclination to Latin verse. 
 
 The thumb-screw was a little relaxed, however, 
 during this second half-year. Philip was so ad- 
 vanced in his studies, and so apt, that Mr. Stelling 
 could obtain credit by his facility, which required 
 little help, much more easily than by the trouble- 
 some process of overcoming Tom's dulness. Gen- 
 tlemen with broad chests and ambitious intentions do 
 sometimes disappoint their friends by failing to carry 
 the world before them. Perhaps it is, that high 
 
 291 
 
School Day5 and College Life 
 
 achievements demand some other unusual qualifica- 
 tion besides an unusual desire for high prizes; per- 
 haps it is that these stalwart gentlemen are rather in- 
 dolent, their divinae particulum aurae being ob- 
 structed from soaring by a too hearty appetite. Some 
 reason or other there was why Mr. Stelling deferred 
 the execution of many spirited projects — why he did 
 not begin the editing of his Greek play, or any other 
 work of scholarship, in his leisure hours, but, after 
 turning the key of his private study with much reso- 
 lution, sat down to one of Theodore Hook's novels. 
 Tom was gradually allowed to shuffle through his 
 lessons with less rigor, and having Philip to help 
 him, he was able to make some show of having ap- 
 plied his mind in a confused and blundering way, 
 without being cross-examined into a betrayal that his 
 mind had been entirely neutral in the matter. He 
 thought school much more bearable under this modi- 
 fication of circumstances; and he went on contentedly 
 enough, picking up a promiscuous education chiefly 
 from things that were not intended as education at 
 all. What was understood to be his education was 
 simply the practice of reading, writing, and spelling, 
 carried on by an elaborate appliance of unintelligible 
 ideas, and by much failure in the effort to learn by 
 rote. 
 
 Nevertheless, there was a visible improvement in 
 Tom under this training; perhaps because he was not 
 a boy in the abstract, existing solely to illustrate the 
 
 292 
 
School-Time 
 
 evils of a mistaken education, but a boy made of 
 flesh and blood, with a disposition not entirely at the 
 mercy of circumstances. 
 
 There was a great improvement in his bearing, 
 for example, and some credit on this score was due to 
 Mr. Poulter, the village schoolmaster, who, being an 
 old Peninsular soldier, was employed to drill Tom — 
 a source of high mutual pleasure. Mr. Poulter, who 
 was understood by the company at the Black Swan 
 to have once struck terror into the hearts of the 
 French, was no longer personally formidable. He 
 had rather a shrunken appearance, and was tremu- 
 lous in the mornings, not from age, but from the ex- 
 treme perversity of the King's Lorton boys, which 
 nothing but gin could enable him to sustain with any 
 firmness. Still, he carried himself with martial 
 erectness, had his clothes scrupulously brushed, and 
 his trousers tightly strapped; and on the Wednes- 
 day and Saturday afternoons, when he came to Tom, 
 he was always inspired with gin and old memories, 
 which gave him an exceptionally spirited air, as of a 
 superannuated charger who hears the drum. The 
 drilling-lessons w^ere always protracted by episodes 
 of warlike narrative, much more interesting to Tom 
 than Philip's stories out of the "Iliad," for there 
 were no cannon in the "Iliad," and besides, Tom 
 had felt some disgust on learning that Hector and 
 Achilles might possibly never have existed. But the 
 Duke of Wellington was really alive, and Bony had 
 
 293 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 not been long dead — therefore Mr. Poulter's remi- 
 niscences of the Peninsular War were removed from 
 all suspicion of being mythical. Mr. Poulter, it ap- 
 peared, had been a conspicuous figure at Talavera, 
 and had contributed not a little to the peculiar terror 
 with which his regiment of infantry was regarded by 
 the enemy. On afternoons, when his memory was 
 more stimulated than usual, he remembered that the 
 Duke of Wellington had (in strict privacy, lest jeal- 
 ousies should be awakened), expressed his esteem for 
 that fine fellow Poulter. The very surgeon who at- 
 tended him in the hospital, after he had received his 
 gunshot-wound, had been profoundly impressed with 
 the superiority of Mr. Poulter's flesh: no other flesh 
 would have healed in anything like the same time. 
 On less personal matters connected with the impor- 
 tant warfare in which he had been engaged, Mr. 
 Poulter was more reticent, only taking care not to 
 give the weight of his authority to any loose notions 
 concerning military history. Any one who pretended 
 to a knowledge of what occurred at the siege of 
 Badajos, was especially an object of silent pity to Mr. 
 Poulter; he wished that prating person had been run 
 down, and had the breath trampled out of him at the 
 first go-off, as he himself had — he might talk about 
 the siege of Badajos then! Tom did not escape irri- 
 tating his drilling-master occasionally, by his curi- 
 osity concerning other military matters than Mr. 
 Poulter's personal experience. 
 
 294 
 
School- Time 
 
 "And General Wolfe, Mr. Poulter? wasn't he a 
 wonderful fighter?" said Tom, who held the notion 
 that all the martial heroes commemorated on the 
 public-house signs were engaged in the war with 
 Bony. 
 
 "Not at all!" said Mr. Poulter, contemptuously. 
 
 "Nothing o' the sort! Heads up," he added, in a 
 
 tone of stern command, which delighted Tom and 
 made him feel as if he were a regiment in his own 
 person. 
 
 "No, no!" Mr. Poulter would continue, on com- 
 ing to a pause in his discipline. "They'd better not 
 talk to me about General Wolfe. He did nothing 
 but die of his wound: that's a poor haction, I con- 
 sider. Any other man 'ud have died o' the wounds 
 
 I've had One of my sword-cuts 'ud ha' killed a 
 
 fellow like General Wolfe." 
 
 "Mr. Poulter," Tom would say, at any allusion to 
 the sword, "I wish you'd bring your sword and do 
 the sword exercise!" 
 
 For a long while Mr. Poulter only shook his head 
 in a significant manner at this request, and smiled 
 patronizingly, as Jupiter may have done when 
 Semele urged her too ambitious request. But one af- 
 ternoon, when a sudden shower of heavy rain had de- 
 tained Mr. Poulter twenty minutes longer than usual 
 at the Black Swan, the sword was brought — just for 
 Tom to look at. 
 
 "And this is the real sword you fought with in all 
 
 295 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 the battles, Mr. Poulter?" said Tom, handling the 
 hilt. "Has it ever cut a Frenchman's head off?" 
 
 "Head off? Ah! and would, if he'd had three 
 heads." 
 
 "But you had a gun and bayonet besides, because 
 you could shoot 'em first and spear 'em after. Bang! 
 Ps-s-s-s!" Tom gave the requisite pantomime to in- 
 dicate the double enjoyment of pulling the trigger 
 and thrusting the spear. 
 
 "Ah, but the sword's the thing when you c'ome to 
 close fighting," said Mr. Poulter, involuntarily fall- 
 ing in with Tom's enthusiasm, and drawing the 
 sword so suddenly that Tom leaped back with much 
 agility. 
 
 "Oh, but, Mr. Poulter, if you're going to ex- 
 ercise," said Tom, a little conscious that he had not 
 stood his ground as became an Englishman, "let me 
 go and call Philip. He'd like to see you, you 
 know." 
 
 "What! the humpbacked lad?" said Mr. Poulter, 
 contemptuously. "What's the use of his looking 
 on?" 
 
 "Oh, but he knows a deal about fighting," said 
 Tom, "and how they used to fight with bows and ar- 
 rows, and battle-axes." 
 
 "Let him come then. I'll show him something 
 different from his bows and arrows," said Mr. Poul- 
 ter, coughing, and drawing himself up, while he 
 gave a little preliminary play to his wrist. 
 
 296 
 
School- Time 
 
 Tom ran in to Philip, who was enjoying his after- 
 noon's holiday at the piano, in the drawing-room, 
 picking out tunes for himself and singing them. He 
 was supremely happy, perched like an amorphous 
 bundle on the high stool, with his head thrown back, 
 his eyes fixed on the opposite cornice, and his lips 
 wide open, sending forth, with all his might, im- 
 promptu syllables to a tune of Arne's, which had hit 
 his fancy. 
 
 "Come, Philip," said Tom, bursting in; "don't 
 stay roaring 'la, la,' there — come and see old Poulter 
 do his sword-exercise in the carriage-house!" 
 
 The jar of this interruption — the discord of Tom's 
 tones coming across the notes to which Philip was 
 vibrating in soul and body, would have been enough 
 to unhinge his temper, even if there had been no 
 question of Poulter the drilling-master; and Tom, 
 in the hurry of seizing something to say to prevent 
 Mr. Poulter from thinking he was afraid of the 
 sword when he sprang away from it, had alighted 
 on this proposition to fetch Philip — though he knew 
 well enough that Philip hated to hear him mention 
 his drilling-lessons. Tom would never have done so 
 inconsiderate a thing except under the severe stress 
 of his personal pride. 
 
 Philip shuddered visibly as he paused from his 
 music. Then turning red, he said, with violent 
 passion — 
 
 "Get away, you lumbering idiot! Don't come 
 
 297 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 bellowing at me — you're not fit to speak to anything 
 but a cart-horse!" 
 
 It was not the first time Philip had been made 
 angry by him, but Tom had never before been as- 
 sailed with verbal missiles that he understood so 
 well. 
 
 "I'm fit to speak to something better than you — 
 you poor-spirited imp!" said Tom, lighting up im- 
 mediately at Philip's fire. "You know I won't hit 
 you, because you're no better than a girl. But I'm 
 an honest man's son, and your father's a rogue — 
 everybody says so!" 
 
 Tom flung out of the room, and slammed the 
 door after him, made strangely heedless by his an- 
 ger; for to slam doors within the hearing of Mrs. 
 Stelling, who was probably not far off, was an of- 
 fence only to be wiped out by twenty lines of Virgil. 
 In fact, that lady did presently descend from her 
 room, in double wonder at the noise and the subse- 
 quent cessation of Philip's music. She found him 
 sitting in a heap on the hassock, and crying bitterly. 
 
 "What's the matter, Wakem? What was that 
 noise about? Who slammed the door?" 
 
 Philip looked up, and hastily dried his eyes. "It 
 was TuUiver who came in — to ask me to go out with 
 him." 
 
 "And what are you in trouble about?" said Mrs. 
 Stelling. 
 
 Philip was not her favorite of the two pupils; 
 
 298 
 
School-Time 
 
 he was less obliging than Tom, who was made useful 
 in many ways. Still, his father paid more than Mr. 
 Tulliver did, and she meant him to feel that she 
 behaved exceedingly well to him. Philip, however, 
 met her advances toward a good understanding very 
 much as a caressed moUusk meets an invitation to 
 show himself out of his shell. Mrs. Stelling was not 
 a loving, tender-hearted woman; she was a woman 
 whose skirts sat well, who adjusted her waist and 
 patted her curls with a preoccupied air when she in- 
 quired after your welfare. These things, doubtless, 
 represent a great social power, but it is not the power 
 of love — and no other power could win Philip from 
 his personal reserve. 
 
 He said, in answer to her question, "My tooth- 
 ache came on, and made me hysterical again." 
 
 This had been the fact once, and Philip was glad 
 of the recollection — it was like an inspiration to en- 
 able him to excuse his crying. He had to accept 
 eau-de-Cologne, and to refuse creosote in con- 
 quence; but that was easy. 
 
 Meanwhile Tom, who had for the first time sent 
 a poisoned arrow into Philip's heart, had returned 
 to the carriage-house, where he found Mr. Poulter, 
 with a fixed and earnest eye, wasting the perfections 
 of his sword exercise on probably observant but in- 
 appreciative rats. But Mr. Poulter was a host in 
 himself; that is to say, he admired himself more than 
 a whole army of spectators could have admired him. 
 
 299 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 He took no notice of Tom's return, being too entirely 
 absorbed in the cut and thrust — the solemn one, two, 
 three, four; and Tom, not without a slight feeling of 
 alarm at Mr. Poulter's fixed eye and hungry-looking 
 sword, which seemed impatient for something else to 
 cut besides the air, admired the performance from as 
 great a distance as possible. It was not until Mr. 
 Poulter paused and wiped the perspiration from his 
 forehead, that Tom felt the full charm of the sword- 
 exercise, and wished it to be repeated. 
 
 "Mr. Poulter," said Tom, when the sword was 
 being finally sheathed, "I wish you'd lend me your 
 sword a while to keep." 
 
 "No, no, young gentleman," said Mr. Poulter, 
 shaking his head, decidedly, "you might do yourself 
 some mischief with it." 
 
 "No, I'm sure I wouldn't — I'm sure I'd take care 
 and not hurt myself. I shouldn't take it out of the 
 sheath much, but I could ground arms with it, and 
 all that." 
 
 "No, no, it wouldn't do, I tell you; it won't do," 
 said Mr. Poulter, preparing to depart. "What 'ud 
 Mr. Stelling say to me?" 
 
 "Oh, I say, do, Mr. Poulter! I'd give you my 
 five-shilling piece if you'd let me keep the sword a 
 week. Look here!" said Tom, reaching out the at- 
 tractively large round of silver. The young dog cal- 
 culated the effect as well as if he had been a phi- 
 losopher. 
 
 300 
 
School-Time 
 
 "Well," said Mr. Poulter, with still deeper grav- 
 ity, "you must keep it out of sight, you know." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I'll keep it under the bed," said Tom, 
 eagerly, "or else at the bottom of my large box." 
 
 "And let me see, now, whether you can draw it 
 out of the sheath without hurting yourself." 
 
 That process having been gone through more 
 than once, Mr. Poulter felt that he had acted with 
 scrupulous conscientiousness, and said, "Well, now. 
 Master Tulliver, if I take the crown-piece, it is to 
 make sure as you'll do no mischief with the sword." 
 
 "Oh, no, indeed, Mr. Poulter," said Tom, delight- 
 edly, handing him the crown-piece, and grasping the 
 sword, which, he thought, might have been lighter 
 with advantage. 
 
 "But if Mr. Stelling catches you carrying it in?" 
 said Mr. Poulter, pocketing the crown-piece pro- 
 visionally while he raised this new doubt. 
 
 "Oh, he always keeps in his upstairs study on 
 Saturday afternoons," said Tom, who disliked any- 
 thing sneaking, but was not disinclined to a little 
 stratagem in a worthy cause. So he carried off the 
 sword in triumph, mixed with dread — dread that he 
 might encounter Mr. or Mrs. Stelling — to his bed- 
 room, where, after some consideration, he hid it in 
 the closet behind some hanging clothes. That night 
 he fell asleep in the thought that he would astonish 
 Maggie with it when she came — tie it around his 
 waist with his red comforter, and make her believe 
 
 301 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 that he was going to be a soldier. There was no- 
 body but Maggie who would be silly enough to be- 
 lieve him, or whom he dared allow to know that he 
 had a sword; and Maggie was really coming next 
 week to see Tom, before she went to a boarding- 
 school with Lucy. 
 
 If you think a lad of thirteen would not have 
 been so childish, you must be an exceptionally wise 
 man, who, although you are devoted to a civil call- 
 ing, requiring you to look bland rather than formi- 
 dable, yet never, since you had a beard, threw your- 
 self into a martial attitude and frowned before the 
 looking-glass. It is doubtful whether our soldiers 
 would be maintained if there were not pacific people 
 at home who liked to fancy themselves soldiers. War, 
 like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease 
 for want of a "public." 
 
 The last breach between the two lads was not 
 readily mended, and for some time they spoke to 
 each other no more than was necessary. Their nat- 
 ural antipathy of temperament made resentment an 
 easy passage to hatred, and in Philip the transition 
 seemed to have begun: there was no malignity in his 
 disposition, but there was a susceptibility that made 
 him peculiarly liable to a strong sense of repulsion. 
 The ox — we may venture to assert it on the author- 
 ity of a great classic — is not given to use his teeth as 
 an instrument of attack; and Tom was an excellent 
 bovine lad, who ran at questionable objects in a truly 
 
 302 
 
School-Time 
 
 ingenious bovine manner; but he had blundered on 
 Philip's tenderest point, and had caused him as much 
 acute pain as if he had studied the means with the 
 nicest precision and the most envenomed spite. Tom 
 saw no reason why they should not make up this 
 quarrel as they had done many others, by behaving 
 as if nothing had happened; for though he had never 
 before said to Philip that his father was a rogue, this 
 idea had so habitually made part of his feeling as to 
 the relation between himself and his dubious school- 
 fellow, whom he could neither like nor dislike, that 
 the mere utterance did not make such an epoch to 
 him as it did to Philip. And he had a right to say 
 so when Philip hectored over him, and called him 
 names. But perceiving that his first advances to- 
 ward amity were not met, he relapsed into his least 
 favorable disposition toward Philip, and resolved 
 never to appeal to him either about drawing or ex- 
 ercises again. They were only so far civil to each 
 other as was necessary to prevent their state of feud 
 from being observed by Mr. Stelling, who would 
 have "put down" such nonsense with great vigor. 
 
 When Maggie came, however, she could not help 
 looking with growing interest at the new schoolfel- 
 low, although he was the son of that wicked Lawyer 
 Wakem, who made her father so angry. She had 
 arrived in the middle of school-hours, and had sat 
 by while Philip went through his lessons with Mr. 
 Stelling. Tom, some weeks ago, had sent her word 
 
 3^2 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 that Philip knew no end of stories — not stupid stories 
 like hers; and she was convinced now from her own 
 observation that he must be very clever: she hoped 
 he would think her rather clever, too, when she came 
 to talk to him. Maggie, moreover, had rather a 
 tenderness for deformed things; she preferred the 
 wry-necked lambs, because it seemed to her that the 
 lambs which were quite strong and well made 
 wouldn't mind so much about being petted; and she 
 was especially fond of petting objects that would 
 think it very delightful to be petted by her. She 
 loved Tom very dearly, but she often wished that he 
 cared more about her loving him. 
 
 "I think Philip Wakem seems a nice boy, Tom," 
 she said, when they went out of the study together 
 into the garden, to pass the interval before dinner. 
 "He couldn't choose his father, you know; and I've 
 read of very bad men who had good sons, as well as 
 good parents who had bad children. And if Philip 
 is good, I think we ought to be the more sorry for 
 him because his father is not a good man. You like 
 him, don't you?" 
 
 "Oh, he's a queer fellow," said Tom, curtly, "and 
 he's as sulky as can be with me, because I told him 
 his father was a rogue. And I'd a right to tell him 
 so, for it was true — and he began it, with calling me 
 names. But you stop here by yourself a bit, Maggie, 
 will you? I've got something I want to do up- 
 stairs." 
 
 304 
 
School-Time 
 
 "Can't I go, too?" said Maggie, who in this first 
 day of meeting again, loved Tom's shadow. 
 
 "No, it's something I'll tell you about by-and-by, 
 not yet," said Tom, skipping away. 
 
 In the afternoon the boys were at their books in 
 the study, preparing the morrow's lessons, that they 
 might have a holiday in the evening in honor of 
 Maggie's arrival. Tom was hanging over his Latin 
 grammar, moving his lips inaudibly like a strict but 
 impatient Catholic repeating his tale of paternosters; 
 and Philip, at the other end of the room, was busy 
 with two volumes, with a look of contented diligence 
 that excited Maggie's curiosity; he did not look at all 
 as if he were learning a lesson. She sat on a low 
 stool at nearly a right angle with the two boys, watch- 
 ing first one and then the other; and Philip, looking 
 off his book once toward the fireplace, caught the 
 pair of questioning dark eyes fixed upon him. He 
 thought this sister of TuUiver's seemed a nice little 
 thing, quite unlike her brother; he wished he had a 
 little sister. What was it, he wondered, that made 
 Maggie's dark eyes remind him of the stories about 
 princesses being turned into animals? — I think it 
 was that her eyes were full of unsatisfied intelli- 
 gence, and, unsatisfied, beseeching affection. 
 
 "I say, Magsie," said Tom at last, shutting his 
 books and putting them away with the energy and de- 
 cision of a perfect master in the art of leaving off, 
 "I've done my lessons now. Come upstairs with me," 
 
 30s 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "What is it?" said Maggie, when they were out- 
 side the door, a slight suspicion crossing her mind 
 as she remembered Tom's preliminary visit up- 
 stairs. "It isn't a trick you're going to play me 
 now?" 
 
 "No, no, Maggie," said Tom, in his most coax- 
 ing tone ; "it's something you'll like ever so/' 
 
 He put his arm around her neck, and she put hers 
 round his waist, and, twined together in this way, 
 they went upstairs. 
 
 "I say, Magsie, you must not tell anybody, you 
 know," said Tom, "else I shall get fifty lines." 
 
 "Is it alive?" said Maggie, whose imagination had 
 settled for the moment on the idea that Tom kept a 
 ferret clandestinely. 
 
 "Oh, I shan't tell you," said he. "Now you go 
 into that corner and hide your face, while I reach it 
 out," he added, as he locked the bedroom door be- 
 hind them. "I'll tell you when to turn round. You 
 mustn't squeal out, you know." 
 
 "Oh, but if you frighten me, I shall," said 
 Maggie, beginning to look rather serious. 
 
 "You won't be frightened, you silly thing," said 
 Tom. "Go and hide your face, and mind you don't 
 peep." 
 
 "Of course I shan't peep," said Maggie, disdain- 
 fully; and she buried her face in the pillow like a 
 person of strict honor. 
 
 But Tom looked round warily as he walked to the 
 
 306 
 
School- Time 
 
 closet; then he stepped into the narrow space, and 
 almost closed the door. Maggie kept her face buried 
 without the aid of principle, for in that dream-sug- 
 gestive attitude she had soon forgotten where she was, 
 and her thoughts were busy with the poor deformed 
 boy, who was so clever, when Tom called out, "Now 
 then, Magsie!" 
 
 Nothing but long meditation and preconcerted ar- 
 rangement of effects could have enabled Tom to pre- 
 sent so striking a figure as he did to Maggie when she 
 looked up. Dissatisfied with the pacific aspect of a 
 face which had no more than the faintest hintof flaxen 
 eyebrow, together with a pair of amiable blue-gray 
 eyes and round pink cheeks that refused to look for- 
 midable, let him frown as he would before the look- 
 ing-glass — (Philip had once told him of a man who 
 had a horse-shoe frown, and Tom tried with all his 
 frowning-might to make a horse-shoe on his fore- 
 head) — he had had recourse to that unfailing source 
 of the terrible, burned cork, and had made himself a 
 pair of black eyebrows that met in a satisfactory 
 manner over his nose, and were matched by a less 
 carefully adjusted blackness about the chin. He had 
 wound a red handkerchief round his cloth cap to 
 give it the air of a turban, and his red comforter 
 across his breast as a scarf — an amount of red which, 
 with the tremendous frown on his brow, and the de- 
 cision with which he grasped the sword, as he held 
 it with its point resting on the ground, would suf- 
 
 307 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 fice to convey an approximative idea of his fierce and 
 bloodthirsty disposition. 
 
 Maggie looked bewildered for a moment, and 
 Tom enjoyed that moment keenly; but in the next 
 she laughed, and clapped her hands together, and 
 said, "Oh, Tom, you've made yourself like Blue- 
 beard at the show." 
 
 It was clear she had not been struck with the 
 presence of the sword — it was not unsheathed. Her 
 frivolous mind required a more direct appeal to its 
 sense of the terrible, and Tom prepared for his mas- 
 ter-stroke. Frowning with a double amount of in- 
 tention, if not of corrugation, (carefully) drew the 
 sword from its sheath, and pointed it at Maggie. 
 
 "Oh, Tom, please don't," exclaimed Maggie, in 
 a tone of suppressed dread, shrinking away from him 
 into the opposite corner. "I shall scream^ — I'm sure 
 I shall! Oh, don't! I wish I'd never come upstairs!" 
 
 The corners of Tom's mouth showed an inclina- 
 tion to a smile of complacency that was immediately 
 checked as inconsistent with the severity of a great 
 warrior. Slowly he let down the scabbard on the 
 floor, lest it should make too much noise, and then 
 said, sternly — 
 
 "I'm the Duke of Wellington! March!" stamp- 
 ing forward with the right leg a little bent, and the 
 sword still pointing toward Maggie, who, trembling, 
 with tear-filled eyes, got upon the bed, as the only 
 means of widening the space between them. 
 
 308 
 
School-Time 
 
 Tom, happy in this spectator of his military per- 
 formances, even though the spectator was only 
 Maggie, proceeded with the utmost exertion of his 
 force to such an exhibition of the cut and thrust 
 as would necessarily be expected of the Duke of 
 .Wellington. 
 
 "Tom, I will not bear it — I will scream," said 
 Maggie, at the first movement of the sword. "You'll 
 hurt yourself; you'll cut your head off." 
 
 "One — two," said Tom, resolutely, though at 
 "two" his wrist trembled a little. "Three," came 
 more slowly, and with it the sword swung down- 
 ward, and Maggie gave a loud shriek. The sword 
 had fallen, with its edge on Tom's foot, and in a 
 moment after he had fallen, too. Maggie leaped 
 from the bed, still shrieking, and immediately there 
 was a rush of footsteps toward the room. Mr. Stell- 
 ing, from his upstairs study, was the first to enter. 
 He found both the children on the floor. Tom had 
 fainted, and Maggie was shaking him by the collar 
 of his jacket, screaming, with wild eyes. She 
 thought he was dead, poor child! and yet she shook 
 him, as if that would bring him back to life. In 
 another minute she was sobbing with joy because 
 Tom had opened his eyes : she couldn't sorrow yet 
 that he had hurt his foot— it seemed as if all happi- 
 ness lay in his being alive. 
 
 Poor Tom bore his severe pain heroically, and 
 was resolute in not "telling" of Mr. Poulter more 
 
 309 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 than was unavoidable: the five-shilling piece re- 
 mained a secret even to Maggie. But there was a 
 terrible dread weighing on his mind — so terrible 
 that he dared not even ask the question which might 
 bring the fatal "yes" — he dared not ask the surgeon 
 or Mr. Stelling, "Shall I be lame, sir?" He mas- 
 tered himself so far as not to cry out at the pain, but 
 when his foot had been dressed, and he was left alone 
 with Maggie seated by his bedside, the children 
 sobbed together with their heads laid on the same 
 pillow. Tom was thinking of himself walking about 
 on crutches, like the wheelwright's son ; and Maggie, 
 who did not guess what was in his mind, sobbed for 
 company. It had not occurred to the surgeon or to 
 Mr. Stelling to anticipate this dread in Tom's mind, 
 and to reassure him by hopeful words. But Philip 
 watched the surgeon out of the house, and waylaid 
 Mr. Stelling to ask the very question that Tom had 
 not dared to ask himself. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir — but does Mr. Askern 
 say TuUiver will be lame?" 
 
 "Oh, no, oh, no," said Mr. Stelling, "not perma- 
 nently, only for a little while." 
 
 "Did he tell TuUiver so, sir, do you think?" 
 
 "No: nothing was said to him on the subject." 
 
 "Then may I go and tell him, sir?" 
 
 "Yes, to be sure: now you mention it, I dare say 
 he may be troubling about that. Go to his bedroom, 
 but be very quiet at present." 
 
 310 
 
School-Time 
 
 It had been Philip's first thought when he heard 
 of the accident — "Will Tulliver be lame? It will 
 be very hard for him if he is" — and Tom's hitherto 
 unforgiven offences were washed out by that pity. 
 Philip felt that they were no longer in a state of re- 
 pulsion, but were being drawn into a common cur- 
 rent of suffering and sad privation. His imagina- 
 tion did not dwell on the outward calamity and its 
 future effect on Tom's life, but it made vividly pres- 
 ent to him the probable state of Tom's feeling. 
 Philip had only lived fourteen years, but those years 
 had, most of them, been steeped in the sense of a lot 
 irremediably hard. 
 
 "Mr. Askern says you'll soon be all right again, 
 Tulliver, did you know?" he said rather timidly, 
 as he stepped gently up to Tom's bed. "I've just 
 been to ask Mr. Stelling, and he says you'll walk as 
 well as ever again by and by." 
 
 Tom looked up with that momentary stopping 
 of the breath which comes with a sudden joy; then 
 he gave a long sigh, and turned his blue-gray eyes 
 straight on Philip's face, as he had not done for a 
 fortnight or more. As for Maggie, this informa- 
 tion of a possibility she had not thought of before, 
 affected her as a new trouble ; the bare idea of Tom's 
 being always lame overpowered the assurance that 
 such a misfortune was not likely to befall him, and 
 she clung to him and cried afresh. 
 
 "Don't be a little silly, Maggie," said Tom ten- 
 
 311 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 derly, feeling very brave now. "I shall soon get 
 v^ell." 
 
 "Good-by, Tulliver," said Philip, putting out his 
 small, delicate hand, which Tom clasped immedi- 
 ately with his more substantial fingers. 
 
 "I say," said Tom, "ask Mr. Stelling to let you 
 come and sit with me sometimes, till I get up again, 
 Wakem — and tell me about Robert Bruce, you 
 know." 
 
 After that, Philip spent all his time out of school- 
 hours with Tom and Maggie. Tom liked to hear 
 fighting stories as much as ever, but he insisted 
 strongly on the fact that those great fighters, who did 
 so many wonderful things and came off unhurt, wore 
 excellent armor from head to foot, which made fight- 
 ing easy work, he considered. He should not have 
 hurt his foot if he had had an iron shoe on. He 
 listened with very great interest to a new story of 
 Philip's about a man who had a very bad wound in 
 his foot, and cried out so dreadfully with the pain 
 that his friends could bear with him no longer, but 
 put him ashore on a desert island, with nothing but 
 some wonderful poisoned arrows to kill animals with 
 for food. 
 
 "I didn't roar out a bit, you know," Tom said, 
 "and I dare say my foot was as bad as his. It's cow- 
 ardly to roar." 
 
 But Maggie would have it that when anything 
 hurt you very much, it was quite permissible to cry 
 
 312 
 
School-Time 
 
 out, and it was cruel of people not to bear it. She 
 wanted to know if Philoctetes had a sister, and why 
 she didn't go with him on the desert island and take 
 care of him. 
 
 One day, soon after Philip had told this story, he 
 and Maggie were in the study alone together while 
 Tom's foot was being dressed. Philip was at his 
 books, and Maggie, after sauntering idly round the 
 room, not caring to do anything in particular, be- 
 cause she would soon go to Tom again, went and 
 leaned on the table near Philip to see what he was 
 doing, for they were quite old friends now, and per- 
 fectly at home with each other. 
 
 "What are you reading about in Greek?" she 
 said. "It's poetry — I can see that, because the lines 
 are so short." 
 
 "It's about Philoctetes — the lame man I vv^as tell- 
 ing you of yesterday," he answered, resting his head 
 on his hand, and looking at her, as if he were not at 
 all sorry to be interrupted. Maggie, in her absent 
 way, continued to lean forward, resting on her arms 
 and moving her feet about, while her dark eyes got 
 more and more fixed and vacant, as if she had quite 
 forgotten Philip and his book. 
 
 "Maggie," said Philip, after a minute or two, 
 still leaning on his elbow and looking at her, "if you 
 had had a brother like me, do you think you should 
 have loved him as well as Tom?" 
 
 Maggie started a little on being roused from her 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 revery, and said, "What?" Philip repeated his 
 question. 
 
 "Oh, yes, better," she answered, immediately. 
 "No, not better; because I don't think I could love 
 you better than Tom. But I should be so sorry — so 
 sorry for you." 
 
 Philip colored: he had meant to imply, would 
 she love him as well in spite of his deformity, and 
 yet when she alluded to it so plainly, he winced un- 
 der her pity. Maggie, young as she was, felt her 
 mistake. Hitherto she had instinctively behaved as 
 if she were quite unconscious of Philip's deformity: 
 her own keen sensitiveness and experience under fam- 
 ily criticism sufficed to teach her this as well as if 
 she had been directed by the most finished breeding. 
 
 "But you are so very clever, Philip, and you can 
 play and sing," she added, quickly. "I wish you 
 were my brother. I'm very fond of you. And you 
 would stay at home with me when Tom went out, 
 and you would teach me everything — wouldn't you? 
 Greek and everything?" 
 
 "But you'll go away soon, and go to school, 
 Maggie," said Philip, "and then you'll forget all 
 about me, and not care for me any more. And then 
 I shall see you when you're grown up, and you'll 
 hardly take any notice of me." 
 
 "Oh, no, I shan't forget you, I'm sure," said 
 Maggie, shaking her head very seriously. "I never 
 forget anything, and I think about everybody when 
 
 314 
 
School-Time 
 
 I'm away from them. I think about poor Yap — 
 he's got a lump in his throat, and Luke says he'll die. 
 Only don't tell Tom, because it will vex him so. 
 You never saw Yap ; he's a queer little dog — nobody 
 cares about him but Tom and me." 
 
 "Do you care as much about me as you do about 
 Yap, Maggie?" said Philip, smiling rather sadly. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I should think so," said Maggie, 
 laughing. 
 
 "I'm very fond of you, Maggie; I shall never 
 forget you/' said Philip, "and when I'm very un- 
 happy, I shall always think of you, and wish I had 
 a sister with dark eyes, just like yours." 
 
 "Why do you like my eyes?" said Maggie, well 
 pleased. She had never heard any one but her 
 father speak of her eyes as if they had merit. 
 
 "I don't know," said Philip. "They're not like 
 any other e3^es. They seem trying to speak — trying 
 to speak kindly. I don't like other people to look 
 at me much, but I like you to look at me, Maggie." 
 
 "Why, I think you're fonder of me than Tom is," 
 said Maggie, rather sorrowfully. Then, wondering 
 how she could convince Philip that she could like 
 him just as well, although he was crooked, she said — 
 
 "Should you like me to kiss you, as I do Tom? I 
 will, if you like." 
 
 "Yes, very much : nobody kisses me." 
 
 Maggie put her arm round his neck and kissed 
 him quite earnestly. 
 
 ^'^ Vol. 15— II 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "There now," she said, "I shall always remem- 
 ber you, and kiss you when I see you again, if it's 
 ever so long. But I'll go now, because I think Mr. 
 Askern's done with Tom's foot." 
 
 When their father came the second time, Maggie 
 said to him, "O father, Philip Wakem is so very 
 good to Tom — he is such a clever boy, and I do love 
 him. And you love him, too, Tom, don't you? Say 
 you love him," she added, entreatingly. 
 
 Tom colored a little as he looked at his father, 
 and said, "I shan't be friends with him when I leave 
 school, father; but we've made it up now, since my 
 foot has been bad, and he's taught me to play at 
 draughts, and I can beat him." 
 
 "Well, well," said Mr. Tulliver, "if he's good to 
 you, try and make him amends, and be good to him. 
 He's a poor crooked creatur, and takes after his dead 
 mother. But don't you be getting too thick with 
 him — he's got his father's blood in him, too. Aye, 
 aye, the gray colt may chance to kick like his black 
 sire." 
 
 The jarring natures of the two boys efifected what 
 Mr. TuUiver's admonition alone might have failed 
 to effect: in spite of Philip's new kindness, and 
 Tom's answering regard in this time of his trouble, 
 they never became close friends. When Maggie 
 was gone, and when Tom by and by began to walk 
 about as usual, the friendly warmth that had been 
 kindled by pity and gratitude died out by degrees, 
 
 316 
 
School-Time 
 
 and left them in their old relation to each other. 
 Philip was often peevish and contemptuous; and 
 Tom's more specific and kindly impressions grad- 
 ually melted into the old background of suspicion 
 and dislike toward him as a queer fellow, a hump- 
 back, and the son of a rogue. If boys and men are 
 to be welded together in the glow of transient feel- 
 ing, they must be made of metal that will mix, else 
 they inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out. 
 
 317 
 
THE EDUCATION OF JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 ¥ AM, and my father was before me, a violent Tory 
 * of the old school; (Walter Scott's school, that is 
 to say, and Homer's,) I name these two out of the 
 numberless great Tory writers, because they were my 
 own two masters. I had Walter Scott's novels, and 
 the Iliad (Pope's translation), for my only reading 
 when I was a child, on week-days: on Sundays 
 their effect was tempered by Robinson Crusoe and 
 the Pilgrim's Progress; my mother having it deeply 
 in her heart to make an evangelical clergyman of me. 
 Fortunately, I had an aunt more evangelical than 
 my mother; and my aunt gave me cold mutton for 
 Sunday's dinner, which — as I much preferred it hot 
 — greatly diminished the influence of the Pilgrim's 
 Progress, and the end of the matter was, that I got all 
 the noble imaginative teaching of Defoe and Bun- 
 yan, and yet — am not an evangelical clergyman. 
 
 I had, however, still better teaching than theirs, 
 and that compulsorily, and every day of the week. 
 
 Walter Scott and Pope's Homer were reading of 
 my own election, but my mother forced me, by steady 
 daily toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by 
 heart; as well as to read it every syllable through, 
 aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the 
 Apocalypse, about once a year: and to that discipline 
 
 318 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 — patient, accurate, and resolute — I owe, not only a 
 knowledge of the book, which I find occasionally 
 serviceable, but much of my general power of taking 
 pains, and the best part of my taste in literature. 
 From Walter Scott's novels I might easily, as I grew 
 older, have fallen to other people's novels; and Pope 
 might, perhaps, have led me to take Johnson's En- 
 glish, or Gibbon's, as types of language; but, once 
 knowing the 32d of Deuteronomy, the 119th Psalm, 
 the 15th of ist Corinthians, the Sermon on the 
 Mount, and most of the Apocalypse, every syllable 
 by heart, and having always a way of thinking with 
 myself what words meant, it was not possible for me, 
 even in the foolishest times of youth, to write entirely 
 superficial or formal English; and the affectation of 
 trying to write like Hooker and George Herbert was 
 the most innocent I could have fallen into. 
 
 From my own chosen masters, then, Scott and 
 Homer, I learned the Toryism which my best after- 
 thought has only served to confirm. 
 
 That is to say a most sincere love of kings, and 
 dislike of everybody who attempted to disobey them. 
 Only, both by Homer and Scott, I was taught 
 strange ideas about kings, which I find for the pres- 
 ent much obsolete; for, I perceived that both the 
 author of the "Iliad" and the author of "Waverley" 
 made their kings, or king-loving persons, do harder 
 work than anybody else. Tydides or Idomeneus al- 
 ways killed twenty Trojans to other people's one, 
 
 319 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 and Redgauntlet speared more salmon than any of 
 the Solway fishermen, and — which was particularly 
 a subject of admiration to me — I observed that they 
 not only did more, but in proportion to their doings, 
 got less than other people — nay, that the best of them 
 were even ready to govern for nothing! and let their 
 followers divide any quantity of spoil or profit. Of 
 late it has seemed to me that the idea of a king has 
 become exactly the contrary of this, and that it has 
 been supposed the duty of superior persons generally 
 to govern less, and get more, than anybody else. So 
 that it was, perhaps, quite as well that in those early 
 days my contemplation of existent kingship was a 
 very distant one. 
 
 The aunt who gave me cold mutton on Sundays 
 was my father's sister: she lived at Bridge-end, in the 
 town of Perth, and had a garden full of gooseberry- 
 bushes, sloping down to the Tay, with a door open- 
 ing to the water, which ran past it, clear-brown 
 over the pebbles three or four feet deep; swift- 
 eddying, — an infinite thing for a child to look down 
 into. 
 
 My father began business as a wine-merchant, 
 with no capital, and a considerable amount of debts 
 bequeathed him by my grandfather. He accepted 
 the bequest, and paid them all before he began to 
 lay by anything for himself, for which his best 
 friends called him a fool, and I, without expressing 
 any opinion as to his wisdom, which I knew in such 
 
 320 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 matters to be at least equal to mine, have written on 
 the granite slab over his grave that he was "an en- 
 tirely honest merchant." As days went on he was 
 able to take a house in Hunter Street, Brunswick 
 Square, No. 54 (the windows of it, fortunately for 
 me, commanded a view of a marvellous iron post, 
 out of which the water-carts were filled through 
 beautiful little trap-doors by pipes like boa-constric- 
 tors; and I was never weary of contemplating that 
 mystery, and the delicious dripping consequent) ; 
 and as years went on, and I came to be four or five 
 years old, he could command a postchaise and pair 
 for two months in the summer, by help of which, 
 with my mother and me, he went the round of his 
 country customers (who liked to see the principal of 
 the house his own traveller) ; so that, at a jog-trot 
 pace, and through the panoramic opening of the four 
 windows of a post-chaise, made more panoramic still 
 to me because my seat was a little bracket in front 
 (for we used to hire the chaise regularly for the two 
 months out of Long Acre, and so could have it 
 bracketed and pocketed as we liked), I saw all the 
 high-roads, and most of the cross ones, of England 
 and Wales, and great part of lowland Scotland, as far 
 as Perth, where every other year we spent the whole 
 summer; and I used to read the "Abbot" at Kinross, 
 and the "Monastery" in Glen Farg, which I confused 
 with "Glendearg," and thought that the White Lady 
 had as certainly lived by the streamlet in that glen of 
 
 321 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 the Ochils, as the Queen of Scots in the island of 
 Loch Leven. 
 
 To my further great benefit, as I grew older, I 
 thus saw nearly all the noblemen's houses in Eng- 
 land ; in reverent and healthy delight of uncovetous 
 admiration — perceiving, as soon as I could perceive 
 any political truth at all, that it was probably much 
 happier to live in a small house, and have Warwick 
 Castle to be astonished at, than to live in Warwick 
 Castle and have nothing to be astonished at; but that, 
 at all events, it would not make Brunswick Square in 
 the least more pleasantly habitable, to pull Warwick 
 Castle down. And, at this day, though I have kind 
 invitations enough to visit America, I could not, even 
 for a couple of months, live in a country so miserable 
 as to possess no castles. 
 
 Nevertheless, having formed my notion of king- 
 hood chiefly from the Fitzjames of the "Lady of the 
 Lake," and of noblesse from the Douglas there, and 
 the Douglas in "Marmion," a painful wonder soon 
 arose in my child-mind, why the castles should now 
 be always empty. Tantallon was there ; but no Archi- 
 bald of Angus — Stirling, but no Knight of Snow- 
 doun. The galleries and gardens of England were 
 beautiful to see — but his Lordship and her Ladyship 
 were always in town, said the housekeepers and gar- 
 deners. Deep yearning took hold of me for a kind of 
 "Restoration," which I began slowly to feel that 
 Charles the Second had not altogether effected, 
 
 322 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 though I always wore a gilded oak-apple very 
 piously in my button-hole on the 29th of May. It 
 seemed to me that Charles the Second's Restoration 
 had been, as compared with the Restoration I wanted, 
 much as that gilded oak-apple to a real apple. And 
 as I grew wiser, the desire for sweet pippins instead 
 of bitter ones, and Living Kings instead of dead ones, 
 appeared to me rational as well as romantic; and 
 gradually it has become the main purpose of my 
 life to grow pippins, and its chief hope, to see 
 Kings. 
 
 I have never been able to trace these prejudices to 
 any royalty of descent: of my father's ancestors I 
 know nothing, nor of my mother's more than that my 
 maternal grandmother was the landlady of the Old 
 King's Head in Market Street, Croydon; and I wish 
 she were alive again, and I could paint her Simone 
 Memmi's King's Head, for a sign. 
 
 My maternal grandfather was, as I have said, a 
 sailor, who used to embark, like Robinson Crusoe, at 
 Yarmouth, and come back at rare intervals, making 
 himself very delightful at home. I have an idea he 
 had something to do with the herring business, but I 
 am not clear on that point; my mother never being 
 much communicative concerning it. He spoiled her, 
 and her (younger) sister, with all his heart, when he 
 was at home; unless there appeared any tendency to 
 equivocation, or imaginative statements, on the part 
 of the children, which were always unforgivable. 
 
 3^3 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 My mother being once perceived by him to have dis- 
 tinctly told him a lie, he sent the servant out forth- 
 with to buy an entire bundle of new broom twigs to 
 whip her with. "They did not hurt me so much as 
 one" (twig) "would have done," said my mother, 
 "but I thought a good deal of it." 
 
 My grandfather was killed at two-and-thirty, by 
 trying to ride, instead of walk, into Croydon; he got 
 his leg crushed by his horse against a wall; and died 
 of the hurt's mortifying. My mother was then seven 
 or eight years old, and, with her sister, was sent to 
 quite a fashionable (for Croydon) day-school, Mrs. 
 Rice's, where my mother was taught evangelical 
 principles, and became the pattern girl and best 
 needlewoman in the school ; and where my aunt abso- 
 lutely refused evangelical principles, and became the 
 plague and pet of it. 
 
 My mother, being a girl of great power, with not 
 a little pride, grew more and more exemplary in 
 her entirely conscientious career, much laughed at, 
 though much beloved, by her sister; who had more 
 wit, less pride, and no conscience. At last my mother, 
 formed into a consummate housewife, was sent for to 
 Scotland to take care of my paternal grandfather's 
 house; who was gradually ruining himself; and who 
 at last effectually ruined, and killed, himself. My 
 father came up to London; was a clerk in a mer- 
 chant's house for nine years, without a holiday; 
 then began business on his own account; paid his 
 
 324 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 father's debts; and married his exemplary Croydon 
 cousin. 
 
 Meantime my aunt had remained in Croydon, 
 and married a baker. By the time I was four years 
 old, and beginning to recollect things — my father 
 rapidly taking higher commercial position in Lon- 
 don — there was traceable — though to me, as a 
 child, wholly incomprehensible — just the least pos- 
 sible shade of shyness on the part of Hunter Street, 
 Brunswick Square, toward Market Street, Croydon. 
 But whenever my father was ill — and hard work and 
 sorrow had already set their mark on him — we all 
 went down to Croydon to be petted by my homely 
 aunt; and walk on Duppas Hill, and on the heather 
 of Addington. 
 
 My aunt lived in the little house still standing — 
 or which was so four months ago — the fashionablest 
 in Market Street, having actually two windows over 
 the shop, in the second story; but I never troubled 
 myself about that superior part of the mansion, unless 
 my father happened to be making drawings in Indian 
 ink, when I would sit reverently by and watch ; my 
 chosen domains being, at all other times, the shop, 
 the bakehouse, and the stones round the spring of 
 crystal water at the back door (long since let down 
 into the modern sewer) ; and my chief companion, 
 my aunt's dog, Towzer, whom she had taken pity on 
 when he was a snappish, starved vagrant; and made 
 a brave and affectionate dog of : which was the kind 
 
 3^S 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 of thing she did for every living creature that came in 
 her way, all her life long. 
 
 Contented, by help of these occasional glimpses 
 of the rivers of Paradise, I lived until I was more 
 than four years old in Hunter Street, Brunswick 
 Square, the greater part of the year; for a few weeks 
 in the summer breathing country air by taking lodg- 
 ings in small cottages (real cottages, not villas, so- 
 called) either about Hampstead, or at Dulwich, at 
 "Mrs. Ridley's," the last of a row in a lane which led 
 out into the Dulwich fields on one side, and was itself 
 full of buttercups in spring, and blackberries in au- 
 tumn. But my chief remaining impressions of those 
 days are attached to Hunter Street. My mother's 
 general principles of first treatment were, to guard 
 me with steady watchfulness. from all avoidable pain 
 or danger; and, for the rest, to let me amuse myself 
 as I liked, provided I was neither fretful nor trouble- 
 some. But the law was, that I should find my own 
 amusement. No toys of any kind were at first al- 
 lowed — and the pity of my Croydon aunt for my 
 monastic poverty in this respect was boundless. On 
 one of my birthdays, thinking to overcome my 
 mother's resolution by splendor of temptation, she 
 bought the most radiant Punch and Judy she could 
 find in all the Soho bazaar — as big as a real Punch 
 and Judy, all dressed in scarlet and gold, and that 
 would dance, tied to the leg of a chair. I must have 
 been greatly impressed, for I remember well the look 
 
 326 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 of the two figures, as my aunt herself exhibited their 
 virtues. My mother was obliged to accept them; 
 but afterward quietly told me it was not right 
 that I should have them; and I never saw them 
 again. 
 
 Nor did I painfully wish, what I was never per- 
 mitted for an instant to hope, or even imagine, the 
 possession of such things as one saw in toy-shops. I 
 had a bunch of keys to play with, as long as I was 
 capable only of pleasure in what glittered and jin- 
 gled ; as I grew older, I had a cart and ball ; and when 
 I was five or six years old, two boxes of well-cut 
 wooden bricks. With these modest, but, I still think, 
 entirely sufficient possessions, and being always sum- 
 marily whipped if I cried, did not do as I was bid, 
 or tumbled on the stairs, I soon attained serene and 
 secure methods of life and motion; and could pass 
 my days contentedly in tracing the squares and com- 
 paring the colors of my carpet — examining the knots 
 in the wood of the floor, or counting the bricks in the 
 opposite houses; with rapturous intervals of excite- 
 ment during the filling of the water-cart, through 
 its leathern pipe, from the dripping iron post at the 
 pavement edge; or the still more admirable proceed- 
 ings of the turncock, when he turned and turned till 
 a fountain sprang up in the middle of the street. But 
 the carpet, and what patterns I could find in bed-cov- 
 ers, dresses, or wall-papers to be examined, were my 
 chief resources, and my attention to the particulars in 
 
 327 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 these was soon so accurate, that when at three and a 
 half I was taken to have my portrait painted by Mr. 
 Northcote, I had not been ten minutes alone with 
 him before I asked him why there were holes in his 
 carpet. The portrait in question represents a very 
 pretty child with yellow hair, dressed in a white 
 frock like a girl, with a broad light-blue sash and 
 blue shoes to match; the feet of the child whole- 
 somely large in proportion to its body; and the shoes 
 still more wholesomely large in proportion to the 
 feet. 
 
 These articles of my daily dress were all sent to 
 the old painter for perfect realization; but they ap- 
 pear in the picture more remarkable than they were 
 in m}^ nursery, because I am represented as running 
 in a field at the edge of a wood with the trunks of its 
 trees striped across in the manner of Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds; while two rounded hills, as blue as my shoes, 
 appear in the distance, which were put in by the 
 painter at my own request; for I had already been 
 once, if not twice, taken to Scotland; and my Scot- 
 tish nurse having always sung to me as we ap- 
 proached the Tweed or Esk, — 
 
 "For Scotland, my darling, lies full in my view, 
 With her barefooted lassies, and mountains so blue," 
 
 the idea of distant hills was connected in my mind 
 with approach to the extreme felicities of life, in my 
 (Scottish) aunt's garden of gooseberry bushes, slop- 
 
 328 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 ing to the Tay. But that, when old Mr. Northcote 
 asked me (little thinking, I fancy, to get any answer 
 so explicit) what I would like to have in the distance 
 of my picture, I should have said "blue hills" instead 
 of "gooseberry bushes," appears to me — and I think 
 without any morbid tendency to think overmuch of 
 myself — a fact sufficiently curious, and not without 
 promise, in a child of that age. 
 
 I think it should be related also that having, as 
 aforesaid, been steadily whipped if I was trouble- 
 some, my formed habit of serenity was greatly pleas- 
 ing to the old painter; for I sat contentedly motion- 
 less, counting the holes in his carpet, or watching him 
 squeeze his paint out of its bladders — a beautiful 
 operation, indeed, to my thinking — but I do not re- 
 member taking any interest in Mr. Northcote's ap- 
 plication of the pigments to the canvas; my ideas of 
 delightful art, in that respect, involving indispen- 
 sably the possession of a large pot, filled with paint of 
 the brightest green, and of a brush which would come 
 out of it soppy. But my quietude was so pleasing to 
 the old man that he begged my father and mother to 
 let me sit to him for the face of a child which he was 
 painting in a classical subject; where I was accord- 
 ingly represented as reclining on a leopard skin, and 
 having a thorn taken out of my foot by a wild man of 
 the woods. 
 
 In all these particulars, I think the treatment, or 
 accidental conditions, of my childhood entirely right, 
 
 329 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 for a child of my temperament: but the mode of my 
 introduction to literature appears to me questionable, 
 and I am not prepared to carry it out in St. George's 
 schools, without much modification. I absolutely de- 
 clined to learn to read by syllables; but would get an 
 entire sentence by heart with great facility, and point 
 with accuracy to every word in the page as I repeated 
 it. As, however, when the words were once dis- 
 placed, I had no more to say, my mother gave up, for 
 the time, the endeavor to teach me to read, hoping 
 only that I might consent, in process of years, to 
 adopt the popular system of syllabic study. But I 
 went on to amuse myself, in my own way, learned 
 whole words at a time, as I did patterns ; and at five 
 years old was sending for my "second volumes" to 
 the circulating library. 
 
 This effort to learn the words in their collective 
 aspect, was assisted by my real admiration of the 
 look of printed type, which I began to copy for my 
 pleasure, as other children draw dogs and horses. 
 The following inscription, facsimile'd from the fly- 
 leaf of my "Seven Champions of Christendom," 
 (judging from the independent views taken in it of 
 the character of the letter L, and the relative eleva- 
 tion of G,) I believe to be an extremely early art 
 study of this class; and as by the will of "Fors," the 
 first lines of the note, written after an interval of fifty 
 years, underneath my copy of it, in direction to Mr. 
 Burgess, presented some notable points of corre- 
 
 33^ 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 spondence with it, I thought it well he should en- 
 grave them together, as they stood. 
 
 
 My mother had, as she afterward told me, sol- 
 emnly "devoted me to God" before I was born; in 
 imitation of Hannah. 
 
 Very good women are remarkably apt to make 
 away with their children prematurely, in this man- 
 ner: the real meaning of the pious act being, that, as 
 the sons of Zebedee are not (or at least they hope not) 
 to sit on the right and left of Christ, in His kingdom, 
 their own sons may perhaps, they think, in time be 
 advanced to that respectable position in eternal life; 
 especially if they ask Christ very humbly for it every 
 day; and they always forget in the most naive way 
 that the position is not His to give! 
 
 "Devoting me to God," meant, as far as m}r 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 mother knew herself what she meant, that she would 
 try to send me to college, and make a clergyman of 
 me: and I was accordingly bred for "the Church." 
 My father, who — rest be to his soul — had the ex- 
 ceedingly bad habit of yielding to my mother in 
 large things and taking his own way in little ones, al- 
 lowed me, without saying a word, to be thus with- 
 drawn from the sherry trade as an unclean thing; 
 not without some pardonable participation in my 
 mother's ultimate views for me. For, many and 
 many a year afterward, I remember, while he was 
 speaking to one of our artist friends, who admired 
 Raphael, and greatly regretted my endeavors to in- 
 terfere with that popular taste — -while my father and 
 he were condoling with each other on my having 
 been impudent enough to think I could tell the pub- 
 lic about Turner and Raphael — instead of content- 
 ing myself, as I ought, with explaining the way of 
 their souls' salvation to them — and what an amiable 
 clergyman was lost in me — "Yes," said my father, 
 with tears in his eyes — (true and tender tears, as ever 
 father shed) "he would have been a Bishop." 
 
 Luckily for me, my mother, under these distinct 
 impressions of her own duty, and with such latent 
 hopes of my future eminence, took me very early to 
 church — where, in spite of my quiet habits, and my 
 mother's golden vinaigrette, always indulged to me 
 there, and there only, with its lid unclasped that I 
 might see the wreathed open pattern above the 
 
 33'^ 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 sponge, I found the bottom of the pew so extremely 
 dull a place to keep quiet in (my best story-books be- 
 ing also taken away from me in the morning), that, 
 as I have somewhere said before, the horror of Sun- 
 day used even to cast its prescient gloom as far back 
 in the week as Friday — and all the glory of Monday, 
 with church seven days removed again, was no 
 equivalent for it. 
 
 Notwithstanding, I arrived at some abstract in 
 my own mind of the Rev. Mr. Howell's sermons ; and 
 occasionally, in imitation of him, preached a sermon 
 at home over the red sofa cushions — this performance 
 being always called for by my mother's dearest 
 friends, as the great accomplishment of my child- 
 hood. The sermon was, I believe, some eleven 
 words long; very exemplary, it seems to me, in that 
 respect — and I still think must have been the purest 
 gospel, for I know it began with, "People, be good." 
 
 We seldom had company, even on week days ; and 
 I was never allowed to come down to dessert, until 
 much later in life — when I was able to crack nuts 
 neatly. I was then permitted to come down to crack 
 other people's nuts for them — (I hope they liked the 
 ministration) — but never to have any myself; nor 
 anything else of dainty kind, either then or at other 
 times. Once, at Hunter Street, I recollect my 
 mother giving me three raisins, in the forenoon, out 
 of the store cabinet; and I remember perfectly the 
 first time I tasted custard, in our lodgings in Nor- 
 
 333 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 folk Street — where we had gone while the house was 
 being painted, or cleaned, or something. My father 
 was dining in the front room, and did not finish his 
 custard; and my mother brought me the bottom of it 
 into the back room. 
 
 But for the reader's better understanding of such 
 further progress of my poor little life as I may tres- 
 pass on his patience in describing, it is now needful 
 that I give some account of my father's mercantile 
 position in London. 
 
 The firm of which he was head partner may be 
 yet remembered by some of the older city houses, as 
 carrying on their business in a small counting-house 
 on the first floor of narrow premises, in as narrow a 
 thoroughfare of East London — Billiter Street, the 
 principal traverse from Leadenhall Street into Fen- 
 church Street. 
 
 The names of the three partners were given in 
 full on their brass plate under the counting-house 
 bell — Ruskin, Telford & Domecq. 
 
 Mr. Domecq's name should have been the first, 
 by rights, for my father and Mr. Telford were only 
 his agents. He was the sole proprietor of the estate 
 which was the main capital of the firm — the vineyard 
 of Macharnudo, the most precious hillside, for 
 growth of white wine, in the Spanish peninsula. The 
 quality of the Macharnudo vintage essentially fixed 
 the standard of Xeres "sack," or "dry" — secco — 
 sherris, or sherry, from the days of Henry the Fifth 
 
 334 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 to our own — the unalterable and unrivalled chalk- 
 marl of it putting a strength into the grape which age 
 can only enrich and darken — never impair. 
 
 Mr. Peter Domecq was, I believe, Spanish born; 
 and partly French, partly English bred; a man of 
 strictest honor, and kindly disposition; how de- 
 scended, I do not know; how he became possessor 
 of his vineyard, I do not know; what position he held, 
 when young, in the firm of Gordon, Murphy & Com- 
 pany, I do not know; but in their house he watched 
 their head clerk, my father, during his nine years of 
 duty, and when the house broke up, asked him to be 
 his own agent in England. My father saw that he 
 could fully trust Mr. Domecq's honor, and feeling — 
 but not so fully either his sense, or his industry; and 
 insisted, though taking only his agent's commission, 
 on being both nominally, and practically, the head- 
 partner of the firm. 
 
 Mr. Domecq lived chiefly in Paris ; rarely visiting 
 his Spanish estate, but having perfect knowledge of 
 the proper processes of its cultivation, and authority 
 over its laborers almost like a chief's over his clan. 
 He kept the wines at the highest possible standard; 
 and allowed my father to manage all matters con- 
 cerning their sale, as he thought best. The second 
 partner, Mr. Henry Telford, brought into the busi- 
 ness what capital was necessary for its London 
 branch. The premises in Billiter Street belonged to 
 him; and he had a pleasant country house at Wid- 
 
 335 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 more, near Bromley; a quite far-away Kentish vil- 
 lage in those days. 
 
 He was a perfect type of an English country gen- 
 tleman of moderate fortune; unmarried, living with 
 three unmarried sisters — who, in the refinement of 
 their highly educated, unpretending, benevolent, and 
 felicitous lives, remain in my memory more like the 
 figures in a beautiful story than realities. Neither in 
 story, nor in reality, have I ever again heard of, or 
 seen, anything like Mr. Henry Telford — so gentle, so 
 humble, so affectionate, so clear in common sense, so 
 fond of horses — and so entirely incapable of doing, 
 thinking, or saying, anything that had the slightest 
 taint in it of the race-course or the stable. 
 
 Yet I believe he never missed any great race; 
 passed the greater part of his life on horseback; and 
 hunted during the whole Leicestershire season; but 
 never made a bet, never had a serious fall, and never 
 hurt a horse. Between him and my father there was 
 absolute confidence, and the utmost friendship that 
 could exist without community of pursuit. My 
 father was greatly proud of Mr. Telford's standing 
 among the country gentlemen; and Mr. Telford was 
 affectionately respectful to my father's steady indus- 
 try and infallible commercial instinct. Mr. Tel- 
 ford's actual part in the conduct of the business was 
 limited to attendance in the counting-house during 
 two months at Midsummer, when my father took his 
 holiday, and sometimes for a month at the beginning 
 
 33^ 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 of the year, when he travelled for orders. At these 
 times Mr. Telford rode into London daily from 
 Widmore, signed what letters and bills needed signa- 
 ture, read the papers, and rode home again; any 
 matters needing deliberation were referred to my 
 father, or awaited his return. All the family at 
 Widmore would have been limitlessly kind to my 
 mother and me, if they had been permitted any op- 
 portunity; but my mother always felt, in cultivated 
 society — and was too proud to feel with patience — 
 the defects of her own early education; and therefore 
 (which was the true and fatal sign of such defect) 
 never familiarly visited any one whom she did not 
 feel to be, in some sort, her inferior. 
 
 Nevertheless, Mr. Telford had a singularly im- 
 portant influence in my education. By, I believe, his 
 sister's advice, he gave me, as soon as it was pub- 
 lished, the illustrated edition of Rogers' "Italy." 
 This book was the first means I had of looking care- 
 fully at Turner's work: and I might, not without 
 some appearance of reason, attribute to the gift the 
 entire direction of my life's energies. But it is the 
 great error of thoughtless biographers to attribute to 
 the accident which introduces some new phase of 
 character, all the circumstances of character which 
 gave the accident importance. The essential point 
 to be noted, and accounted for, was that I could un- 
 derstand Turner's work when I saw it — not by what 
 chance, or in what year, it was first seen. Poor Mr. 
 
 337 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Telford, nevertheless, was always held by papa and 
 mamma primarily responsible for my Turner insani- 
 ties. 
 
 In a more direct, though less intended way, his 
 help to me was important. For, before my father 
 thought it right to hire a carriage for the above- 
 mentioned Midsummer holiday, Mr. Telford always 
 lent us his own travelling chariot. 
 
 Now the old English chariot is the most luxurious 
 of travelling carriages, for two persons, or even for 
 two persons and so much of a third personage as I 
 possessed at three years old. The one in question 
 was hung high, so that we could see well over stone 
 dikes and average hedges out of it; such elevation 
 being attained by the old-fashioned folding-steps, 
 with a lovely padded cushion fitting into the recess of 
 the door — steps which it was one of my chief travel- 
 ling delights to see the hostlers fold up and down; 
 though my delight was painfully alloyed by envious 
 ambition to be allowed to do it myself — but I never 
 was — lest I should pinch my fingers. 
 
 The "dickey" — (to think that I should never till 
 this moment have asked myself the derivation of 
 that word, and now be unable to get at it!) — being 
 typically, that commanding seat in her Majesty's 
 mail, occupied by the Guard; and classical, even in 
 modern literature, as the scene of Mr. Bob Sawyer's 
 arrangements with Sam — was thrown far back in 
 Mr. Telford's chariot, so as to give perfectly com- 
 
 33^ 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 fortable room for the legs (if one chose to travel 
 outside on fine days), and to afford beneath it spa- 
 cious area to the boot, a storehouse of rearward mis- 
 cellaneous luggage. Over which — with all the rest 
 of forward and superficial luggage — my nurse Anne 
 presided, both as guard and packer; unrivalled, 
 she, in the flatness and precision of her in-laying 
 of dresses, as in turning of pancakes; the fine pre- 
 cision, observe, meaning also the easy wit and in- 
 vention of her art; for, no more in packing a trunk 
 than commanding a campaign, is precision possible 
 without foresight. 
 
 Among the people whom one must miss out of 
 one's life, dead, or worse than dead, by the time one 
 is past fifty, I can only say for my own part, that the 
 one I practically and truly miss most, next to father 
 and mother (and putting losses of imaginary good 
 out of the question), is this Anne, my father's nurse, 
 and mine. She was one of our "many" (our many 
 being always but few), and from her girlhood to her 
 old age, the entire ability of her life was given to 
 serving us. She had a natural gift and specialty for 
 doing disagreeable things; above all, the service of 
 a sick room; so that she was never quite in her glory 
 unless some of us were ill. She had also some par- 
 allel speciality for saying disagreeable things; and 
 might be relied upon to give the extremely darkest 
 view of any subject, before proceeding to ameliora- 
 tive action upon it. And she had a very creditable 
 
 339 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 and republican aversion to doing immediately, or 
 in set terms, as she was bid ; so that when my mother 
 and she got old together, and my mother became 
 very imperative and particular about having her 
 teacup set on one side of her little round table, Anne 
 would observantly and punctiliously put it always 
 on the other; which caused my mother to state to me, 
 every morning after breakfast, gravely, that, if ever 
 a woman in this world was possessed by the Devil, 
 Anne was that woman. But in spite of these mo- 
 mentary and petulant aspirations to liberality and 
 independence of character, poor Anne remained 
 very servile in soul all her days; and was altogether 
 occupied, from the age of fifteen to seventy-two, in 
 doing other people's wills instead of her own, and 
 seeking other people's good instead of her own: nor 
 did I ever hear on any occasion of her doing harm 
 to a human being, except by saving two hundred and 
 some odd pounds for her relations; in consequence 
 of which, some of them, after her funeral, did not 
 speak to the rest for several months. 
 
 The dickey then aforesaid, being indispensable 
 for our guard Anne, was made wide enough for two, 
 that my father might go outside also when the scen- 
 ery and day were fine. The entire equipage was not 
 a light one of its kind; but, the luggage being care- 
 fully limited, went gayly behind good horses on the 
 then perfectly smooth mail roads; and posting, in 
 those days, being universal, so that at the leading 
 
 340 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 inns in every country town, the cry "Horses out!" 
 down the yard, as one drove up, was answered, often 
 instantly, always within five minutes, by the merry 
 trot through the archway of the booted and bright- 
 jacketed rider, with his caparisoned pair — there was 
 no driver's seat in front: and the four large, admira- 
 bly fitting and sliding windows, admitting no drop 
 of rain when they were up, and never sticking as 
 they were let down, formed one large moving oriel, 
 out of which one saw the country round, to the full 
 half of the horizon. My own prospect was more 
 extended still, for my seat was the little box con- 
 taining my clothes, strongly made, with a cushion on 
 one end of it; set upright in front (and well for- 
 ward), between my father and mother. I was thus 
 not the least in their way, and my horizon of sight the 
 widest possible. When no object of particular inter- 
 est presented itself, I trotted, keeping time with the 
 post-boy on my trunk cushion for a saddle, and 
 whipped my father's legs for horses; at first theoreti- 
 cally only, with dexterous motion of wrist; but ulti- 
 mately in a quite practical and efficient manner, my 
 father having presented me with a silver-mounted 
 postilion's whip. 
 
 The midsummer holiday, for better enjoyment of 
 which Mr. Telford provided us with these luxuries, 
 began usually on the fifteenth of May, or there- 
 about; — my father's birthday was the tenth; on that 
 day I was always allowed to gather the gooseber- 
 
 341 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ries for his first gooseberry pie of the year, from the 
 tree between the buttresses on the north wall of the 
 Heme Hill garden ; so that we could not leave be- 
 fore that festa. The holiday itself consisted in a 
 tour for orders through half the English counties; 
 and a visit (if the counties lay northward) to my 
 aunt in Scotland. 
 
 The mode of journeying was as fixed as that of 
 our home life. We went from forty to fifty miles a 
 day, starting always early enough in the morning to 
 arrive comfortably to four o'clock dinner. Gener- 
 ally, therefore, getting ofif at six o'clock, a stage or 
 two were done before breakfast, with the dew on 
 the grass, and first scent from the hawthorns; if in 
 the course of the midday drive there were any gen- 
 tleman's house to be seen — or, better still, a lord's — 
 or, best of all, a duke's — my father baited the horses, 
 and took my mother and me reverently through the 
 state rooms; always speaking a little under our 
 breath to the housekeeper, major domo, or other au- 
 thority in charge; and gleaning worshipfuUy what 
 fragmentary illustrations of the history and domestic 
 ways of the family might fall from their lips. 
 
 In analyzing above, the efifect on my mind of all 
 this, I have perhaps a little antedated the supposed 
 resultant impression that it was probably happier to 
 live in a small house than a large one. But as- 
 suredly, while I never to this day pass a lattice-win- 
 dowed cottage without wishing to be its cottager, I 
 
 342 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 never yet saw the castle which I envied to its lord; 
 and although in the course of these many wor- 
 shipful pilgrimages I gathered curiously extensive 
 knowledge, both of art and natural scenery, after- 
 ward infinitely useful, it is evident to me in retro- 
 spect that my own character and affections were lit- 
 tle altered by them; and that the personal feeling 
 and native instinct of me had been fastened, irrevo- 
 cably, long before, to things modest, humble, and 
 pure in peace, under the low red roofs of Croydon, 
 and by the cress-set rivulets in which the sand 
 danced and minnows darted above the Springs of 
 Wandel. 
 
 When I was about four years old my father 
 found himself able to buy the lease of a house on 
 Heme Hill, a rustic eminence four miles south of 
 the "Standard in Cornhill;" of which the leafy seclu- 
 sion remains, in all essential points of character, un- 
 changed to this day: certain Gothic splendors, lately 
 indulged in by our wealthier neighbors, being the- 
 only serious innovations; and these are so graciously 
 concealed by the fine trees of their grounds, that the 
 passing viator remains unappalled by them; and I 
 can still walk up and down the piece of road between 
 the Fox tavern and the Heme Hill station, imagin- 
 ing myself four years old. 
 
 Our house was the northernmost of a group 
 which stand accurately on the top or dome of the 
 hill, where the ground is for a small space level, 
 
 343 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 as the snows are (I understand), on; the dome of 
 Mont Bianc; presently falling, however, in what may 
 be, in the London clay formation, considered a pre- 
 cipitous slope, to our valley of Chamouni (or of Dul- 
 wich) on the east; and with a softer descent into Cold 
 Harbor Lane on the west: on the south, no less beau- 
 tifully declining to the dale of the Efifra (doubtless 
 shortened from Effrena, signifying the "Unbridled" 
 river; recently, I regret to say, bricked over for the 
 convenience of Mr. Biffin, chemist, and others) ; 
 while on the north, prolonged indeed with slight 
 depression some half a mile or so, and receiving, in 
 the parish of Lambeth, the chivalric title of "Cham- 
 pion Hill," it plunges down at last to efface itself 
 in the plains of Peckham, and the rural barbarism of 
 Goose Green. 
 
 The group, of which our house was the quarter, 
 consisted of two precisely similar partner-couples of 
 houses, gardens and all to match ; still the two high- 
 est blocks of buildings seen from Norwood on the 
 crest of the ridge; so that the house itself, three- 
 storied, with garrets above, commanded, in those 
 comparatively smokeless days, a very notable view 
 from its garret windows, of the Norwood hills on one 
 side, and the winter sunrise over them; and of the 
 valley of the Thames on the other, with Windsor 
 telescopically clear in the distance, and Harrow, 
 conspicuous always in fine weather to open vision 
 against the summer sunset. It had front and back 
 
 344 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 garden in sufficient proportion to its size; the front, 
 richly set with old evergreens, and well-grown lilac 
 and laburnum; the back, seventy yards long by 
 twenty wide, renowned over all the hill for its pears 
 and apples, which had been chosen with extreme 
 care by our predecessor (shame on me to forget the 
 name of a man to whom I owe so much!) — and pos- 
 sessing also a strong old mulberry tree, a tall white- 
 heart cherry tree, a black Kentish one, and an al- 
 most unbroken hedge, all round, of alternate goose- 
 berry and currant bush; decked, in due season (for 
 the ground was wholly beneficent), with magical 
 splendor of abundant fruit: fresh green, soft amber, 
 and rough-bristled crimson bending the spinous 
 branches; clustered pearl and pendent ruby joyfully 
 discoverable under the large leaves that looked like 
 vine. 
 
 The dififerences of primal importance which I 
 observed between the nature of this garden, and that 
 of Eden, as I had imagined it, were, that, in this one, 
 all the fruit was forbidden ; and there were no com- 
 panionable beasts : in other respects the little domain 
 answered every purpose of Paradise to me; and the 
 climate, in that cycle of our years, allowed me to 
 pass most of my life in it. My mother never gave 
 me more to learn than she knew I could easily get 
 learned, if I set myself honestly to work, by twelve 
 o'clock. She never allowed anything to disturb me 
 when my task was set; if it was not said rightly by 
 
 345 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 twelve o'clock, I was kept in till I knew it, and in 
 general, even when Latin Grammar came to supple- 
 ment the Psalms, I was my own master for at least an 
 hour before half-past one dinner, and for the rest 
 of the afternoon. 
 
 My mother, herself finding her chief personal 
 pleasure in her flowers, was often planting or prun- 
 ing beside me, at least if I chose to stay beside her. 
 I never thought of doing anything behind her back 
 which I would not have done before her face; and 
 her presence was therefore no restraint to me; but, 
 also, no particular pleasure, for, from having al- 
 ways been left so much alone, I had generally my 
 own little affairs to see after; and, on the whole, by 
 the time I was seven years old, was already getting 
 too independent, mentally, even of my father and 
 mother ;! and, having nobody else to be dependent 
 upon, began to lead a very small, perky, contented, 
 conceited, Cock-Robinson-Crusoe sort of life, in the 
 central point which it appeared to me ( as it must nat- 
 urally appear to geometrical animals), that I occu- 
 pied in the universe. 
 
 This was partly the fault of my father's modesty; 
 and partly of his pride. He had so much more con- 
 fidence in my mother's judgment as to such matters 
 than in his own, that he never ventured even to help, 
 much less to cross her, in the conduct of my educa- 
 tion; on the other hand, in the fixed purpose of mak- 
 ing an ecclesiastical gentleman of me, with the super- 
 
 346 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 finest of manners, and access to the highest circles of 
 fleshly and spiritual society, the visits to Croydon, 
 where I entirely loved my aunt, and young baker- 
 cousins, became rarer and more rare: the society of 
 our neighbors on the hill could not be had without 
 breaking up our regular and sweetly selfish manner 
 of living; and, on the whole, I had nothing animate 
 to care for, in a childish way, but myself, some nests 
 of ants, which the gardener would never leave undis- 
 turbed for me, and a sociable bird or two; though I 
 never had the sense or perseverance to make one 
 really tame. But that was partly because, if ever I 
 managed to bring one to be the least trustful of me, 
 the cats got it. 
 
 Under these circumstances, what powers of imag- 
 ination I possessed, either fastened themselves on in- 
 animate things — the sky, the leaves, and pebbles, 
 observable within the walls of Eden, or caught at 
 any opportunity of flight into regions of romance, 
 compatible with the objective realities of existence in 
 the nineteenth century, within a mile and a quarter 
 of Camberwell Green. 
 
 Herein my father, happily, though with no defi- 
 nite intention other than of pleasing me, when he 
 found he could do so without infringing any of my 
 mother's rules, became my guide. I was particu- 
 larly fond of watching him shave; and was always 
 allowed to come into his room in the morning (under 
 the one in which I am now writing) , to be the mo- 
 
 Vol. 15—12 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 tionless witness of that operation. Over his dress- 
 ing-table hung one of his own water-color drawings, 
 made under the teaching of the elder Nasmyth. I 
 believe, at the High School of Edinburgh. It was 
 done in the early manner of tinting, which, just about 
 the time when my father was at the High School, 
 Dr. Munro was teaching Turner; namely, in gray 
 under-tints of Prussian blue and British ink, washed 
 with warm color afterward on the lights. It repre- 
 sented Conway Castle, with its Frith, and, in the 
 foreground, a cottage, a fisherman, and a boat at the 
 water's edge. 
 
 When my father had finished shaving, he always 
 told me a story about this picture. The custom be- 
 gan without any initial purpose of his, in conse- 
 quence of my troublesome curiosity whether the fish- 
 erman lived in the cottage, and where he was going 
 to in the boat. It being settled, for peace' sake, that 
 he did live in the cottage, and was going in the boat 
 to fish near the castle, the plot of the drama after- 
 ward gradually thickened; and became, I believe, 
 involved with that of the tragedy of Douglas, and of 
 the Castle Spectre, in both of which pieces my father 
 had performed in private theatricals, before my 
 mother, and a select Edinburgh audience, when he 
 was a boy of sixteen, and she, at grave twenty, a 
 model housekeeper, and very scornful and relig- 
 iously suspicious of theatricals. But she was never 
 weary of telling me, in later years, how beautiful 
 
 348 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 my father looked in his Highland dress, with the 
 high black feathers. 
 
 In the afternoons, when my father returned (al- 
 ways punctually) from his business, he dined, at half- 
 past four, in the front parlor, my mother sitting be- 
 side him to hear the events of the day, and give coun- 
 sel and encouragement with respect to the same;— 
 chiefly the last, for my father was apt to be vexed if 
 orders for sherry fell the least short of their due 
 standard, even for a day or two. I was never pres- 
 ent at this time, however, and only avouch what I 
 relate by hearsay and probable conjecture; for be- 
 tween four and six it would have been a grave mis- 
 demeanor in me if I so much as approached the 
 parlor door. After that, in summer time, we were 
 all in the garden as long as the day lasted; tea under 
 the white-heart cherry tree; or in winter and rough 
 weather, at six o'clock in the drawing-room — I hav- 
 ing my cup of milk, and slice of bread-and-butter, in 
 a little recess, with a table in front of it, wholly 
 sacred to me; and in which I remained in the even- 
 ings as an Idol in a niche, while my mother knitted, 
 and my father read to her— and to me, so far as I 
 chose to listen. 
 
 The series of the Waverley novels, then drawing 
 toward its close, was still the chief source of delight 
 in all households caring for literature; and I can no 
 more recollect the time when I did not know them 
 than v/hen I did not know the Bible ; but I have still 
 
 349 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 a vivid remembrance of my father's intense expres- 
 sion of sorrow mixed with scorn, as he threw down 
 "Count Robert of Paris," after reading three or four 
 pages; and knew that the life of Scott was ended: 
 the scorn being a very complex and bitter feeling in 
 him — partly, indeed, of the book itself, but chiefly 
 of the wretches who were tormenting and selling the 
 wrecked intellect, and not a little, deep down, of the 
 subtle dishonesty which had essentially caused the 
 ruin. My father never could forgive Scott his 
 concealment of the Ballantyne partnership. 
 
 Such being the salutary pleasures of Heme Hill, 
 I have next with deeper gratitude to chronicle what 
 I owed to my mother for the resolutely consistent 
 lessons which so exercised me in the Scriptures as to 
 make every word of them familiar to my ear in 
 habitual music — yet in that familiarity reverenced, 
 as transcending all thought, and ordaining all con- 
 duct. 
 
 This she effected, not by her own sayings or per- 
 sonal authority; but simply by compelling me to read 
 the book thoroughly, for myself. As soon as I was 
 able to read with fluency, she began a course of Bible 
 work with me, which never ceased till I went to Ox- 
 ford. She read alternate verses with me, watching, 
 at first, every intonation of my voice, and correcting 
 the false ones, till she made me understand the verse, 
 if within my reach, rightly, and energetically. It 
 might be beyond me altogether; that she did not care 
 
 3S^ 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 about; but she made sure that as soon as I got hold 
 of it at all, I should get hold of it by the right end. 
 
 In this way she began with the first verse of Gen- 
 esis, and went straight through, to the last verse of 
 the Apocalypse; hard names, numbers, Levitical law, 
 and all; and began again at Genesis the next day. 
 If a nam.e was hard, the better the exercise in pro- 
 nunciation — if a chapter was tiresome, the better les- 
 son in patience — if loathsome, the better lesson in 
 faith that there was some use in its being so out- 
 spoken. After our chapters (from two to three a 
 day, according to their length, the first thing after 
 breakfast, and no interruption from servants allowed 
 — none from visitors, who either joined in the read- 
 ing or had to stay upstairs — and none from any visit- 
 ings or excursions, except real travelling), I had to 
 learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure 
 I had not lost something of what was already known ; 
 and, with the chapters thus gradually possessed from 
 the first word to the last, I had to learn the whole 
 body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which are 
 good, melodious, and forceful verse; and to which, 
 together with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultiva- 
 tion of my ear in sound. 
 
 It is strange, that of all the pieces of the Bible 
 which my mother thus taught me, that which cost me 
 most to learn, and which was, to my child's mind, 
 chiefly repulsive — the 119th Psalm — has now be- 
 come of all the most precious to me, in its overflow- 
 
 3S^ 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God, 
 in opposition to the abuse of it by modern preachers 
 of what they imagine to be His gospel. 
 
 But it is only by deliberate effort that I recall the 
 long morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise — 
 toil on both sides equal — by which, year after year, 
 my mother forced me to learn these paraphrases, and 
 chapters (the eighth of ist Kings being one — try it, 
 good reader, in a leisure hour!) allowing not so 
 much as a syllable to be missed or misplaced; while 
 every sentence was required to be said over and over 
 again till she was satisfied with the accent of it. I 
 recollect a struggle between us of about three weeks, 
 concerning the accent of the "of" in the lines 
 
 "Shall any following spring revive 
 The ashes of the urn?" — 
 
 I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and partly 
 in true instinct for rhythm (being wholly careless on 
 the subject both of urns and their contents), on re- 
 citing it with an accented of. It was not, I say, 
 till after three weeks' labor, that my mother got 
 the accent lightened on the "of" and laid on the 
 ashes, to her mind. But had it taken three years, 
 she would have done it, having once undertaken to 
 do it. And, assuredly, had she not done it — well, 
 there's no knowing what would have happened; but 
 I am very thankful she did. 
 
 I have just opened my oldest (in use) Bible — a 
 
 3S^ 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 small, closely, and very neatly printed volume it is, 
 printed in Edinburgh by Sir D. Hunter Blair and 
 J. Bruce, Printers to the King's Most Excellent Maj- 
 esty, in 1816. Yellow, now, with age, and flexible, 
 but not unclean, with much use, except that the lower 
 corners of the pages at 8th of ist Kings, and 32d 
 Deuteronomy, are worn somewhat thin and dark, the 
 learning of these two chapters having cost me much 
 pains. My mother's list of the chapters with which, 
 thus learned, she established my soul in life, has just 
 fallen out of it. I will take what indulgence the in- 
 curious reader can give me, for printing the list thus 
 accidentally occurrent: 
 
 Exodus 
 2 Samuel 
 
 chapters 
 
 15th and 20th. 
 
 1st, from 17th verse to the end. 
 
 I Kings 
 
 ce 
 
 8th. 
 
 Psalms 
 Proverbs 
 
 
 23d, 32d, 90th, 91st, 103d, ii2th 
 119th, 139th. 
 2d, 3d, 8th, I2th. 
 
 Isaiah 
 
 Matthew 
 
 Acts 
 
 << 
 it 
 
 58th. 
 
 5th, 6th, 7th. 
 
 26th. 
 
 I Corinthians 
 
 James 
 
 Revelation 
 
 
 13th, 15th. 
 Sth, 6th. 
 4th. 
 
 And truly, though I have picked up the elements 
 of a little further knowledge — in mathematics, me- 
 teorology, and the like, in after life — and owe not 
 a little to the teaching of many people, this maternal 
 installation of my mind in that property of chapters, 
 
 3S3 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 I count very confidently the most precious, and, on 
 the whole, the one essential part of all my educa- 
 tion. 
 
 It was only, I think, after my seventh year had 
 been fulfilled in these meditations, that my mother 
 added the Latin lesson to the Bible-reading. But it 
 extremely surprises me, in trying, at least for my 
 own amusement, if not the reader's, to finish the 
 sketch into its corners, that I can't recollect now 
 what used to happen first in the morning, except 
 breakfasting in the nursery, and, if my Croydon 
 cousin Bridget happened to be staying with us, quar- 
 relling with her which should have the brownest 
 bits of toast. That must have been later on, though, 
 for I could not have been promoted to toast at the 
 time I am thinking of. Nothing is well clear to me 
 of the day's course, till, after my father had gone to 
 the City by the coach, and my mother's household 
 orders being quickly given, lessons began at half- 
 past nine, with the Bible readings above described, 
 and the two or three verses to be learned by heart, 
 with a verse of paraphrase; — then a Latin declen- 
 sion or bit of verb, and eight words of vocabulary 
 from "Adam's Latin Grammar" (the best that ever 
 was), and the rest of the day was my own. Arith- 
 metic was wholesomely remitted till much later; ge- 
 ography I taught myself fast enough in my own 
 way; history was never thought of, beyond what I 
 chose to read of Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather." 
 
 354 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 Thus, as aforesaid, by noon I was in the garden on 
 fine days, or left to my own amusements on wet ones; 
 of which I have further at once to note that nearly 
 as soon as I could crawl, my toy-bricks of lignum 
 vitae had been constant companions : and I am grace- 
 less in forgetting by what extravagant friend (I 
 greatly suspect my Croydon aunt), I was afterward 
 gifted with a two-arched bridge, admirable in fit- 
 tings of voussoir and keystone, and adjustment of the 
 level courses of masonry with bevelled edges, into 
 which they dovetailed, in the style of Waterloo 
 Bridge. Well-made centrings, and a course of in- 
 laid steps down to the water, made this model large- 
 ly, as accurately, instructive : and I was never weary 
 of building, wwbuilding — (it was too strong to be 
 thrown down, but had always to be taken down) — 
 and rebuilding it. This inconceivably passive — or 
 rather impassive — contentment in doing, or reading, 
 the same thing over and over again, I perceive to 
 have been a great condition in my future power of 
 getting thoroughly to the bottom of matters. 
 
 Some people would say that in getting these toys 
 lay the chance that guided me to an early love of 
 architecture; but I never saw or heard of another 
 child so fond of its toy bricks, except Miss Edge- 
 worth's Frank. To be sure, in this present age — age 
 of universal brickfield though it be — people don't 
 give their children toy bricks, but toy pufif-puffs; 
 and the little things are always taking tickets and 
 
 2SS 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 arriving at stations, without ever fathoming — none 
 of them will take pains enough to do that — the prin- 
 ciple of a pufif-puff ! And what good could they get 
 of it if they did — unless they could learn also, that 
 no principle of Pufif-puff would ever supersede the 
 principle of Breath? 
 
 But I not only mastered, with "Harry and Lucy," 
 the entire motive principle of puff-puff; but also, 
 by help of my well-cut bricks, very utterly the laws 
 of practical stability in towers and arches, by the 
 time I was seven or eight years old: and these studies 
 of structure were further animated by my invariable 
 habit of watching, with the closest attention, the pro- 
 ceedings of any bricklayers, stone-sawyers, or paviors 
 — whose work my nurse would allow me to stop to 
 contemplate in our walks; or, delight of delights, 
 might be seen at ease from some fortunate window 
 of inn or lodging on our journeys. In those cases 
 the day was not long enough for my rapture and 
 riveted observation. 
 
 Constantly, as aforesaid, in the garden when the 
 weather was fine, my time there was passed chiefly in 
 the same kind of close v/atching of the ways of plants. 
 I had not the smallest taste for growing them, or 
 taking care of them, any more than for taking care 
 of the birds, or the trees, or the sky, or the sea. My 
 whole time passed in staring at them, or into them. 
 In no morbid curiosity, but in admiring wonder, I 
 pulled every flower to pieces till I knew all that 
 
 3S^ 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 could be seen of it with child's eyes; and used to lay 
 up little treasures of seeds, by way of pearls and 
 beads — never with any thought of sowing them. 
 The old gardener only came once a week, for what 
 sweeping and weeding needed doing; I was fain to 
 learn to sweep the walks with him, but was discour- 
 aged and shamed by his always doing the bits I had 
 done over again. I was extremely fond of digging 
 holes, but that form of gardening was not allowed. 
 Necessarily, I fell always back into my merely con- 
 templative mind, and at nine years old began a 
 poem, called "Eudosia," — I forget wholly where I 
 got hold of this name, or what I understood by it — 
 "On the Universe," though I could understand not 
 a little by it, now. A couplet or two, as the real be- 
 ginning at once of "Deucalion" and "Proserpina," 
 may be perhaps allowed, together with the preced- 
 ing, a place in this grave memoir; the rather that 
 I am again enabled to give accurate date — Septem- 
 ber 28, 1828 — for the beginning of its "First book," 
 as follows : — 
 
 "When first the wrath of heaven o'erwhelmed the world, 
 And o'er the rocks, and hills, and mountains, hurl'd 
 The waters' gathering mass ; and sea o'er shore — 
 Then mountains fell, and vales, unknown before. 
 Lay where they were. Far different was the Earth 
 When first the flood came down, than at its second birth. 
 Now for its produce ! — Queen of flowers, O rose. 
 From whose fair colored leaves such odor flows. 
 Thou must now be before thy subjects named. 
 Both for thy beauty and thy sweetness famed. 
 
 357 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Thou art the flower of England, and the flow'r 
 Of Beauty too — of Venus' odorous bower. 
 And thou wilt often shed sweet odors round, 
 And often stooping, hide thy head on ground. 
 And then the lily, towering up so proud. 
 And raising its gay head among the various crowd, 
 There the black spots upon a scarlet ground. 
 And there the taper-pointed leaves are found." 
 
 In 220 lines, of such quality, the first book as- 
 cends from the rose to the oak. The second begins 
 — to my surprise, and in extremely exceptional vio- 
 lation of my above-boasted custom — with an ecstatic 
 apostrophe to what I had never seen! 
 
 "I sing the Pine, which clothes high Switzer's head, 
 And high enthroned, grows on a rocky bed. 
 On gulfs so deep, on cliffs that are so high, 
 He that would dare to climb them, dares to die." 
 
 This enthusiasm, however, only lasts — mostly 
 exhausting itself in a description, verified out of 
 "Harry and Lucy," of the slide of Alpnach — through 
 76 lines, when the verses cease, and the book being 
 turned upside down, begins at the other end with 
 the information that "Rock-crystal is accompanied by 
 Actynolite, Axinite, and Epidote, at Bourg d'Oisans 
 in Dauphiny." But the garden-meditations never 
 ceased, and it is impossible to say how much strength 
 was gained, or how much time uselessly given, ex- 
 cept in pleasure, to these quiet hours and foolish 
 rhymes. Their happiness made all the duties of 
 outer life irksome, and their unprogressive reveries 
 
 358 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 might, the reader may think, if my mother had 
 wished, have been changed into a beginning of sound 
 botanical knowledge. But, while there were books 
 on geology and mineralogy which I could under- 
 stand, all on botany were then — and they are little 
 mended now — harder than the Latin grammar. The 
 mineralogy was enough for me seriously to work at, 
 and I am inclined finally to aver that the garden- 
 time could not have been more rightly passed, un- 
 less in weeding. 
 
 At six punctually I joined my father and mother 
 at tea, being, in the drawing-room, restricted to the 
 inhabitation of the sacred niche above referred to, 
 a recess beside the fireplace, well lighted from the 
 lateral window in the summer evenings, and by the 
 chimney-piece lamp in winter, and out of all incon- 
 venient heat, or hurtful draught. A good writing- 
 table before it shut me well in, and carried my plate 
 and cup, or books in service. After tea, my father 
 read to my mother what pleased themselves, I pick- 
 ing up what I could, or reading what I liked better 
 instead. Thus I heard all the Shakespeare come- 
 dies and historical plays again and again — all Scott, 
 and all "Don Quixote," a favorite book of my 
 father's, and at which I could then laugh to ecstasy; 
 now, it is one of the saddest, and, in some things, the 
 most offensive of books to me. 
 
 My father was an absolutely beautiful reader 
 of the best poetry and prose; — of Shakespeare, Pope, 
 
 359 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Spenser, Byron, and Scott; as of Goldsmith, Addi- 
 son, and Johnson. Lighter ballad poetry he had 
 not fineness of ear to do justice to: his sense of the 
 strength and wisdom of true meaning, and of the 
 force of rightly ordered syllables, made his delivery 
 of "Hamlet," "Lear," "Cssar," or "Marmion," 
 melodiously grand and just; but he had no idea of 
 modulating the refrain of a ballad, and had little pa- 
 tience with the tenor of its sentiment. He looked 
 always, in the matter of what he read, for heroic 
 will and consummate reason : never tolerated the 
 morbid love of misery for its own sake, and never 
 read, either for his own pleasure or my instruction, 
 such ballads as "Burd Helen," the "Twa Corbies," 
 or any other rhyme or story which sought its interest 
 in vain love or fruitless death. 
 
 But true, pure, and ennobling sadness began very 
 early to mingle its undertone v/ith the constant hap- 
 piness of those days — a ballad music, beautiful in sin- 
 cerity, and hallowing them like cathedral chant. 
 Concerning which — I must go back now to the days I 
 have only heard of with the hearing of the ear, and 
 yet of which some are to me as if mine eyes had seen 
 them. 
 
 It must have been a little after 1780 that my pa- 
 ternal grandmother, Catherine Tweeddale, ran away 
 with my paternal grandfather when she was not quite 
 sixteen; and my aunt Jessie, my father's only sister, 
 was born a year afterward ; a few weeks after which 
 
 360 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 event, my grandmother, not yet seventeen, was sur- 
 prised, by a friend who came into her room unan- 
 nounced, dancing a threesome reel, with two chairs 
 for her partners; she having found at the moment 
 no other way of adequately expressing the pleas- 
 ure she took in this mortal life, and its gifts and 
 promises. 
 
 The latter failed somewhat afterward; and my 
 aunt Jessie, a very precious and perfect creature, 
 beautiful in her dark-eyed, Highland way — utterly 
 religious, in her quiet Puritan way — and very sub- 
 missive to Fates mostly unkind, was married to a 
 somewhat rough tanner, with a fairly good business 
 in the good town of Perth: and, when I was old 
 enough to be taken first to visit them, my aunt and 
 my uncle the tanner lived in a square-built gray 
 stone house in the suburb of Perth known as "Bridge- 
 End," the house some fifty yards north of the bridge; 
 its garden sloping steeply to the Tay, which eddied, 
 three or four feet deep of sombre crystal, round the 
 steps where the servants dipped their pails. 
 
 A mistaken correspondent in "Fors" once com- 
 plained of my coarse habit of sneering at people of 
 no ancestry. I have no such habit; though not al- 
 ways entirely at ease in writing of my uncles the 
 baker and the tanner. And my readers may trust me 
 when I tell them that, in now remembering my 
 dreams in the house of the entirely honest chief baker 
 of Market Street, Croydon, and of Peter — not Simon 
 
 361 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 — the tanner, whose house was by the riverside of 
 Perth, I would not change the dreams, far less the 
 tender realities, of those early days, for anything I 
 hear now remembered by lords or dames, of their 
 days of childhood in castle halls, and by sweet lawns 
 and lakes in park-walled forest. 
 
 Lawn and lake enough indeed I had, in the North 
 Inch of Perth, and pools of pausing Tay, before Rose 
 Terrace (where I used to live after my uncle died, 
 briefly apoplectic, at Bridge-End), in the peace of 
 the fair Scotch summer days, with my widowed aunt, 
 and my little cousin Jessie, then traversing a bright 
 space between her sixth and ninth year; dark-eyed 
 deeply, like her mother, and similarly pious; so that 
 she and I used to compete in the Sunday evening 
 Scriptural examinations; and be as proud as two little 
 peacocks because Jessie's elder brothers, and sister 
 Mary, used to get "put down," and either Jessie or I 
 was always "Dux." We agreed upon this that we 
 would be married when we were a little older; not 
 considering it to be preparatorily necessary to be in 
 any degree wiser. 
 
 Strangely, the kitchen servant-of-all-work in the 
 house at Rose Terrace was a very old "Mause" — be- 
 fore, my grandfather's servant in Edinburgh — who 
 might well have been the prototype of the Mause of 
 "Old Mortality," but had even a more solemn, fear- 
 less and patient faith, fastened in her by extreme suf- 
 fering; for she had been nearly starved to death when 
 
 362 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 she was a girl, and had literally picked the bones out 
 of cast-out dust-heaps to gnaw; and ever afterward, 
 to see the waste of an atom of food was as shocking 
 to her as blasphemy. "Oh, Miss Margaret!" she 
 said once to my mother, who had shaken some crumbs 
 off a dirty plate out of the window, "I had rather you 
 had knocked me down." She would make her dinner 
 upon anything in the house that the other servants 
 wouldn't eat — often upon potato skins, giving her 
 own dinner away to any poor person she saw; and 
 would always stand during the whole church service 
 (though at least seventy years old when I knew her, 
 and very feeble) , if she could persuade any wild Am- 
 orite out of the streets to take her seat. Her wrinkled 
 and worn face, moveless in resolution and patience, 
 incapable of smile, and knit sometimes perhaps too 
 severely against Jessie and me, if we wanted more 
 creamy milk to our porridge, or jumped off our fa- 
 vorite box on Sunday — ("Never mind, John," said 
 Jessie to me, once, seeing me in an unchristian state 
 of provocation on this subject, "when we're married, 
 we'll jump off boxes all day long, if we like!") — may 
 have been partly instrumental in giving me that 
 slight bias against Evangelical religion, which I con- 
 fess to be sometimes traceable in my later works; but 
 I never can be thankful enough for having seen in 
 our own "Old Mause," the Scottish Puritan spirit in 
 its perfect faith and force; and been enabled there- 
 fore afterward to trace its agency in the reforming 
 
 3^3 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 policy of Scotland, with the reverence and honor it 
 deserves. 
 
 My aunt, a pure dove-priestess, if ever there was 
 one, of Highland Dodona, w^as of a far gentler tem- 
 per; but still, to me, remained at a wistful distance. 
 She had been much saddened by the loss of three 
 of her children before her husband's death. Little 
 Peter, especially, had been the cornerstone of her 
 love's building; and it was thrown down swiftly: 
 white swelling came in the knee; he suffered much, 
 and grew weaker gradually, dutiful always, and lov- 
 ing, and wholly patient. She wanted him one day to 
 take half a glass of port wine, and took him on her 
 knee, and put it to his lips. "Not now, mamma; in a 
 minute," said he; and put his head on her shoulder, 
 and gave one long, low sigh, and died. Then there 
 was Catharine; and — I forget the other little daugh- 
 ter's name, I did not see them; my mother told me of 
 them — eagerly always about Catharine, who had 
 been her own favorite. My aunt had been talking 
 earnestly one day with her husband about these two 
 children; planning this and that for their schooling 
 and what not: at night, for a little while she could not 
 sleep; and as she lay thinking, she saw the door of 
 the room open, and two spades come into it, and stand 
 at the foot of her bed. Both the children were dead 
 within brief time afterward. I was about to write 
 "within a fortnight" — but I cannot be sure of remem- 
 bering my mother's words accurately. 
 
 364 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 But when I was in Perth, there were still — Mary, 
 her eldest daughter, who looked after us children 
 when Mause was too busy; James and John, Wil- 
 liam and Andrew (I can't think whom the unapos- 
 toiic William was named after) . But the boys were 
 then all at school or college — the scholars, William 
 and Andrew, only came home to tease Jessie and me, 
 and eat the biggest jargonel pears; the collegians 
 were wholly abstract; and the two girls and I played 
 in our quiet ways on the North Inch, and by the 
 "Lead," a stream "led" from the Tay past Rose Ter- 
 race into the town for molinary purposes; and long 
 ago, I suppose, bricked over or choked with rubbish; 
 but then lovely, and a perpetual treasure of flowing 
 diamond to us children. Mary, by the way, was as- 
 cending toward twelve — fair, blue-eyed, and moder- 
 ately pretty; and as pious as Jennie, without being 
 quite so zealous. 
 
 My father rarely stayed with us in Perth, but 
 went on business travel through Scotland, and even 
 my mother became a curiously unimportant figure at 
 Rose Terrace. I can't understand how she so rarely 
 walked with us children; she and my aunt seemed 
 always to have their own secluded ways. Mary, Jes- 
 sie, and I were allowed to do what we liked on the 
 Inch: and I don't remember doing any lessons in 
 these Perth times, except the above-described com- 
 petitive divinity on Sunday. 
 
 Had there been anybody then to teach me any- 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 thing about plants or pebbles, it had been good for 
 me; as it was, I passed my days much as the thistles 
 and tansy did, only with perpetual watching of all 
 the ways of running water — a singular awe develop- 
 ing itself in me, both of the pools of Tay, where the 
 water changed from brown to blue-black, and of the 
 precipices of Kinnoull; partly out of my own mind, 
 and partly because the servants always became seri- 
 ous when we went up Kinnoull way, especially if I 
 wanted to stay and look at the little crystal spring of 
 Bower's Well. 
 
 "But you say you were not afraid of anything?" 
 writes a friend, anxious for the unassailable veracity 
 of these memoirs. Well, I said, not of ghosts, thun- 
 der, or beasts — meaning to specify the commonest 
 terrors of mere childhood. Every day, as I grew 
 wiser, taught me a reasonable fear; else I had not 
 above described myself as the most reasonable person 
 of my acquaintance. And by the swirls of smooth 
 blackness, broken by no fleck of foam, where Tay 
 gathered herself like Medusa, I never passed without 
 awe, even in those thoughtless days; neither do I in 
 the least mean that I could walk among tombstones 
 in the night (neither, for that matter, in the day), 
 as if they were only paving stones set upright. Far 
 the contrary; but it is important to the reader's con- 
 fidence in writings which have seemed inordinately 
 impressional and emotional, that he should know I 
 was never subject to — I should perhaps rather say, 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 sorrowfully, never capable of — any manner of illu- 
 sion or false imagination, nor in the least liable to 
 have my nerves shaken by surprise. When I was 
 about five years old^ having been on amicable terms 
 for a while with a black Newfoundland, then on pro- 
 bation for watch-dog at Heme Hill; after one of our 
 long summer journeys my first thought on getting 
 home was to go to see Lion. My mother trusted me 
 to go to the stable with our one serving-man, Thomas, 
 giving him strict orders that I was not to be allowed 
 within stretch of the dog's chain. Thomas, for bet- 
 ter security, carried me in his arms. Lion was at his 
 dinner, and took no notice of either of us; on which 
 I besought leave to pat him. Foolish Thomas stooped 
 toward him that I might, when the dog instantly flew 
 at me, and bit a piece clean out of the corner of my 
 lip on the left side. I was brought up the back stairs, 
 bleeding fast, but not a whit frightened, except lest 
 Lion should be sent away. Lion indeed had to go; 
 but not Thomas : my mother was sure he was sorry, 
 and I think blamed herself the most. The bitten side 
 of the (then really pretty) mouth was spoiled for 
 evermore, but the wound, drawn close, healed 
 quickly; the last use I made of my movable lips be- 
 fore Dr. Aveline drew them into ordered silence for 
 a while, was to observe, "Mamma, though I can't 
 speak, I can play upon the fiddle." But the house was 
 of another opinion, and I never attained any pro- 
 ficiency upon that instrument worthy of my genius. 
 
 367 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Not the slightest diminution of my love of dogs, nor 
 the slightest nervousness in managing them, was in- 
 duced by the accident. 
 
 I scarcely know whether I was in any real danger 
 or not when, another day, in the same stable, quite by 
 myself, I went head foremost into the large water-tub 
 kept for the garden. I think I might have got awk- 
 wardly wedged if I had tried to draw my feet in after 
 me: instead, I used the small watering-pot I had in 
 my hand to give myself a good thrust up from the 
 bottom, and caught the opposite edge of the tub with 
 my left hand, getting not a little credit afterward for 
 my decision of method. Looking back to the few 
 chances that have in any such manner tried my head, 
 I believe it has never failed me when I wanted it, 
 and that I am much more likely to be confused by 
 sudden admiration than by sudden danger. 
 
 The dark pools of Tay, which have led me into 
 this boasting, were under the high bank at the head 
 of the North Inch — the path above them being sel- 
 dom traversed by us children unless at harvest time, 
 when we used to go gleaning in the fields beyond; 
 Jessie and I afterward grinding our corn in the 
 kitchen pepper-mill, and kneading and toasting for 
 ourselves cakes of pepper bread, of quite unpurchas- 
 able quality. 
 
 In the general course of this my careful narration, 
 I rebut with as much indignation as may be per- 
 mitted without ill manners, the charge of partiality 
 
 368 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 to anything merely because it was seen when I was 
 young. I hesitate, however, in recording as a con- 
 stant truth for the world, the impression left on 
 me when I went gleaning with Jessie, that Scottish 
 sheaves are more golden than are bound in other 
 lands, and that no harvests elsewhere visible to hu- 
 man eyes are so like the "corn of heaven" as those of 
 Strath-Tay and Strath-Earn. 
 
 When I was about eight or nine I had a bad 
 feverish illness at Dunkeld, during which I believe I 
 was in some danger, and am sure I was very uncom- 
 fortable. It came on after a long walk in which I 
 had been gathering quantities of foxgloves and pull- 
 ing them to pieces to examine their seeds, and there 
 were hints about their having poisoned me; very ab- 
 surd, but which extended the gathering awe from 
 river eddies to foxglove dells. Not long after that, 
 when we were back at home, my cousin Jessie fell ill, 
 and died very slowly, of water on the brain. I was 
 very sorry, not so much in any strength of early af- 
 fection, as in the feeling that the happy, happy days 
 at Perth were forever ended, since there was no more 
 Jessie. 
 
 Before her illness took its fatal form — before, in- 
 deed, I believe it had at all declared itself — my aunt 
 dreamed one of her foresight dreams, simple and 
 plain enough for any one's interpretation — that she 
 was approaching the ford of a dark river, alone, 
 when little Jessie came running up behind her, and 
 
 3^9 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 passed her, and went through first. Then she passed 
 through herself, and looking back from the other 
 side, saw her old Mause approaching from the dis- 
 tance to the bank of the stream. And so it was, that 
 Jessie, immediately afterward, sickened rapidly and 
 died; and a few months, or it might be nearly a year 
 afterward, my aunt died of decline ; and Mause, some 
 two or three years later, having had no care after her 
 mistress and Jessie were gone, but when she might go 
 to them. 
 
 I was at Plymouth with my father and mother 
 when my Scottish aunt died, and had been very 
 happy with my nurse on the hill east of the town, 
 looking out on the bay and breakwater; and came in 
 to find my father, for the first time I had ever seen 
 him, in deep distress of sobbing tears. 
 
 I was very sorry that my aunt was dead, but, at 
 that time (and a good deal since, also) I lived mostly 
 in the present, like an animal, and my principal sen- 
 sation was : What a pity it was to pass such an uncom- 
 fortable evening — and we at Plymouth! 
 
 The deaths of Jessie and her mother of course 
 ended our Scottish days. The only surviving daugh- 
 ter, Mary, was thenceforward adopted by my father 
 and mother, and brought up with me. She was four- 
 teen when she came to us, and I four years younger; 
 so with the Perth days, closed the first decade of my 
 life. Mary was a rather pretty, blue-eyed, clumsily- 
 made girl, very amiable and affectionate in a quiet 
 
 370 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 way, with no parts, but good sense and good princi- 
 ple, honestly and inoffensively pious, and equal tem- 
 pered, but with no pretty girlish ways or fancies. 
 She became a serene additional neutral tint in the 
 household harmony; read alternate verses of the 
 Bible with my mother and me in the mornings, and 
 went to a day school in the forenoon. When we trav- 
 elled she took somewhat of a governess position to- 
 ward me, we being allowed to explore places together 
 without my nurse — but we generally took old Anne 
 too for better company. 
 
 It began now to be of some importance what 
 church I went to on Sunday morning. My father, 
 who was still much broken in health, could not go to 
 the long Church of England service, and, my mother 
 being evangelical, he went contentedly, or at least 
 submissively, with her and me to Beresford Chapel, 
 Walworth, where the Rev. D. Andrews preached, 
 regularly, a. somewhat eloquent, forcible, and ingen- 
 ious sermon, not tiresome to him — the prayers were 
 abridged from the Church Service, and we, being the 
 grandest people in the congregation, were allowed — 
 though, as I now remember, not without offended 
 and reproachful glances from the more conscientious 
 worshippers — to come in when even those short 
 prayers were half over. Mary and I used each to 
 write an abstract of the sermon in the afternoon, to 
 please ourselves — Mary dutifully, and I to show how 
 well I could do it. We never went to church in af- 
 
 371 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ternoon or evening. I remember yet the amazed and 
 appalling sensation, as of a vision preliminary to the 
 Day of Judgment, of going, a year or two later, first 
 into a church by candlelight. 
 
 We had no family worship, but our servants were 
 better cared for than is often the case in ostentatiously 
 religious houses. My mother used to take them, 
 when girls, from families known to her, sister after 
 sister, and we never had a bad one. 
 
 On the Sunday evening my father would some- 
 times read us a sermon of Blair's, or it might be, a 
 clerk or a customer would dine with us, when the 
 conversation, in mere necessary courtesy, would take 
 generally the direction of sherry. Mary and I got 
 through the evening how we could, over the "Pil- 
 grim's Progress," Bunyan's "Holy War," Quarles's 
 "Emblems," Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," Mrs. Sher- 
 wood's "Lady of the Manor" — a very awful book to 
 me, because of the stories in it of wicked girls who 
 had gone to balls, dying immediately after of fever 
 — and Mrs. Sherwood's "Henry Milner" — of which 
 more presently — the "Youth's Magazine," "Alfred 
 Campbell the Young Pilgrim," and, though rather 
 as a profane indulgence, permitted because of the 
 hardness of our hearts, Bingley's "Natural History." 
 We none of us cared for singing hymns or psalms as 
 such, and were too honest to amuse ourselves with 
 them as sacred music, besides that we did not find 
 their music amusing. 
 
 372 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 My father and mother, though due checks for 
 charities were of course sent to Dr. Andrews, and 
 various civilities at Christmas, in the way of turkeys 
 or boxes of raisins, intimated their satisfaction with 
 the style of his sermons and purity of his doctrine — 
 had yet, with their usual shyness, never asked for his 
 acquaintance, or even permitted the state of their 
 souls to be inquired after in pastoral visits. Mary 
 and I, however, were charmed merely by the distant 
 effect of him, and used to walk with Anne up and 
 down in Walworth, merely in hope of seeing him 
 pass on the other side of the way. At last, one day, 
 when, by extreme favor of Fortune, he met us in a 
 great hurry on our own side of it, and nearly tumbled 
 over me, Anne, as he recovered himself, dropped him 
 a low courtesy; whereupon he stopped, inquired who 
 we were, and was extremely gracious to us; and we, 
 coming home in a fever of delight, announced, not 
 much to my mother's satisfaction, that the Doctor had 
 said he would call some day! And so, little by little, 
 the blissful acquaintance was made. I might be 
 eleven or going on twelve by that time. Miss An- 
 drews, the elder sister of the "Angel in the House," 
 was an extremely beautiful girl of seventeen; she 
 sang "Tambourgi, Tambourgi" with great spirit and 
 a rich voice, went at blackberry time on rambles with 
 us at the Norwood Spa, and made me feel generally 
 that there was something in girls that I did not un- 
 derstand, and that was curiously agreeable. And at 
 
 373 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 last, because I was so fond of the Doctor, and he had 
 the reputation (in Walworth) of being a good 
 scholar, my father thought he might pleasantly initi- 
 ate me in Greek, such initiation having been already 
 too long deferred. The Doctor, it afterward turned 
 out, knew little more of Greek than the letters, and 
 declensions of nouns ; but he wrote the letters prettily, 
 and had an accurate and sensitive ear for rhythm. 
 He began me with the odes of Anacreon, and made 
 me scan both them and my Virgil thoroughly, some- 
 times, by way of interlude, reciting bits of Shake- 
 speare to me with force and propriety. The Anacre- 
 ontic metre entirely pleased me, nor less the Anacre- 
 ontic sentiment. I learned half the odes by heart 
 merely to please myself, and learned with certainty, 
 what in later study of Greek art it has proved ex- 
 tremely advantageous to me to know, that the Greeks 
 liked doves, swallows, and roses just as well as I did. 
 In the intervals of these unlaborious Greek les- 
 sons, I went on amusing myself — partly in writing 
 English doggerel, partly in map drawing, or copying 
 Cruikshank's illustrations to Grimm, which I did 
 with great, and to most people now incredible, exact- 
 ness, a sheet of them being, by good hap, well pre- 
 served, done when I was between ten and eleven. 
 But I never saw any boy's work in my life showing 
 so little original faculty, or grasp by memory. I 
 could literally draw nothing, not a cat, not a mouse, 
 not a boat, not a bush, "out of my head," and there 
 
 374 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 was, luckily, at present no idea on the part either of 
 parents or preceptor, of teaching me to draw out of 
 other people's heads. 
 
 Nevertheless, Mary, at her day school, was get- 
 ting drawing lessons with the other girls. Her re- 
 port of the pleasantness and zeal of the master, and 
 the frank and somewhat unusual execution of the 
 drawings he gave her to copy, interested my father, 
 and he was still more pleased by Mary's copying, for 
 a proof of industry while he was away on his win- 
 ter's journey — copying, in pencil, so as to produce the 
 effect of a vigorous engraving, the little water-color 
 by Prout of a wayside cottage, which was the founda- 
 tion of our future water-color collection, being then 
 our only possession in that kind — of other kind, two 
 miniatures on ivory completed our gallery. 
 
 I perceive, in thinking over the good work of that 
 patient black and white study, that Mary could have 
 drawn, if she had been well taught and kindly en- 
 couraged. But her power of patient copying did not 
 serve her in drawing from nature, and when, that 
 same summer, I between ten and eleven (1829), 
 we went to stay at Matlock in Derbyshire, all that 
 she proved able to accomplish was an outline of Cax- 
 ton's New Bath Hotel, in which our efforts in the 
 direction of art, for that year, ended. 
 
 But, in the glittering white broken spar, specked 
 with galena, by which the walks of the hotel garden 
 were made bright, and in the shops of the pretty vil- 
 
 375 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 lage, and in many a happy walk among its cliffs, I 
 pursued my mineralogical studies on fluor, calcite, 
 and the ores of lead, with indescribable rapture when 
 I was allowed to go into a cave. My father and 
 mother showed far more kindness than I knew, in 
 yielding to my subterranean passion; for my mother 
 could not bear dirty places, and my father had a 
 nervous feeling that the ladders would break, or the 
 roof fall, before we got out again. They went with 
 me, nevertheless, wherever I wanted to go — my 
 father even into the terrible Speedwell mine at Cas- 
 tleton, where, for once, I was a little frightened my- 
 self. 
 
 From Matlock we must have gone on to Cumber- 
 land, for I find in my father's writing the legend, 
 "Begun 28th November, 1830, finished nth January, 
 1832," on the fly-leaf of the "Iteriad," a poem in four 
 books, which I indited, between those dates, on the 
 subject of our journey among the Lakes, and of which 
 some little notice may be taken further on. 
 
 It must have been in the spring of 1831 that the 
 important step was taken of giving me a drawing 
 master. Mary showed no gift of representing any of 
 the scenes of our travels, and I began to express some 
 wish that I could draw myself. Whereupon, Mary's 
 pleasant drawing master, to whom my father and 
 mother were equitable enough not to impute Mary's 
 want of genius, was invited to give me also an hour 
 in the week. 
 
 376 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 I suppose a drawing master's business can only 
 become established by his assertion of himself to the 
 public as the possessor of a style ; and teaching in that 
 only. Nevertheless, Mr. Runciman's memory sus- 
 tains disgrace in my mind in that he gave no impulse 
 nor even indulgence to the extraordinary gift I had 
 for drawing delicately with the pen point. Any work 
 of that kind was done thenceforward only to please 
 myself, Mr, Runciman gave me nothing but his 
 own mannered and inefficient drawings to copy, and 
 greatly broke the force both of my mind and hand. 
 
 Yet he taught me much, and suggested more. He 
 taught me perspective, at once accurately and sim- 
 ply — an invaluable bit of teaching. He compelled 
 me into a swiftness and facility of hand which I 
 found afterward extremely useful, though what I 
 have just called the "force," the strong accuracy of 
 my line, was lost. He cultivated in me — indeed 
 founded — the habit of looking for the essential points 
 in the things drawn, so as to abstract them decisively, 
 and he explained to me the meaning and importance 
 of composition, though he himself could not compose, 
 
 A very happy time followed, for about two years. 
 
 I was, of course, far behind Mary in touch-skill 
 of pencil drawing, and it was good for her that this 
 superiority was acknowledged, and due honor done 
 her for the steady pains of her unimpulsive practice 
 and unwearied attention. For, as she did not write 
 poems like me, nor collect spars like me. nor exhibit 
 
 377 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 any prevailing vivacity of mind in any direction, she 
 was gradually sinking into far too subordinate a po- 
 sition to my high-mightiness. But I could make no 
 pretence for some time to rival her in free-hand copy- 
 ing, and my first attempts from nature were not felt 
 by my father to be the least flattering to his vanity. 
 
 These were made under the stimulus of a journey 
 to Dover with the forethought of which my mother 
 comforted me through an illness of 1829. I find my 
 quite first sketch-book, an extremely inconvenient 
 upright small octavo in mottled and flexible cover, 
 the paper pure white, and ribbedly gritty, filled with 
 outlines, irregularly defaced by impulsive efforts at 
 finish, in arbitrary places and corners, of Dover and 
 Tunbridge Castles and the main tower of Canterbury 
 Cathedral. These, with a really good study, supple- 
 mented by detached detail, of Battle Abbey, I have 
 set aside for preservation; the really first sketch I 
 ever made from nature being No. i, of a street in 
 Sevenoaks. I got little satisfaction and less praise 
 by these works; but the native architectural instinct 
 is instantly developed in these — highly notable for 
 any one who cares to note such nativities. Two little 
 pencillings from Canterbury south porch and cen- 
 tral tower, I have given to Miss Gale, of Burgate 
 House, Canterbury; the remnants of the book itself 
 to Mrs. Talbot, of Tyn-y-Ffynon, Barmouth, both 
 very dear friends. 
 
 But, before everything, at this time, came my 
 
 378 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 pleasure in merely watching the sea. I was not al- 
 lowed to row, far less to sail, nor to walk near the 
 harbor alone; so that I learned nothing of shipping, 
 or anything else worth learning, but spent four or five 
 hours every day in simply staring and wondering at 
 the sea — an occupation which never failed me till I 
 was forty. Whenever I could get to a beach it was 
 enough for me to have the waves to look at, and hear, 
 and pursue and fly from. I never took to natural 
 history of shells, or shrimps, or weeds, or jelly-fish. 
 Pebbles? — yes, if there were any; otherwise, merely 
 stared all day long at the tumbling and creaming 
 strength of the sea. Idiotically, it now appears to 
 me, wasting all that priceless youth in mere dream 
 and trance of admiration; it had a certain strain of 
 Byronesque passion in it, which meant something: 
 but it was a fearful loss of time. 
 
 The summer of 1832 must, I think, have been 
 passed at home, for my next sketch-book contains 
 only some efforts at tree-drawing in Dulwich, and a 
 view of the bridge over the now bricked-up "Efifra," 
 by which the Norwood road then crossed it at the 
 bottom of Heme Hill: the road itself, just at the 
 place where, from the top of the bridge, one looked 
 up and down the streamlet, bridged now into pu- 
 tridly damp shade by the railway, close to Heme 
 Hill Station. This sketch was the first in which I 
 was ever supposed to show any talent for drawing. 
 But on my thirteenth (?) birthday, 8th February, 
 
 379 
 
 Vol. IS— 13 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 1832, my father's partner, Mr. Henry Telford, gave 
 me Rogers' "Italy," and determined the main tenor 
 of my life. 
 
 At that time I had never heard of Turner, except 
 in the well-remembered saying of Mr. Runciman's, 
 that "the world had lately been much dazzled and led 
 away by some splendid ideas thrown out by Turner." 
 But I had no sooner cast eyes on the Rogers vignettes 
 than I took them for my only masters, and set myself 
 to imitate them as far as I possibly could by fine pen 
 shading. 
 
 I have told this story so often that I begin to doubt 
 its time. It is curiously tiresome that Mr. Telford 
 did not himself write my name in the book, and my 
 father, who writes in it, "The gift of Henry Telford, 
 Esq.," still more curiously, for him, puts no date: if 
 it was a year later, no matter; there is no doubt how- 
 ever that early in the spring of 1833 Prout published 
 his sketches in Flanders and Germany. I well re- 
 member going with my father into the shop where 
 subscribers entered their names, and being referred 
 to the specimen print, the turreted window over the 
 Moselle, at Coblentz. We got the book home to 
 Heme Hill before the time of our usual annual tour; 
 and as my mother watched my father's pleasure and 
 mine in looking at the wonderful places, she said, 
 why should not we go and see some of them in 
 reality? My father hesitated a little, then with glit- 
 tering eyes said — why not? And there were two 
 
 380 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 or three weeks of entirely rapturous and amazed 
 preparation. I recollect that very evening bringing 
 down my big geography book, still most precious to 
 me (I take it down now, and for the first time put my 
 own initials under my father's name in it) ; and look- 
 ing with Mary at the outline of Mont Blanc, copied 
 from Saussure, at p. 201, and reading some of the 
 singular information about the Alps which it illus- 
 trates. So that Switzerland must have been at once in- 
 cluded in the plans — soon prosperously, and with re- 
 sult of all manner of good, by God's help fulfilled. 
 
 We went by Calais and Brussels to Cologne; up 
 the Rhine to Strasburg, across the Black Forest to 
 Schaffhausen, then made a sweep through North 
 Switzerland by Basle, Berne, Interlachen, Lucerne, 
 Zurich, to Constance — following up the Rhine still to 
 Coire, then over Splugen to Como, Milan, and 
 Genoa; meaning, as I now remember, for Rome. 
 But, it being June already, the heat of Genoa warned 
 us of imprudence: we turned, and came back over 
 the Simplon to Geneva, saw Chamouni, and so home 
 by Lyons and Dijon. 
 
 To do all this in the then only possible way, with 
 post-horses, and, on the lakes, with oared boats, 
 needed careful calculation of time each day. My 
 father liked to get to our sleeping place as early as 
 he could, and never would stop the horses for me to 
 draw anything (the extra pence to postilion for wait- 
 ing being also an item of weight in his mind) ; thus I 
 
 381 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 got into the bad habit, yet not without its discipline, 
 of making scrawls as the carriage went along, and 
 working them up "out of my head" in the evening. I 
 produced in this manner, throughout the journey, 
 some thirty sheets or so of small pen and Indian ink 
 drawings, four or five in a sheet; some not inelegant, 
 all laborious, but for the most part one just like an- 
 other, and without exception stupid and characterless 
 to the last degree. 
 
 With these flying scrawls on the road, I made, 
 when staying in towns, some elaborate pencil and pen 
 outlines, of which perhaps half a dozen are worth 
 register and preservation. My father's pride in a 
 study of the doubly-towered Renaissance church of 
 Dijon was great. A still more laborious Hotel de 
 Ville of Brussels remains with it at Brantwood. The 
 drawing of that Hotel de Ville by me now at Ox- 
 ford is a copy of Prout's, which I made in illustration 
 of the volume in which I wrote the beginning of a 
 rhymed history of the tour. 
 
 For it had excited all the poor little faculties that 
 were in me to their utmost strain, and I had certainly 
 more passionate happiness, of a quality utterly inde- 
 scribable to people who never felt the like, and more, 
 in solid quantity, in those three months, than most 
 people have in all their lives. The impression of 
 the Alps first seen from Schafifhausen, of Milan, and 
 of Geneva, I will try to give some account of after- 
 ward — my first business now is to get on. 
 
 382 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 The winter of '33, and what time I could steal 
 to amuse myself in, out of '34, were spent in compar- 
 ing, writing fair, and drawing vignettes for the deco- 
 ration of the aforesaid poetical account of our tour, 
 in imitation of Rogers' "Italy." The drawings were 
 made on separate pieces of paper and pasted into 
 the books; many have since been taken out, others 
 are there for which the verses were never written, for 
 I had spent my fervor before I got up the Rhine. I 
 leave the unfinished folly in Joanie's care, that none 
 but friends may see it. 
 
 Meantime, it having been perceived by my father 
 and mother that Dr. Andrews could neither prepare 
 me for the University, nor for the duties of a bishop- 
 ric, I was sent as a day scholar to the private school 
 kept by the Rev. Thomas Dale, in Grove Lane, with- 
 in walking distance of Heme Hill. Walking down 
 with my father after breakfast, carrying my blue bag 
 of books, I came home to half-past one dinner, and 
 prepared my lessons in the evening for next day. Un- 
 der these conditions I saw little of my fellow-schol- 
 ars, the two sons of Mr. Dale, Tom and James; and 
 three boarders, the sons of Colonel Matson, of Wool- 
 wich; of Alderman Key, of Denmark Hill; and a 
 fine lively boy, Willoughby Jones, afterward Sir W., 
 and only lately, to my sorrow, dead. 
 
 Finding me in all respects what boys could only 
 look upon as an innocent, they treated me as I sup- 
 pose they would have treated a girl ; they neither 
 
 3^3 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 thrashed nor chafifed me — finding, indeed, from the 
 first that chaff had no effect on me. Generally I did 
 not understand it, nor in the least mind it if I did, 
 the fountain of pure conceit in my own heart sustain- 
 ing me serenely against all deprecation, whether by 
 master or companion. I was fairly intelligent of 
 books, had a good quick and holding memory, 
 learned whatever I was bid as fast as I could, and as 
 well; and since all the other boys learned always as 
 little as they could, though I was far in retard of 
 them in real knowledge, I almost always knew the 
 day's lesson best. I have already described, in the 
 first chapter of "Fiction, Fair and Foul," Mr. Dale's 
 rejection of my clearly known old grammar as a 
 "Scotch thing." In that one action he rejected him- 
 self from being my master; and I thenceforward 
 learned all he told me only because I had to do it. 
 
 While these steps were taken for my classical ad- 
 vancement, a master was found for me, still in that 
 unlucky Walworth, to teach me mathematics. Mr. 
 Rowbotham was an extremely industrious, deserv- 
 ing, and fairly well-informed person in his own 
 branches, who, with his wife, and various impedi- 
 ments and inconveniences in the way of children, 
 kept a "young gentleman's Academy" near the Ele- 
 phant and Castle, in one of the first houses which 
 have black plots of grass in front, fenced by iron 
 railings from the Walworth Road. 
 
 He knew Latin, German, and French grammar; 
 
 384 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 was able to teach the "use of the globes" as far as 
 needed in a preparatory school, and was, up to far 
 beyond the point needed for me, a really sound 
 mathematician. For the rest, utterly unacquainted 
 with men or their history, with nature and its mean- 
 ings; stupid and disconsolate, incapable of any man- 
 ner of mirth or fancy, thinking mathematics the only 
 proper occupation of human intellect, asthmatic to 
 a degree causing often helpless suffering, and hope- 
 lessly poor, spending his evenings, after his school- 
 drudgery was over, in writing manuals of arith- 
 metic and algebra, and compiling French and Ger- 
 man grammars, which he allowed the booksellers to 
 cheat him out of — adding, perhaps, with all his year's 
 lamp-labor, fifteen or twenty pounds to his income; 
 — a more wretched, innocent^ patient, insensible, un- 
 admirable, uncomfortable, intolerable being never 
 was produced in this era of England by the culture 
 characteristic of her metropolis. 
 
 Under the tuition, twice a week in the evening, 
 of Mr. Rowbotham (invited always to substantial 
 tea with us before the lesson as a really efficient 
 help to his hungry science, after the walk up Heme 
 Hill, painful to asthma), I prospered fairly in 1834, 
 picking up some bits of French grammar, of which 
 I had really felt the want — I had before got hold, 
 somehow, of words enough to make my way about 
 with — and I don't know how, but I recollect, at 
 Paris, going to the Louvre under charge of Salvador 
 
 385 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 (I wanted to make a sketch from Rembrandt's Sup- 
 per at Emmaus), and on Salvador's application to 
 the custode for permission, it appeared I was not old 
 enough to have a ticket — fifteen was then the earliest 
 admission-age; but seeing me look woebegone, the 
 good-natured custode said he thought if I went in to 
 the "Board," or whatever it was, of authorities, and 
 asked for permission myself, they would give it me. 
 Whereupon I instantly begged to be introduced to the 
 Board, and the custode taking me in under his coat 
 lappets, I did verily, in what broken French was feas- 
 ible to me, represent my case to several gentlemen of 
 an official and impressive aspect, and got my permis- 
 sion, and outlined the Supper at Emmaus with some 
 real success in expression, and was extremely proud 
 of myself. But my narrow knowledge of the lan- 
 guage, though thus available for business, left me 
 sorrowful and ashamed after the fatal dinner at Mr. 
 Domecq's, when the little Elise, then just nine, see- 
 ing that her elder sisters did choose to trouble them- 
 selves with me, and being herself of an entirely be- 
 nevolent and pitiful temper, came across the draw- 
 ing-room to me in my desolation, and leaning an 
 elbow on my knee, set herself deliberately to chatter 
 to me mellifluously for an hour and a half by the 
 time-piece — requiring no answer, of which she saw 
 I was incapable, but satisfied with my grateful and 
 respectful attention, and admiring interest, if not ex- 
 actly always in what she said, at least in the way she 
 
 386 
 
Education of Ruskin 
 
 said it. She gave me the entire history of Ker school, 
 and of the objectionable characters of her teachers, 
 and of the delightful characters of her companions, 
 and of the mischief she got into, and the surrepti- 
 tious enjoyments they devised, and the joys of coming 
 back to the Champs Elysees, and the general likeness 
 of Paris to the Garden of Eden. And the hour and 
 a half seemed but too short, and left me resolved, 
 anyhow, to do my best to learn French. 
 
 So, as I said, I progressed in this study to the 
 contentment of Mr. Rowbotham, went easy through 
 the first three books of Euclid, and got as far as 
 quadratics jn Algebra. But there I stopped, vir- 
 tually, forever. The moment I got into sums of se- 
 ries, or symbols expressing the relations instead of 
 the real magnitudes of things — partly in want of 
 faculty, partly in an already well-developed and 
 healthy hatred of things vainly bothering and in- 
 tangible^ — I jibbed — -or stood stunned. Afterward, 
 at Oxford, they dragged me through some conic sec- 
 tions, of which the facts representable by drawing be- 
 came afterward of extreme value to me; and taught 
 me as much trigonometry as made my mountain 
 work, in plan and elevation, unaccusable. In ele- 
 mentary geometry I was always happy, and, for a 
 boy, strong; and my conceit, developing now every 
 hour more venomously as I began to perceive the 
 weakness of my masters, led me to spend nearly every 
 moment I could command for study in my own way, 
 
 387 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 through the year 1835, in trying to trisect an angle. 
 For some time afterward I had the sense to reproach 
 myself for the waste of thoughtful hours in that year, 
 little knowing or dreaming how many a year to come, 
 from that time forth, was to be worse wasted. 
 
 While the course of my education was thus daily 
 gathering the growth of me into a stubborn little 
 standard bush, various frost-stroke was stripping 
 away from me the poor little flowers — or herbs — of 
 the forest, that had once grown, happily for me, at 
 my side. 
 
 388 
 
A HOOSIER SCHOOL* 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A PRIVATE LESSON FROM A BULLDOG 
 
 ""WTANT to be a schoolmaster, do you? You? 
 ^ Well, what would you do in Flat Crick dees- 
 trick, Fd like to know? Why, the boys have driv 
 off the last two, and licked the one afore them like 
 blazes. You might teach a summer school, when 
 nothin' but children come. But I 'low it takes a 
 right smart man to be schoolmaster in Flat Crick 
 in the winter. They'd pitch you out of doors, 
 sonny, neck and heels, afore Christmas." 
 
 The young man, who had walked ten miles to 
 get the school in this district, and who had been 
 mentally reviewing his learning at every step he 
 took, trembling lest the committee should find that he 
 did not know enough, was not a little taken aback 
 at this greeting from "old Jack Means," who was 
 the first trustee that he lighted on. The Impression 
 made by these ominous remarks was emphasized by 
 the glances which he received from Jack Means's 
 
 * From "The Hoosier School-Master," by Edward Eggleston. 
 Copyright 1892, by Orange J udd Company. 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 two sons. The older one eyed him from the top of 
 his brawny shoulders with that amiable look which 
 a big dog turns on a little one before shaking him. 
 Ralph Hartsook had never thought of being meas- 
 ured by the standard of muscle. This notion of beat- 
 ing education into young savages in spite of them- 
 selves dashed his ardor. 
 
 He had walked right to where Jack Means was 
 at work shaving shingles in his own front yard. 
 While Mr. Means was making the speech which we 
 have set down above, and punctuating it with ex- 
 pectorations, a large brindle bulldog had been sniff- 
 ing at Ralph's heels, and a girl in a new linsey-wool- 
 sey dress, standing by the door, had nearly giggled 
 her head off at the delightful prospect of seeing a 
 new schoolteacher eaten up by the ferocious brute. 
 
 The disheartening words of the old man, the im- 
 mense muscles of the young man who was to be his 
 rebellious pupil, the jaws of the ugly bulldog, and 
 the heartless giggle of the girl, gave Ralph a de- 
 lightful sense of having precipitated himself into a 
 den of wild beasts. Faint with weariness and dis- 
 couragement, and shivering with fear, he sat down 
 on a wheelbarrow. 
 
 "You, Bull!" said the old man to the dog, which 
 was showing more and more a disposition to make 
 a meal of the incipient pedagogue, "you. Bull! git 
 aout, you pup!" The dog walked sullenly off, but 
 not until he had given Ralph a look full of promise 
 
 390 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 of what he meant to do when he got a good chance. 
 Ralph wished himself back in the village of Lewis- 
 burg, whence he had come. 
 
 "You see," continued Mr. Means, spitting in a 
 meditative sort of a way, "you see, we a'n't none . 
 of your saft sort in these diggin's. It takes a man 
 to boss this deestrick. Howsumdever, ef you think 
 you kin trust your hide in Flat Crick schoolhouse 
 I ha'n't got no 'bjection. But ef you git licked, 
 don't come on us. Flat Crick don't pay no 'nsur- 
 ance, you bet! Any other trustees? Wal, yes. But 
 as I pay the most taxes, t'others jist let me run the 
 thing. You can begin right off a Monday. They 
 a'n't been no other applications. You see, it takes 
 grit to apply for this school. The last master had a 
 black eye for a month. But, as I wuz sayin', you can 
 jist roll up and wade in. I 'low you've got spunk, 
 maybe, and that goes for a heap sight more'n sinnoo 
 with boys. Walk in, and stay over Sunday with me. 
 You'll hev' to board roun', and I guess you better 
 begin here." 
 
 Ralph did not go in, but sat out on the wheel- 
 barrow, watching the old man shave shingles, while 
 the boys split the blocks and chopped wood. Bull 
 smelled of the newcomer again in an ugly way, and 
 got a good kick from the older son for his pains. 
 But out of one of his red eyes the dog warned the 
 young schoolmaster that he should yet suffer for all 
 kicks received on his account. 
 
 39^ 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "Ef Bull once takes a holt, heaven and yarth can't 
 make him let go," said the older son to Ralph, by 
 way of comfort. . 
 
 It was well for Ralph that he began to "board 
 roun' " by stopping at Mr. Means's. Ralph felt 
 that Flat Creek was what he needed. He had lived 
 a bookish life; but here was his lesson in the art 
 of managing people, for he who can manage the un- 
 tamed and strapping youths of a winter school in 
 Hoopole County has gone far toward learning one 
 of the hardest of lessons. And in Ralph's time, 
 things were worse than they are now. The older 
 son of Mr. Means was called Bud Means. What 
 his real name was, Ralph could not find out, for in 
 many of these families the nickname of "Bud" given 
 to the oldest boy, and that of "Sis," which is the 
 birthright of the oldest girl, completely bury the 
 proper Christian name. Ralph saw his first strategic 
 point, which was to capture Bud Means. 
 
 After supper, the boys began to get ready for 
 something. Bull stuck up his ears in a dignified 
 way, and the three or four yellow curs who were 
 Bull's satellites yelped delightedly and discord- 
 antly. 
 
 "Bill," said Bud Means to his brother, "ax the 
 master ef he'd like to hunt coons. I'd like to take 
 the starch out uv the stuck-up feller." 
 
 " 'Nough said," was Bill's reply. 
 
 "You durn't do it," said Bud. 
 
 39'^ 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 "I don't take no sech a dare," returned Bill, and 
 walked down to the gate, by. which Ralph stood 
 watching the stars come out, and half wishing he 
 had never seen Flat Creek. 
 
 "I say, mister," began Bill, "mister, they's a coon 
 what's been a eatin' our chickens lately, and we're 
 goin' to try to ketch the varmint You wouldn't 
 like to take a coon hunt nor nothin', would you?" 
 
 "Why, yes," said Ralph, "there's nothing I should 
 like better, if I could only be sure Bull wouldn't 
 mistake me for the coon." 
 
 And so, as a matter of policy, Ralph dragged his 
 tired legs eight or ten miles, on hill and in hollow, 
 after Bud, and Bill, and Bull, and the coon. But 
 the raccoon climbed a tree. The boys got into a 
 quarrel about whose business it was to have brought 
 the axe, and who was to blame that the tree could 
 not be felled. Now, if there was anything Ralph's 
 muscles were good for, it was climbing. So, asking 
 Bud to give him a start, he soon reached the limb 
 above the one on which the raccoon was. Ralph 
 did not know how ugly a customer a raccoon can 
 be, and so got credit for more courage than he had. 
 With much peril to his legs from the raccoon's teeth, 
 he succeeded in shaking the poor creature off among 
 the yelping brutes and yelling boys. Ralph could 
 not help sympathizing with the hunted animal," 
 which sold its life as dearly as possible, giving the 
 dogs many a scratch and bite. It seemed to him 
 
 393 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 tKat he was like the raccoon, precipitated into the 
 midst of a party of dogs who would rejoice in worry- 
 ing his life out, as Bull and his crowd were destroy- 
 ing the poor raccoon. When Bull at last seized the 
 raccoon and put an end to it, Ralph could not but 
 admire the decided way in which he did it, calling 
 to mind Bud's comment, "Ef Bull once takes a holt, 
 heaven and yarth can't make him let go." 
 
 But as they walked home, Bud carrying the rac- 
 coon by the tail, Ralph felt that his hunt had not 
 been in vain. He fancied that even red-eyed Bull, 
 walking uncomfortably close to his heels, respected 
 him more since he had climbed that tree. 
 
 "Purty peart kind of a master," remarked the old 
 man to Bud, after Ralph had gone to bed. "Guess 
 you better be a little easy on him. Hey?" 
 
 But Bud deigned no reply. Perhaps because he 
 knew that Ralph heard the conversation through the 
 thin partition. 
 
 Ralph woke delighted to find it raining. He did 
 not want to hunt or fish on Sunday, and this steady 
 rain would enable him to make friends with Bud. 
 I do not know how he got started, but after break- 
 fast he began to tell stories. Out of all the books 
 he had ever read he told story after story. And 
 "old man Means," and "old Miss Means," and Bud 
 Means, and Bill Means, and Sis Means listened 
 with great eyes while he told of Sindbad's adventures, 
 of the Old Man of the Sea, of Robinson Crusoe, of 
 
 394 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 Captain Gulliver's experiences in Lilliput, and of 
 Baron Munchausen's exploits. 
 
 Ralph had caught his fish. The hungry minds 
 of these backwoods people were refreshed with the 
 new life that came to their imaginations in these 
 stories. For there was but one book in the Means 
 library, and that, a well-thumbed copy of "Captain 
 Riley's Narrative," had long since lost all freshness. 
 
 "I'll be dog-on'd," said Bill, emphatically, "ef I 
 hadn't ruther hear the master tell them whoppin' 
 yarns than to go to a circus the best day I ever seed!" 
 Bill could pay no higher compliment. 
 
 What Ralph wanted was to make a friend of Bud. 
 It's a nice thing to have the seventy-four-gun ship 
 on your own side, and the more Hartsook admired 
 the knotted muscles of Bud Means the more he de- 
 sired to attach him to himself. So, whenever he 
 struck out a peculiarly brilliant passage, he anx- 
 iously watched Bud's eye. But the young Philistine 
 kept his own counsel. He listened, but said nothing, 
 and the eyes under his shaggy brows gave no sign. 
 Ralph could not tell whether those eyes were deep 
 and inscrutable or only stolid. Perhaps a little of 
 both. When Monday morning came, Ralph was 
 nervous. He walked to school with Bud. 
 
 "I guess you're a little skeered by what the old 
 man said, a'n't you?" 
 
 Ralph was about to deny it, but on reflection con- 
 cluded that it was best to speak the truth. He said 
 
 395 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 that Mr. Means's description of the school had made 
 him feel a little down-hearted. 
 
 "What will you do with the tough boys? You 
 a'n't no match for 'em." And Ralph felt Bud's eyes 
 not only measuring his muscles, but scrutinizing his 
 countenance. He only answered: 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "What would you do with me, for instance?" 
 and Bud stretched himself up as if to shake out the 
 reserve power coiled up in his great muscles. 
 
 "I sha'n't have any trouble with you." 
 
 "Why, I'm the wust chap of all. I thrashed the 
 last master, myself." 
 
 And again the eyes of Bud Means looked out 
 sharply from his shadowing brows to see the efifect 
 of this speech on the slender young man. 
 
 "You won't thrash me, though," said Ralph. 
 
 "Pshaw! I 'low I could whip you in an inch of 
 your life with my left hand, and never half try," said 
 young Means, with a threatening sneer. 
 
 "I know that as well as you do." 
 
 "Well, a'n't you afraid of me, then?" and again 
 he looked sidewise at Ralph. 
 
 "Not a bit," said Ralph, wondering at his own 
 courage. 
 
 They walked on in silence a minute. Bud was 
 turning the matter over. 
 
 "Why a'n't you afraid of me?" he said pres- 
 ently. 
 
 396 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 "Because you and I are going to be friends." 
 
 "And what about t'others?" 
 
 "I am not afraid of all the other boys put to- 
 gether." 
 
 "You a'n't! The mischief! How's that?" 
 
 "Well, I'm not afraid of them because you and 
 I are going to be friends, and you can whip all of 
 them together. You'll do the fighting and I'll do 
 the teaching." 
 
 The diplomatic Bud only chuckled a little at this ; 
 whether he assented to the alliance or not Ralph 
 could not tell. 
 
 When Ralph looked round on the faces of the 
 scholars — the little faces full of mischief and curios- 
 ity, the big faces full of an expression which was not 
 further removed than second-cousin from contempt 
 — when young Hartsook looked into these faces, his 
 heart palpitated with stage-fright. There is no au- 
 dience so hard to face as one of school children, as 
 many a man has found to his cost. Perhaps it is 
 that no conventional restraint can keep down their 
 laughter when you do or say anything ridiculous. 
 
 Hartsook's first day was hurried and unsatisfac- 
 tory. He was not master of himself, and conse- 
 quently not master of anybody else. When evening 
 came, there were symptoms of insubordination 
 through the whole school. Poor Ralph was sick at 
 heart. He felt that if there had ever been the 
 shadow of an alliance between himself and Bud, it 
 
 397 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 was all "off" now. It seemed to Hartsook that 
 even Bull had lost his respect for the teacher. Half 
 that night the young man lay awake. At last com- 
 fort came to him. A reminiscence of the death of 
 the raccoon flashed on him like a vision. He re- 
 membered that quiet and annihilating bite which 
 Bull gave. He remembered Bud's certificate, that 
 "Ef Bull once takes a holt, heaven and yarth can't 
 make him let go." He thought that what Flat 
 Creek needed was a bulldog. He would be a bull- 
 dog, quiet, but invincible. He would take hold in 
 such a way that nothing should make him let go. 
 And then he went to sleep. 
 
 In the morning Ralph got out of bed slowly. He 
 put his clothes on slowly. He pulled on his boots in 
 a bulldog mood. He tried to move as he thought 
 Bull would move if he were a man. He ate with 
 deliberation, and looked everybody in the eyes with 
 a manner that made Bud watch him curiously. He 
 found himself continually comparing himself with 
 Bull. He found Bull possessing a strange fascina- 
 tion for him. He walked to school alone, the rest 
 having gone on before. He entered the school- 
 room preserving a cool and dogged manner. He 
 saw in the eyes of the boys that there was mischief 
 brewing. He did not dare sit down in his chair for 
 fear of a pin. Everybody looked solemn. Ralph 
 lifted the lid of his desk. "Bow-wow! wow-wow!" 
 It was the voice of an imprisoned puppy, and the 
 
 398 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 school giggled and then roared. Then everything 
 was quiet. 
 
 The scholars expected an outburst of wrath from 
 the teacher. For they had come to regard the whole 
 world as divided into two classes, the teacher on the 
 one side representing lawful authority, and the pu- 
 pils on the other in a state of chronic rebellion. To 
 play a trick on the master was an evidence of spirit; 
 to "lick" the master was to be the crowned hero of 
 Flat Creek district. Such a hero was Bud Means; 
 and Bill, who had less muscle, saw a chance to dis- 
 tinguish himself on a teacher of slender frame. 
 Hence the puppy in the desk. 
 
 Ralph Hartsook grew red in the face when he 
 saw the puppy. But the cool, repressed, bulldog 
 mood in which he had kept himself saved him. He 
 lifted the dog into his arms and stroked him until 
 the laughter subsided. Then, in a solemn and set 
 way, he began : 
 
 "I am sorry," and he looked round the room 
 with a steady, hard eye — everybody felt that there 
 was a conflict coming — "I am sorry that any scholar 
 in this school could be so mean" — the word was ut- 
 tered with a sharp emphasis, and all the big boys felt 
 sure that there would be a fight with Bill Means, 
 and perhaps with Bud — "could be so mean — as to 
 — shut up his brother in such a place as that!" 
 
 There was a long, derisive laugh. The wit was 
 indififerent, but by one stroke Ralph had carried the 
 
 399 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 whole school to his side. By the significant glances 
 of the boys, Hartsook detected the perpetrator of the 
 joke, and with the hard and dogged look in his eyes, 
 with just such a look as Bull would give a puppy, but 
 with the utmost suavity in his voice, he said : 
 
 "William Means, will you be so good as to put 
 this dog out of doors?" 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 A SPELL COMING 
 
 T^HERE was a moment of utter stillness; but the 
 '"' magnetism of Ralph's eye was too much for 
 Bill Means. The request was so polite, the master's 
 look was so innocent and yet so determined. Bill 
 often wondered afterward that he had not "fit" rather 
 than obeyed the request. But somehow he put the 
 dog out. He was partly surprised, partly inveigled, 
 partly awed into doing just what he had not intended 
 to do. In the week that followed. Bill had to fight 
 half a dozen boys for calling him "Puppy Means." 
 Bill said he wished he'd licked the master on the spot. 
 'Twould 'a' saved five fights out of the six. 
 
 And all that day and the next, the bulldog in the 
 master's eye was a terror to evil-doers. At the close 
 of school on the second day Bud was heard to give it 
 as his opinion that "the master wouldn't be much in 
 
 400 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 a tussle, but he had a heap of thunder and lightning 
 in him." 
 
 Did he inflict corporal punishment? inquires 
 some philanthropic friend. Would you inflict cor- 
 poral punishment if you were tiger-trainer in Van 
 Amburgh's happy family? But poor Ralph could 
 never satisfy his constituency in this regard. 
 
 "Don't believe he'll do," was Mr. Pete Jones's 
 comment to Mr. Means. "Don't thrash enough. 
 Boys won't I'arn 'less you thrash 'em, says I. Least- 
 ways, mine won't. Lay it on good is what I says to a 
 master. Lay it on good. Don't do no harm. Lickin' 
 and I'arnin' goes together. No lickin', no I'arnin', 
 says I. Lickin' and I'arnin', lickin' and i'arnin', is 
 the good ole way." 
 
 And Mr. Jones, like some wiser people, was the 
 more pleased with his formula that it had an allitera- 
 tive sound. Nevertheless, Ralph was master from this 
 time until the spelling-school came. If only it had 
 not been for that spelling-school! Many and many a 
 time after the night of the fatal spelling-school 
 Ralph used to say, "If only it had not been for that 
 spelling-school!" 
 
 There had to be a spelling-school. Not only for 
 the sake of my story, which would not have been 
 worth the telling if the spelling-school had not taken 
 place, but because Flat Creek district had to have a 
 spelling-school. It Is the only public literary exer- 
 cise known in Hoopole County. It takes the place of 
 
 401 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 lyceum lecture and debating club. Sis Means, or, as 
 she wished now to be called, Mirandy Means, ex- 
 pressed herself most positively in favor of it. She 
 said that she 'lowed the folks in that district couldn't 
 in no wise do without it. But it was rather to its so- 
 cial than to its intellectual benefits that she referred. 
 For all the spelling-schools ever seen could not en- 
 able her to stand anywhere but at the foot of the class. 
 There is one branch diligently taught in a backwoods 
 school. The public mind seems impressed with the 
 difficulties of English orthography, and there is a 
 solemn conviction that the chief end of man is to 
 learn to spell. " 'Know Webster's Elementary' came 
 down from Heaven," would be the backwoods ver- 
 sion of the Greek saying but that, unfortunately for 
 the Greeks, their fame has not reached so far. It of- 
 ten happens that the pupil does not know the meaning 
 of a single word in the lesson. This is of no con- 
 sequence. What do you want to know the meaning 
 of a word for? Words were made to be spelled, and 
 men were probably created that they might spell 
 them. Hence the necessity for sending a pupil 
 through the spelling-book five times before you al- 
 low him to begin to read, or indeed to do anything 
 else. Hence the necessity for those long spelling- 
 classes at the close of each forenoon and afternoon 
 session of the school, to stand at the head of which is 
 the cherished ambition of every scholar. Hence, too, 
 the necessity for devoting the whole of the afternoon 
 
 402 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 session of each Friday to a "spelling-match." In 
 fact, spelling is the "national game" in Hoopole 
 County. Baseball and croquet matches are as un- 
 known as Olympian chariot-races. Spelling and 
 shucking are the only public competitions. 
 
 So the fatal spelling-school had to be appointed 
 for the Wednesday of the second week of the session, 
 just when Ralph felt himself master of the situation. 
 Not that he was without his annoyances. One of 
 Ralph's troubles in the week before the spelling- 
 school was that he was loved. The other that he was 
 hated. And while the time between the appointing 
 of the spelling tournament and the actual occurrence 
 of that remarkable event is engaged in elapsing, let 
 me narrate two incidents that made it for Ralph a 
 trying time. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MIRANDY, HANK, AND SHOCKY 
 
 "|\/[IRANDY had nothing but contempt for the 
 -*-'-*■ new master until he developed the bulldog in 
 his character. Mirandy fell in love with the bulldog. 
 Like many other girls of her class, she was greatly 
 enamored with the "subjection of women," and she 
 stood ready to fall in love with any man strong 
 enough to be her master. Much has been said of the 
 strong-minded woman. I offer this psychological 
 
 403 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 remark as a contribution to the natural history of the 
 weak-minded woman. 
 
 It was at the close of that very second day on 
 which Ralph had achieved his first victory over the 
 school, and in which Mirandy had been seized with 
 her desperate passion for him, that she told him 
 about it. Not in words. We do not allow that in 
 the most civilized countries, and still less would it be 
 tolerated in Hoopole County. But Mirandy told the 
 master the fact that she was in love with him, though 
 no word passed her lips. She walked by him from 
 school. She cast at him what are commonly called 
 sheep's-eyes. Ralph thought them more like calf's 
 eyes. She changed the whole tone of her voice. She 
 whined ordinarily. Now she whimpered. And so by 
 ogling him, by blushing at him, by tittering at him, 
 by giggling at him, by snickering at him, by simper- 
 ing at him, by making herself tenfold more a fool 
 even than nature had made her, she managed to con- 
 vey to the dismayed soul of the young teacher the 
 frightful intelligence that he was loved by the rich- 
 est, the ugliest, the silliest, the coarsest, and the most 
 entirely contemptible girl in Flat Creek district. 
 
 Ralph sat by the fire the next morning trying to 
 read a few minutes before school-time, while the boys 
 were doing the chores and the bound girl was milk- 
 ing the cows, with no one in the room but the old 
 woman. She was generally as silent as Bud, but now 
 she seemed for some unaccountable reason disposed 
 
 404 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 to talk. She had sat down on the broad Hearth to 
 have her usual morning smoke; the popular table, 
 adorned by no cloth, stood in the middle of the floor ; 
 the unwashed blue teacups sat in the unwashed blue 
 saucers ; the unwashed blue plates kept company with 
 the begrimed blue pitcher. The dirty skillets by the 
 fire were kept in countenance by the dirtier pots, and 
 the ashes were drifted and strewn over the hearth- 
 stones in a most picturesque way. 
 
 "You see," said the old woman, knocking the 
 residuum from her cob pipe, and chafing some dry 
 leaf between her withered hands preparatory to fill- 
 ing it again, "you see, Mr. Hartsook, my ole man's 
 purty well along in the world. He's got a right 
 smart lot of this world's plunder, one way and an- 
 other." And while she stuffed the tobacco into her 
 pipe Ralph wondered why she should mention it to 
 him. "You see, we moved in here nigh upon twenty- 
 five years ago. 'Twas when my Jack, him as died 
 afore Bud was born, was a baby. Bud'll be twenty- 
 one the fif of next June." 
 
 Here Mrs. Means stopped to rake a live coal out 
 of the fire with her skinny finger, and then to carry it 
 in her skinny palm to the bowl — or to the hole — of 
 her cob pipe. When she got the smoke a-goIng, she 
 proceeded: 
 
 "You see, this yere bottom land was all Congress 
 land in them there days, and It sold for a dollar and 
 a quarter, and I says to my ole man, 'Jack,' says I, 
 
 405 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 'Jack, do you git a plenty while you're a-gittin\ Git 
 a plenty while you're a-gittin',' says I, 'fer 'twon't 
 never be no cheaper'n 'tis now,' and it ha'n't been; I 
 knowed 'twouldn't," and Mrs. Means took the pipe 
 from her mouth to indulge in a good chuckle at the 
 thought of her financial shrewdness. " 'Git a plenty 
 while you're a-gittin',' says I. I could see, you know, 
 they was a powerful sight of money in Congress land. 
 That's what made me say, 'Git a plenty while you're 
 a-gittin'.' An Jack, he's wuth lots and gobs of 
 money, all made out of Congress land. Jack didn't 
 git rich by hard work. Bless you, no! Not him. 
 That a'n't his way. Hard work a'n't, you know. 
 'Twas that air six hundred dollars he got along of 
 me, all salted down Into Flat Crick bottoms at a dol- 
 lar and a quarter a' acre, and 'twas my sayin' 'Git a 
 plenty while you're a-gittin' ' as done it." And here 
 the old ogre laughed, or grinned horribly, at Ralph, 
 showing her few straggling, discolored teeth. 
 
 Then she got up and knocked the ashes out of her 
 pipe, and laid the pipe away and walked round in 
 front of Ralph. After adjusting the chunks so that 
 the fire would burn, she turned her yellow face to- 
 ward Ralph, and scanning him closely came out with 
 the climax of her speech In the remark: "You see as 
 how, Mr. Hartsook, the man what gits my Mi- 
 randy'll do well. Flat Crick lanH's wuth nigh upon 
 a hundred a' acre." 
 
 This gentle hint came near knocking Ralph down. 
 
 406 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 Had Flat Creek land been worth a hundred times a 
 hundred dollars an acre, and had he owned five hun- 
 dred times Means's five hundred acres, he would 
 have given it all just at that moment to have anni- 
 hilated the whole tribe of Meanses. Except Bud. 
 Bud was a giant, but a good-natured one. He 
 thought he would except Bud from the general de- 
 struction. As for the rest, he mentally pictured to 
 himself the pleasure of attending their funerals. 
 There was one thought, however, between him and 
 despair. He felt confident that the cordiality, the in- 
 tensity, and the persistency of his dislike of Sis Means 
 were such that he should never inherit a foot of the 
 Flat Creek bottoms. 
 
 But what about Bud? What if he joined the con- 
 spiracy to marry him to this weak-eyed, weak-headed 
 wood-nymph, or backwoods nymph? 
 
 If Ralph felt it a misfortune to be loved by Mi- 
 randy Means, he found himself almost equally un- 
 fortunate in having incurred the hatred of the mean- 
 est boy in school. "Hank" Banta, low-browed, 
 smirky, and crafty, was the first sufferer by Ralph's 
 determination to use corporal punishment, and so 
 Henry Banta, who was a compound of deceit and re- 
 sentment, never lost an opportunity to annoy the 
 young schoolmaster, who was obliged to live perpet- 
 ually on his guard against his tricks. 
 
 One morning, as Ralph walked toward the 
 schoolhouse, he met little Shocky. What the boy's 
 
 407 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 first name or last name was the teacher did not know. 
 He had given his name as Shocky, and all the 
 teacher knew was that he was commonly called 
 Shocky, that he was an orphan, that he lived with 
 a family named Pearson over in Rocky Hollow, and 
 that he was the most faithful and affectionate child 
 in the school. On this morning that I speak of, 
 Ralph had walked toward the school early to avoid 
 the company of Mirandy. But not caring to sustain 
 his dignity longer than was necessary, he loitered 
 along the road, admiring the trunks of the maples, 
 and picking up a beech-nut now and then. Just as 
 he was about to go on toward the school, he caught 
 sight of little Shocky running swiftly toward him, 
 but looking from side to side, as if afraid of being 
 seen. 
 
 "Well, Shocky, what is it?" and Ralph put his 
 hand kindly on the great bushy head of white hair 
 from which came Shocky's nickname. Shocky had 
 to pant a minute. 
 
 "Why, Mr. Hartsook," he gasped, scratching his 
 head,"they's a pond down under the schoolhouse,"and 
 here Shocky's breath gave out entirely for a minute. 
 
 "Yes, Shocky, I know that. What about it? The 
 trustees haven't come to fill it up, have they?" 
 
 "Oh! no, sir; but Hank Banta, you know — " and 
 Shocky took another breathing spell, standing as 
 close to Ralph as he could, for poor Shocky got all 
 his sunshine from the master's presence. 
 
 408 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 "Has Henry fallen in and got a ducking, 
 Shocky?" 
 
 "Oh! no, sir; he wants to git you in, you see." 
 "Well, I won't go in, though, Shocky." 
 "But, you see, he's been and gone and pulled 
 back the board that you have to step on to git ahind 
 your desk; he's been and gone and pulled back the 
 board so as you can't help a-tippin' it up, and a- 
 sowsin' right in ef you step there." 
 
 "And so you came to tell me." There was a hus- 
 kiness in Ralph's voice. He had, then, one friend 
 in Flat Creek district — poor little Shocky. He put 
 his arm round Shocky just a moment, and then told 
 him to hasten across to the other road, so as to come 
 back to the schoolhouse in a direction at right an- 
 gles to the master's approach. But the caution was 
 not needed. Shocky had taken care to leave in that 
 way, and was altogether too cunning to be seen com- 
 ing down the road with Mr. Hartsook. But after 
 he got over the fence to go through the "sugar 
 camp" (or sugar orchard^ as they say at the East), 
 he stopped and turned back once or twice, just to 
 catch one more smile from Ralph. And then he hied 
 away through the tall trees, a very happy boy, kick- 
 ing and plowing the brown leaves before him in his 
 perfect delight, saying over and over again: "How 
 he looked at me! how he did look!" And when Ralph 
 came up to the schoolhouse door, there was Shocky 
 sauntering along from the other direction, throw- 
 
 409 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ing bits of limestone at fence rails, and smiling still 
 clear down to his shoes at thought of the master's kind 
 words. 
 
 "What a quare boy Shocky is!" remarked Betsey 
 Short, with a giggle. "He just likes to wander 
 round alone. I see him a-comin' out of the sugar 
 camp just now. He's been in there half an hour." 
 And Betsey giggled again; for Betsey Short could 
 giggle on slighter provocation than any other girl 
 on Flat Creek. 
 
 When Ralph Hartsook, with the quiet, dogged 
 tread that he was cultivating, walked into the school- 
 room, he took great care not to seem to see the trap 
 set for him; but he carelessly stepped over the board 
 that had been so nicely adjusted. The boys who 
 were Hank's confidants in the plot were very busy 
 over their slates, and took pains not to show their 
 disappointment. 
 
 The morning session wore on without incident. 
 Ralph several times caught two people looking at 
 him. One was Mirandy. Her weak and watery 
 eyes stole loving glances over the top of her spell- 
 ing-book, which she would not study. Her looks 
 made Ralph's spirits sink to forty below zero, and 
 congeal. 
 
 But on one of the backless little benches that sat 
 In the middle of the schoolroom was little Shocky, 
 who also cast many love-glances at the young mas- 
 ter; glances as grateful to his heart as Mirandy's og- 
 
 410 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 ling — he was tempted to call it goring — was hate- 
 ful. 
 
 "Look at Shocky!" giggled Betsey Short, behind 
 her slate. "He looks as if he was a-goin' to eat the 
 master up, body and soul." 
 
 And so the forenoon wore on as usual, and those 
 who laid the trap had forgotten it, themselves. The 
 morning session was drawing to a close. The fire 
 in the great old fireplace had burned low. The 
 flames, which seemed to Shocky to be angels, had 
 disappeared, and now the bright coals, which had 
 played the part of men and women and houses in 
 Shocky's fancy, had taken on a white and downy 
 covering of ashes, and the great half-burned back-log 
 lay there smouldering like a giant asleep in a snow- 
 drift. Shocky longed to wake him up. 
 
 As for Henry Banta, he was too much bothered 
 to get the answer to a "sum" he was doing, to re- 
 member anything about his trap. In fact, he had 
 quite forgotten that half an hour ago in the all-ab- 
 sorbing employment of drawing ugly pictures on his 
 slate and coaxing Betsey Short to giggle by showing 
 them slyly across the schoolroom. Once or twice 
 Ralph had been attracted to Betsey's extraordinary 
 fits of giggling, and had come so near to catching 
 Hank that the boy thought it best not to run any 
 further risk of the beech switches, four or five feet 
 long, laid up behind the master in sight of the school 
 as a prophylactic. Hence his application just now 
 
 411 
 
 Vol. 15—14 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 to his "sum" in long division, and hence his puzzled 
 look, for, idler that he was, his "sums" did not solve 
 themselves easily. As usual in such cases, he came 
 up in front of the master's desk to have the difficulty 
 explained. He had to v^ait a minute until Ralph got 
 through with showing Betsey Short, who had been 
 seized with a studying fit, and who could hardly give 
 any attention to the teacher's explanations, she did 
 want to giggle so much ! Not at anything in particu- 
 lar, but just at things in general. 
 
 While Ralph was "doing" Betsey's "sum" for 
 her, he was solving a much more difficult question. 
 A plan had flashed upon him, but the punishment 
 seemed a severe one. He gave it up once or twice, 
 but he remembered how turbulent the Flat Creek 
 elements were; and had he not inly resolved to be 
 as unrelenting as a bulldog? He fortified himself 
 by recalling again the oft-remembered remark of 
 Bud, "Ef Bull wunst takes a holt, heaven and yarth 
 can't make him let go." And so he resolved to give 
 Hank and the whole school one good lesson. 
 
 "Just step round behind me, Henry, and you can 
 see how I do this," said Ralph. 
 
 Hank was entirely off his guard, and, with his 
 eyes fixed upon the slate on the teacher's desk, he 
 sidled round upon the broad loose board misplaced 
 by his own hand, and in an instant the other end of 
 the board rose up in the middle of the schoolroom, 
 almost striking Shocky in the face, while Henry 
 
 412 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 Banta went down into the ice-cold water beneath 
 the schoolhouse. 
 
 "Why, Henry!" cried Ralph, jumping to his feet 
 with well-feigned surprise. "How did this hap- 
 pen?" and he helped the dripping fellow out and 
 seated him by the fire. 
 
 Betsey Short giggled. 
 
 Shocky was so tickled that he could hardly keep 
 his seat. 
 
 The boys who were in the plot looked very seri- 
 ous indeed. 
 
 Ralph made some remarks by way of improving 
 the occasion. He spoke strongly of the utter mean- 
 ness of the one who could play so heartless a trick 
 on a schoolmate. He said that it was as much thiev- 
 ing to get your fun at the expense of another as to 
 steal his money. And while he talked, all eyes were 
 turned on Hank — all except the eyes of Mirandy 
 Means. They looked simperingly at Ralph. All 
 the rest looked at Hank. The fire had made his 
 face very red. Shocky noticed that. Betsey Short 
 noticed it, and giggled. The master wound up with 
 an appropriate quotation from Scripture. He said 
 that the person who displaced that board had better 
 not be encouraged by the success — he said success 
 with a curious emphasis — of the present experiment 
 to attempt another trick of the kind. For it was set 
 down in the Bible that if a man dug a pit for the 
 feet of another he would be very likely to fall in it 
 
 413 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 himself. Which made all the pupils look solemn, 
 except Betsey Short, who giggled. And Shocky 
 wanted to. And Mirandy cast an expiring look at 
 Ralph. And if the teacher was not love-sick, he 
 certainly was sick of Mirandy's love. 
 
 When school was "let out," Ralph gave Hank 
 every caution that he could about taking cold, and 
 even lent him his overcoat, very much against Hank's 
 will. For Hank had obstinately refused to go home 
 before the school was dismissed. 
 
 Then the master walked out in a quiet and sub- 
 dued way to spend the noon recess in the woods, while 
 Shocky watched his retreating footsteps with loving 
 admiration. And the pupils not in the secret can- 
 vassed the question of who moved the board. Bill 
 Means said he'd bet Hank did it, which set Betsey 
 Short ofif in an uncontrollable giggle. And Shocky 
 listened innocently. 
 
 But that night Bud said slyly: "Thunder and 
 lightning! what a manager you air, Mr. Hartsook!" 
 To which Ralph returned no reply except a friendly 
 smile. Muscle paid tribute to brains that time. 
 
 But Ralph had no time for exultation; for just 
 here came the spelling-school. 
 
 414 
 
A Hoosier School 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SPELLING DOWN THE MASTER 
 
 "¥ 'LOW," said Mrs. Means, as she stuffed the to- 
 '^ bacco into her cob pipe after supper on that 
 eventful Wednesday evening: "I 'low they'll app'int 
 the Squire to gin out the words to-night. They mos' 
 always do, you see, kase he's the peartest ole man in 
 this deestrick; and I 'low some of the young fellers 
 would have to git up and dust ef they would keep up 
 to him. And he uses sech remarkable smart words. 
 He speaks so polite, too. But laws! don't I remem- 
 ber when he was poarer nor Job's turkey? Twenty 
 year ago, when he come to these 'ere diggin's, that air 
 Squire Hawkins was a poar Yankee schoolmaster, 
 that said 'pail' instid of bucket, and that called a cow 
 a 'caow,' and that couldn't tell to save his gizzard 
 what we meant by '/ow and by right smart. But he's 
 larnt our ways now, an' he's jest as civilized as the 
 rest of us. You would-n know he'd ever been a Yan- 
 kee. He didn't stay poar long. Not he. He jest 
 married a right rich girl! He! he!" And the old 
 woman grinned at Ralph, and then at Mirandy, and 
 then at the rest, until Ralph shuddered. Nothing 
 was so frightful to him as to be fawned on by this 
 grinning ogre, whose few lonesome, blackish teeth 
 seemed ready to devour him. "He didn't stay poar, 
 
 415 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 you bet a hoss!" and with this the coal was deposited 
 on the pipe, and the lips began to crack like parch- 
 ment as each puff of smoke escaped. "He married 
 rich, you see," and here another significant look at 
 the young master, and another fond look at Mirandy, 
 as she puffed away reflectively. "His wife hadn't no 
 book-larnin'. She'd been through the spellin' book 
 wunst, and had got as fur as 'asperity' on it a second 
 time. But she couldn't read a word when she was 
 married, and never could. She warn't overly smart. 
 She hadn't hardly got the sense the law allows. But 
 schools was skase in them air days, and, besides, book- 
 larnin' don't do no good to a woman. Makes her 
 stuck up. I never knowed but one gal in my life as 
 had ciphered into fractions, and she was so dog-on 
 stuck up that she turned up her nose one night at a 
 apple-pealin' bekase I tuck a sheet off the bed to 
 splice out the table-cloth, which was ruther short. 
 And the sheet was mos' clean too. Had-n been slep 
 on more'n wunst or twicet. But I was goin' fer to say 
 that when Squire Hawkins married Virginny Gray 
 he got a heap o' money, or, what's the same thing 
 mostly, a heap o' good land. And that's better'n 
 book-larnin', says I. Ef a gal had gone clean 
 through all eddication, and got to the rule of three 
 itself, that would'n buy a feather-bed. Squire Haw- 
 kins jest put eddication agin the gal's farm, and 
 traded even, an' ef ary one of 'em got swindled, I 
 never heerd no complaints." 
 
 416 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 And here she looked at Ralph in triumph, her 
 hard face splintering into the hideous semblance of 
 a smile. And Mirandy cast a blushing, gushing, all- 
 imploring, and all-confiding look on the young mas- 
 ter. 
 
 "I say, ole woman," broke in old Jack, "I say, 
 wot is all this 'ere spoutin' about the Square fer?" and 
 old Jack, having bit ofif an ounce of "pigtail," re- 
 turned the plug to his pocket. 
 
 As for Ralph, he fell into a sort of terror. He 
 had a guilty feeling that this speech of the old lady's 
 had somehow committed him beyond recall to Mi- 
 randy. He did not see visions of breach-of-promise 
 suits. But he trembled at the thought of an avenging 
 big brother. 
 
 "Hanner, you kin come along, too, ef you're a 
 mind, when you git the dishes washed," said Mrs. 
 Means to the bound girl, as she shut and latched 
 the back door. The Means family had built a new 
 house in front of the old one, as a sort of adver- 
 tisement of bettered circumstances, an eruption of 
 shoddy feeling; but when the new building was 
 completed, they found themselves unable to occupy 
 it for anything else than a lumber room, and so, 
 except a parlor which Mirandy had made an efifort 
 to furnish a little (in hope of the blissful time when 
 somebody should "set up" with her of evenings), 
 the new building 'was almost unoccupied, and the 
 family went in and out through the back door, which, 
 
 417 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 indeed, was the front door also, for, according to a 
 curious custom, the "front" of the house was placed 
 toward the south, though the "big road" (Hoosier for 
 highway) ran along the northwest side, or, rather, 
 past the northwest corner of it. 
 
 When the old woman had spoken thus to Han- 
 nah and had latched the door, she muttered, "That 
 gal don't never show no gratitude fer favors;" to 
 which Bud rejoined that he didn't think she had no 
 .great sight to be pertickler thankful fer. To which 
 Mrs. Means made no reply, thinking it best, per- 
 haps, not to wake up her dutiful son on so interest- 
 ing a theme as her treatment of Hannah. Ralph felt 
 glad that he was this evening to go to another board- 
 ing place. He should not hear the rest of the contro- 
 versy. 
 
 Ralph walked to the schoolhouse with Bill. 
 They were friends again. For when Hank Banta's 
 ducking and his dogged obstinacy in sitting in his 
 wet clothes had brought on a serious fever, Ralph 
 had called together the big boys, and had said: "We 
 must take care of one another, boys. Who will vol- 
 unteer to take turns sitting up with Henry?" He put 
 his own name down, and all the rest followed, 
 
 "William Means and myself will sit up to-night," 
 said Ralph. And poor Bill had been from that mo- 
 ment the teacher's friend. He was chosen to be 
 Ralph's companion. He was Puppy Means no 
 longer! Hank could not be conquered by kindness, 
 
 418 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 and the teacher was made to feel the bitterness of his 
 resentment long after. But Bill Means was for the 
 time entirely placated, and he and Ralph went to 
 spelling-school together. 
 
 Every family furnished a candle. There were 
 yellow dips and white dips, burning, smoking, and 
 flaring. There was laughing, and talking, and gig- 
 gling, and simpering, and ogling, and flirting, and 
 courting. What a full-dress party is to Fifth Av- 
 enue, a spelling-school is to Hoopole County. It is 
 an occasion which is metaphorically inscribed with 
 this legend: "Choose your partners." Spelling is 
 only a blind in Hoopole County, as is dancing on 
 Fifth Avenue. But as there are some in society who 
 love dancing for its own sake, so in Flat Creek dis- 
 trict there were those who loved spelling for its own 
 sake, and who, smelling the battle from afar, had 
 come to try their skill in this tournament, hoping to 
 freshen the laurels they had won in their school- 
 days. 
 
 "I 'low," said Mr. Means, speaking as the princi- 
 pal school trustee, "I 'low our friend the Square is 
 jest the man to boss this 'ere consarn to-night. Ef 
 nobody objects, I'll app'int him. Come, Square, 
 don't be bashful. Walk up to the trough, fodder or 
 no fodder, as the man said to his donkey." 
 
 There was a general giggle at this, and many of 
 the young swains took occasion to nudge the girls 
 alongside them, ostensibly for the purpose of mak- 
 
 419 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ing them see the joke, but really for the pure pleasure 
 of nudging. The Greeks figured Cupid as naked, 
 probably because he wears so many disguises that 
 they could not select a costume for him. 
 
 The Squire came to the front. Ralph made an 
 inventory of the agglomeration which bore the name 
 of Squire Hawkins, as follows: 
 
 1. A swallow-tail coat of indefinite age, worn 
 only on state occasions, when its owner was called to 
 figure in his public capacity. Either the Squire had 
 grown too large or the coat too small. 
 
 2. A pair of black gloves, the most phenomenal, 
 abnormal, and unexpected apparition conceivable in 
 Flat Creek district, where the preachers wore no 
 coats in the summer, and where a black glove was 
 never seen except on the hands of the Squire. 
 
 3. A wig of that dirty, waxen color so common to 
 wigs. This one showed a continual inclination to slip 
 off the owner's smooth, bald pate, and the Squire had 
 frequently to adjust it. As his hair had been red, the 
 wig did not accord with his face, and the hair un- 
 grayed was doubly discordant with a countenance 
 shrivelled by age. 
 
 4. A semicircular row of whiskers hedging the 
 edge of the jaw and chin. These were dyed a fright- 
 ful dead-black, such a color as belonged to no natural 
 hair or beard that ever existed. At the roots there 
 was a quarter of an inch of white, giving the whiskers 
 the appearance of having been stuck on. 
 
 420 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 5. A pair of spectacles "with tortoise-shell rim." 
 Wont to slip ofif. 
 
 6. A glass eye, purchased of a pedler, and dif- 
 fering in color from its natural mate, perpetually 
 getting out of focus by turning in or out. 
 
 7. A set of false teeth, badly fitted, and given to 
 bobbing up and down. 
 
 8. The Squire proper, to whom these patches 
 were loosely attached. 
 
 It is an old story that a boy wrote home to his 
 father begging him to come West, because "mighty ^^ 
 mean men get into office out here." But Ralph ^ 
 concluded that some Yankees had taught school in 
 Hoopole County who would not have held a high 
 place in the educational institutions of Massachu- 
 setts. Hawkins had some New England idioms, but 
 they were well overlaid by a Western pronunciation. 
 
 "Ladies and gentlemen," he began, shoving up his 
 spectacles, and sucking his lips over his white teeth to 
 keep them in place, "ladies and gentlemen, young 
 men and maidens, raley I'm obleeged to Mr. Means 
 fer this honor," and the Squire took both hands and 
 turned the top of his head round half an inch. Then 
 he adjusted his spectacles. Whether he was obliged 
 to Mr. Means for the honor of being compared to a 
 donkey was not clear. "I feel in the inmost compart- 
 ments of my animal spirits a most happifying sense 
 of the success and futility of all my endeavors to 
 sarve the people of Flat Creek deestrick, and the 
 
 421 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 people of Tomkins township, in my weak way and 
 manner." This burst of eloquence was delivered 
 with a constrained air and an apparent sense of a 
 danger that he, Squire Hawkins, might fall to pieces 
 in his weak way and manner, and of the success and 
 futility of all attempts at reconstruction. For by 
 this time the ghastly pupil of the left eye, which was 
 black, was looking away round to the left, while the 
 little blue one on the right twinkled cheerfully to- 
 ward the front. The front teeth would drop down so 
 that the Squire's mouth was kept nearly closed, and 
 his words whistled through. 
 
 "I feel as if I could be grandiloquent on this inter- 
 esting occasion," twisting his scalp round, "but raley 
 I must forego any such exertions. It is spelling you 
 want. Spelling is the cornerstone, the grand, under- 
 lying subterfuge, of a good eddication. I put the 
 spellin'-book prepared by the great Daniel Webster 
 alongside the Bible. I do, raley. I think I may put 
 it ahead of the Bible. For if it wurn't fer spellin'- 
 books and sich occasions as these, where would the 
 Bible be? I should like to know. The man who got 
 up, who compounded this work of inextricable valoo 
 was a benufactor to the whole human race or any 
 other.'^ Here the spectacles fell of¥. The Squire re- 
 placed them in some confusion, gave the top of his 
 head another twist, and felt of his glass eye, while 
 poor Shocky stared in wonder, and Betsey Short 
 rolled from side to side in the effort to suppress her 
 
 422 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 giggle. Mrs. Means and the other old ladies looked 
 the applause they could not speak. 
 
 "I app'int Larkin Lanham and Jeems Buchanan 
 fer captings," said the Squire. And the two young 
 men thus named took a stick and tossed it from hand 
 to hand to decide which should have the "first 
 choice." One tossed the stick to the other, who held 
 it fast just where he happened to catch it. Then 
 the first placed his hand above the second, and so 
 the hands were alternately changed to the top. The 
 one who held the stick last without room for the other 
 to take hold had gained the lot. This was tried three 
 times. As Larkin held the stick twice out of three 
 times, he had the choice. He hesitated a moment. 
 Everybody looked toward tall Jim Phillips. But 
 Larkin was fond of a venture on unknown seas, and 
 so he said, "I take the master," while a buzz of sur- 
 prise ran round the room, and the captain of the 
 other side, as if afraid his opponent would withdraw 
 the choice, retorted quickly, and with a little smack 
 of exultation and defiance in his voice, "And / take 
 Jeems Phillips." 
 
 And soon all present, except a few of the old 
 folks, found themselves ranged in opposing hosts, the 
 poor spellers lagging in, with what grace they could, 
 at the foot of the two divisions. The Squire opened 
 his spelling-book and began to give out the words to 
 the two captains, who stood up and spelled against 
 each other. It was not long until Larkin spelled 
 
 423 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "really" with one I, and had to sit down in con- 
 fusion, while a murmur of satisfaction ran through 
 the ranks of the opposing forces. His own side bit 
 their lips. The slender figure of the young teacher 
 took the place of the fallen leader, and the excite- 
 ment made the house very quiet. Ralph dreaded the 
 loss of prestige he would sufifer if he should be easily 
 spelled down. And at the moment of rising he saw 
 in the darkest corner the figure of a well-dressed 
 young man sitting in the shadow. Why should his 
 evil genius haunt him? But by a strong effort he 
 turned his attention away from Dr. Small, and lis- 
 tened carefully to the words which the Squire did not 
 pronounce very distinctly, spelling them with extreme 
 deliberation. This gave him an air of hesitation 
 which disappointed those on his own side. They 
 wanted him to spell with a dashing assurance. But 
 he did not begin a word until he had mentally felt 
 his way through it. After ten minutes of spelling 
 hard words Jeems Buchanan, the captain on the other 
 side, spelled "atrocious" with an s instead of a c, and 
 subsided, his first choice, Jeems Phillips, coming up 
 against the teacher. This brought the excitement to 
 fever-heat. For though Ralph was chosen first, it 
 was entirely on trust, and most of the company were 
 disappointed. The champion who now stood up 
 against the schoolmaster was a famous speller. 
 
 Jim Phillips was a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered 
 fellow who had never distinguished himself in any 
 
 424 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 other pursuit than spelling. Except in this one art 
 of spelling he was of no account. He could not 
 catch well or bat well in ball. He could not throw 
 well enough to make his mark in that famous West- 
 ern game of bull-pen. He did not succeed well in 
 any study but that of Webster's Elementary. But in 
 that he was — to use the usual Flat Creek locution — 
 in that he was "a boss." This genius for spelling is 
 in some people a sixth sense, a matter of intuition. 
 Some spellers are born, and not made, and their fa- 
 cility reminds one of the mathematical prodigies that 
 crop out every now and then to bewilder the world. 
 Bud Means, foreseeing that Ralph would be pitted 
 against Jim Phillips, had warned his friend that Jim 
 could "spell like thunder and lightning," and that it 
 "took a powerful smart speller" to beat him, for he 
 knew "a heap of spelling-book." To have "spelled 
 down the master" is next thing to having whipped 
 the biggest bully in Hoopole County, and Jim had 
 "spelled down" the last three masters. He divided 
 the hero-worship of the district with Bud Means. 
 
 For half an hour the Squire gave out hard words. ^ 
 What a blessed thing our crooked orthography is! 
 Without it there could be no spelling-schools. As 
 Ralph discovered his opponent's mettle he became 
 more and more cautious. He was now satisfied that 
 Jim would eventually beat him. The fellow evi- 
 dently knew more about the spelling-book than old 
 Noah Webster himself. As he stood there, with his 
 
 425 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 dull face and long sharp nose, his hands behind his 
 back, and his voice spelling infallibly, it seemed to 
 Hartsook that his superiority must lie in his nose. 
 Ralph's cautiousness answered a double purpose; it 
 enabled him to tread surely, and it was mistaken by 
 Jim for weakness. Phillips was now confident that 
 he should carry off the scalp of the fourth school- 
 master before the evening was over. He spelled 
 eagerly, confidently, brilliantly. Stoop-shouldered 
 as he was, he began to straighten up. In the minds of 
 all the company the odds were in his favor. He saw 
 this, and became ambitious to distinguish himself by 
 spelling without giving the matter any thought. 
 
 Ralph always believed that he would have been 
 speedily defeated by Phillips had it not been for two 
 thoughts which braced him. The sinister shadow of 
 young Dr. Small sitting in the dark corner by the 
 water-bucket nerved him. A victory over Phillips 
 was a defeat to one who wished only ill to the young 
 schoolmaster. The other thought that kept his pluck 
 alive was the recollection of Bull. He approached 
 a word as Bull approached the raccoon. He did not 
 take hold until he was sure of his game. When he 
 took hold, it was with a quiet assurance of success. 
 As Ralph spelled in this dogged way for half an hour 
 the hardest words the Squire could find, the excite- 
 ment steadily rose in all parts of the house, and 
 Ralph's friends even ventured to whisper that "may- 
 be Jim had cotched his match, after all!" 
 
 426 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 But Phillips never doubted of his success. 
 
 "Theodolite," said the Squire. 
 
 "T-h-e, the, o-d, od, theod, o, theodo, 1-y-t-e, the- 
 odolite, " spelled the champion. 
 
 "Next," said the Squire, nearly losing his teeth 
 in his excitement. Ralph spelled the word slowly 
 and correctly, and the conquered champion sat down 
 in confusion. The excitement was so great for some 
 minutes that the spelling was suspended. Everybody 
 in the house had shown sympathy with one or the 
 other of the combatants, except the silent shadow in 
 the corner. It had not moved during the contest, 
 and did not show any interest now in the result. 
 
 "Gewhilliky crickets! Thunder and lightning! 
 Licked him all to smash!" said Bud, rubbing his 
 hands on his knees. "That beats my time all hol- 
 ler!" 
 
 And Betsey Short giggled until her tuck-comb 
 fell out, though she was on the defeated side. 
 
 Shocky got up and danced with pleasure. 
 
 But one suffocating look from the aqueous eyes 
 of Mirandy destroyed the last spark of Ralph's pleas- 
 ure in his triumph, and sent that awful below-zero 
 feeling all through him. 
 
 "He's powerful smart, is the master," said old 
 Jack to Mr. Pete Jones. "He'll beat the whole kit 
 and tuck of 'em afore he's through. I knowed he was 
 smart. That's the reason I tuck him," proceeded 
 Mr. Means. 
 
 427 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "Yaas, but he don't lick enough. Not nigh," 
 answered Peter Jones. "No lickin', no larnin', 
 says I." 
 
 It was now not so hard. The other spellers on 
 the opposite side went down quickly under the hard 
 words which the Squire gave out. The master had 
 mowed down all but a few, his opponents had given 
 up the battle, and all had lost their keen interest in 
 a contest to which there could be but one conclusion, 
 for there were only the poor spellers left. But Ralph 
 Hartsook ran against a stump where he was least ex- 
 pecting it. It was the Squire's custom, when one of 
 the smaller scholars or poorer spellers rose to spell 
 against the master, to give out eight or ten easy 
 words, that they might have some breathing-spell be- 
 fore being slaughtered, and then to give a poser or 
 two which soon settled them. He let them run a 
 little, as a cat does a doomed mouse. There was now 
 but one person left on the opposite side, and, as she 
 rose in her blue calico dress, Ralph recognized Han- 
 nah, the bound girl at old Jack Means's. She had 
 not attended school in the district, and had never 
 spelled in spelling-school before, and was chosen 
 last as an uncertain quantity. The Squire began with 
 easy words of two syllables, from that page of Web- 
 ster, so well known to all who ever thumbed it, as 
 "baker," from the word that stands at the top of the 
 page. She spelled these words in an absent and unin- 
 terested manner. As everybody knew that she would 
 
 428 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 have to go down as soon as this preliminary skirmish- 
 ing was over, everybody began to get ready to go 
 home, and already there was the buzz of prepara- 
 tion. Young men were timidly asking girls if "they 
 could see them safe home," which was the approved 
 formula, and were trembling in mortal fear of "the 
 mitten." Presently the Squire, thinking it time to 
 close the contest, pulled his scalp forward, adjusted 
 his glass eye, which had been examining his nose long 
 enough, and turned over the leaves of the book to the 
 great words at the place known to spellers as "incom- 
 prehensibility," and began to give out those "words 
 of eight syllables with the accent on the sixth." List- 
 less scholars now turned round, and ceased to 
 whisper, in order to be in at the master's final tri- 
 umph. But to their surprise "ole Miss Meanses' 
 white nigger," as some of them called her in allusion 
 to her slavish life, spelled these great words with as 
 perfect ease as the master. Still not doubting the re- 
 sult, the Squire turned from place to place and se- 
 lected all the hard words he could find. The school 
 became utterly quiet, the excitement was too great for 
 the ordinary buzz. Would "Meanses' Hanner" beat 
 the master? beat the master that had laid out Jim 
 Phillips? Everybody's sympathy was now turned to 
 Hannah. Ralph noticed that even Shocky had de- 
 serted him, and that his face grew brilliant every 
 time Hannah spelled a word. In fact, Ralph de- 
 serted himself. As he saw the fine, timid face of the 
 
 429 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 girl so long oppressed flush and shine with interest; 
 as he looked at the rather low but broad and intelli- 
 gent brow and the fresh, white complexion and saw 
 the rich, womanly nature coming to the surface un- 
 der the influence of applause and sympathy — he did 
 not want to beat. If he had not felt that a victory 
 given would insult her, he would have missed in- 
 tentionally. The bulldog, the stern, relentless setting 
 of the will, had gone, he knew not whither. And 
 there had come in its place, as he looked in that face, 
 a something which he did not understand. You did 
 not, gentle reader, the first time it came to you. 
 
 The Squire was puzzled. He had given out all 
 the hard words in the book. He again pulled the top 
 of his head forward. Then he wiped his spectacles 
 and put them on. Then out of the depths of his 
 pocket he fished up a list of words just coming into 
 use in those days — words not in the spelling-book. He 
 regarded the paper attentively with his blue right eye. 
 His black left eye meanwhile fixed itself in such a 
 stare on Mirandy Means that she shuddered and hid 
 her eyes in her red silk handkerchief. 
 
 "Daguerreotype," sniffed the Squire. It was 
 Ralph's turn. 
 
 "D-a-u, dau— " 
 
 "Next." 
 
 And Hannah spelled it right. 
 
 Such a buzz followed that Betsey Short's giggle 
 could not be heard, but Shocky shouted: "Hanner 
 
 430 
 
A Hoosier School 
 
 beat! my Hanner spelled down the master!" And 
 Ralph went over and congratulated her. 
 
 And Dr. Small sat perfectly still in the corner. 
 
 And then the Squire called them to order, and 
 said: "As our friend Hanner Thomson is the only 
 one left on her side, she will have to spell against 
 nearly all on t'other side. I shall therefore take the 
 liberty of procrastinating the completion of this in- 
 teresting and exacting contest until to-morrow even- 
 ing. I hope our friend Hanner may again carry off 
 the cypress crown of glory. There is nothing better 
 for us than healthful and kindly simulation." 
 
 Dr. Small, who knew the road to practice, es- 
 corted Mirandy, and Bud went home with somebody 
 else. The others of the Means family hurried on, 
 while Hannah, the champion, stayed behind a min- 
 ute to speak to Shocky. Perhaps it was because 
 Ralph saw that Hannah must go alone that he sud- 
 denly remembered having left something which was 
 of no consequence, and resolved to go round by Mr. 
 Means's and get it. 
 
 43 ^ 
 
THE EDUCATION OF BENJAxMIN 
 FRANKLIN 
 
 PARENTAGE AND BOYHOOD 
 
 T^ EAR SON : I have ever had pleasure in obtain- 
 ^^ ing any little anecdotes of my ancestors. You 
 may remember the inquiries I made among the re- 
 mains of my relations when you were with me in 
 England, and the journey I undertook for that pur- 
 pose. Imagining it may be equally agreeable to 
 you to know the circumstances of my life, many of 
 which you are yet unacquainted with, and expecting 
 the enjoyment of a week's uninterrupted leisure in my 
 present country retirement, I sit down to write them 
 for you. To which I have besides some other in- 
 ducements. Having emerged from the poverty and 
 obscurity in which I was born and bred to a state of 
 affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, 
 and having gone so far through life with a consider- 
 able share of felicity, the conducing means I made 
 use of, which with the blessing of God so well suc- 
 ceeded, my posterity may like to know, as they may 
 find some of them suitable to their own situations, 
 and therefore fit to be imitated. 
 
 That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced 
 me sometimes to say, that were it offered to my 
 choice, I should have no objection to a repetition 
 
 432 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 of the same life from its beginning, only asking the 
 advantages authors have in a second edition to cor- 
 rect some faults of the first. So I might, besides 
 correcting the faults, change some sinister accidents 
 and events of it for others more favorable. But 
 though this were denied, I should still accept the 
 offer. Since such a repetition is not to be expected, 
 the next thing most like living one's life over again 
 seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make 
 that recollection as durable as possible by putting it 
 down in writing. 
 
 Hereby, too, I shall indulge the inclination so 
 natural in old men, to be talking of themselves and 
 their own past actions; and I shall indulge it with- 
 out being tiresome to others, who, through respect to 
 age, might conceive themselves obliged to give me a 
 hearing, since this may be read or not as any one 
 pleases. And, lastly (I may as well confess it, since 
 my denial of it will be believed by nobody), per- 
 haps I shall a good deal gratify my own vanity. In- 
 deed, I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory 
 words, ^'Without vanity I may say'' etc., but some 
 vain thing immediately followed. Most people dis- 
 like vanity in others, whatever share they have of it 
 themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I 
 meet with it, being persuaded that it is often pro- 
 ductive of good to the possessor, and to others that 
 are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in 
 many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a 
 
 433 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 man were to thank God for his vanity among the 
 other comforts of life. 
 
 And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with 
 all humility to acknowledge that I owe the men- 
 tioned happiness of my past life to his kind provi- 
 dence, which led me to the means I used and gave 
 them success. My belief of this induces me to hope, 
 though I must not presume, that the same goodness 
 will still be exercised toward me, in continuing that 
 happiness, or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse, 
 which I may experience as others have done; the 
 complexion of my future fortune being known to 
 Him only in whose power it is to bless to us even our 
 afflictions. 
 
 The notes one of my uncles (who had the same 
 kind of curiosity in collecting family anecdotes) once 
 put into my hands furnished me with several par- 
 ticulars relating to our ancestors. From these notes 
 I learned that the family had lived in the same vil- 
 lage, Ecton, in Northamptonshire, for three hun- 
 dred years, and how much longer he knew not (per- 
 haps from the time when the name of Franklin, that 
 before was the name of an order of people, was as- 
 sumed by them as a surname when others took sur- 
 names all over the kingdom), on a freehold of about 
 thirty acres, aided by the smith's business, which had 
 continued in the family till his time, the eldest son 
 being always bred to that business; a custom which 
 he and my father followed as to their eldest sons. 
 
 434 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 iWhen I searched the registers at Ecton, I found an 
 account of their births, marriages, and burials from 
 the year 1555 only, there being no registers kept in 
 that parish at any time preceding. By that register 
 I perceived that I was the youngest son of the young- 
 est son for jfive generations back. My grandfather, 
 Thomas, who was born in 1598, lived at Ecton till 
 he grew too old to follow business longer, when he 
 went to live with his son John, a dyer at Banbury, 
 in Oxfordshire, with whom my father served an ap- 
 prenticeship. There my grandfather died and lies 
 buried. We saw his gravestone in 1758. His eldest 
 son Thomas lived in the house at Ecton, and left it 
 with the land to his only child, a daughter, who, with 
 her husband, one Fisher, of Wellingborough, sold it 
 to Mr. Isted, now lord of the manor there. My 
 grandfather had four sons that grew up, viz.: 
 Thomas, John, Benjamin, and Josiah. I will give 
 you what account I can of them, at this distance 
 from my papers, and if these are not lost in my ab- 
 sence, you will among them find many more par- 
 ticulars. 
 
 Thomas was bred a smith under his father; but, 
 being ingenious, and encouraged in learning (as all 
 my brothers were) by an Esquire Palmer, then the 
 principal gentleman in that parish, he qualified him- 
 self for the business of scrivener; became a consid- 
 erable man in the county; was a chief mover of all 
 public-spirited undertakings for the county or town 
 
 435 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 of Northampton, and his own village, of which many 
 instances were related of him ; and much taken notice 
 of and patronized by the then Lord Halifax. He 
 died in 1702, January 6, old style, just four years to 
 a day before I was born. The account we received 
 of his life and character from some old people at 
 Ecton, I remember, struck you as something ex- 
 traordinary, from its similarity to what you knew 
 of mine. "Had he died on the same day," 
 you said, "one might have supposed a transmigra- 
 tion." 
 
 John was bred a dyer, I believe, of woollens. 
 Benjamin was bred a silk dyer, serving an appren- 
 ticeship at London. He was an ingenious man. I 
 remember him well, for when I was a boy he came 
 over to my father in Boston, and lived in the house 
 with us some years. He lived to a great age. His 
 grandson, Samuel Franklin, now lives in Boston. 
 He left behind him two quarto volumes, MS., of his 
 own poetry, consisting of little occasional pieces ad- 
 dressed to his friends and relations. He had formed 
 a short-hand of his own, which he taught me, but, 
 never practicing it, I have now forgot it. I was 
 named after this uncle, there being a particular affec- 
 tion between him and my father. He was very 
 pious, a great attender of sermons of the best preach- 
 ers, which he took down in his short-hand, and had 
 with him many volumes of them. He was also much 
 of a politician; too much, perhaps, for his station. 
 
 436 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 There fell lately into my hands, in London, a collec- 
 tion he had made of all the principal pamphlets re- 
 lating to public affairs, from 1641 to 1717; many of 
 the volumes are wanting as appears by the number- 
 ing, but there still remain eight volumes in folio, 
 and twenty-four in quarto and in octavo. A dealer 
 in old books met with them, and knowing me by my 
 sometimes buying of him, he brought them to me. 
 It seems my uncle must have left them here when 
 he went to America, which was about fifty years 
 since. There are many of his notes in the mar- 
 gins. 
 
 This obscure family of ours was early in the 
 Reformation, and continued Protestants through the 
 reign of Queen Mary, when they were sometimes in 
 danger of trouble on account of their zeal against 
 popery. They had got an English Bible, and to con- 
 ceal and secure it, it was fastened open with tapes 
 under and within the cover of a joint-stool. When 
 my great-great-grandfather read it to his family, he 
 turned up the joint-stool upon his knees, turning over 
 the leaves then under the tapes. One of the chil- 
 dren stood at the door to give notice if he saw the 
 apparitor coming, who was an officer of the spiritual 
 court. In that case the stool was turned down again 
 upon its feet, when the Bible remained concealed un- 
 der it as before. This anecdote I had from my uncle 
 Benjamin. The family continued all of the Church 
 of England till about the end of Charles the Sec- 
 
 437 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ond's reign, when some of the ministers that had been 
 ousted for non-conformity holding conventicles in 
 Northamptonshire, Benjamin and Josiah adhered 
 to them, and so continued all their lives: the 
 rest of the family remained with the Episcopal 
 Church. 
 
 Josiah, my father, married young, and carried his 
 wife with three children into New England, about 
 1682. The conventicles having been forbidden by 
 law, and frequently disturbed, induced some consid- 
 erable men of his acquaintance to remove to that 
 country, and he was prevailed with to accompany 
 them thither, where they expected to enjoy their 
 mode of religion with freedom. By the same wife 
 he had four children more born there, and by a sec- 
 ond wife ten more, in all seventeen ; of which I re- 
 member thirteen sitting at one time at his table, who 
 all grew up to be men and women, and married; I 
 was the youngest son, and the youngest child but two, 
 and was born in Boston, New England. My mother, 
 the second wife, was Abiah Folger, daughter of Peter 
 Folger, one of the first settlers of New England, of 
 whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather, 
 in his church history of that country, entitled "Mag- 
 nalia Christi Americana," as ^'a godly, learned En- 
 glishman," if I remember the words rightly. I have 
 heard that he wrote sundry small occasional pieces, 
 but only one of them was printed, which I saw now 
 many years since. It was written in 1675, in the 
 
 438 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 homespun verse of that time and people, and ad- 
 dressed to those then concerned in the government 
 there. It was in favor of liberty of conscience, and 
 in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and other sec- 
 taries that' had been under persecution, ascribing 
 the Indian wars, and other distresses that had be- 
 fallen the* country, to that persecution, as so many 
 judgments of God to punish so heinous an offence, 
 and exhorting a repeal of those uncharitable laws. 
 The whole appeared to me as written with a good 
 deal of decent plainness and manly freedom. The 
 six concluding lines I remember, though I have for- 
 gotten the two first of the stanza; but the purport of 
 them was, that his censures proceeded from good- 
 will, and therefore he would be known to be the 
 author. 
 
 "Because to be a libeller (says he) 
 I hate it with my heart; 
 From Sherburne town, where now I dwell 
 
 My name I do put here ; 
 .Without offence your real friend, 
 It is Petea- Folgier." 
 
 My elder brothers were all put apprentices to 
 different trades. I was put to the grammar-school 
 at eight years of age, my father intending to devote 
 me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the 
 Church. My early readiness in learning to read 
 (which must have been very early, as I do not re- 
 member when I could not read), and the opinion 
 
 439 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 of all his friends that I should certainly make a good 
 scholar, encouraged him in this purpose of his. My 
 uncle Benjamin, too, approved of it, and proposed 
 to give me all his short-hand volumes of sermons, I 
 suppose as a stock to set up with, if I w^ould learn his 
 character. I continued, however, at the grammar- 
 school not quite one year, though in that time I had 
 risen gradually from the middle of the class of that 
 year to be the head of it, and further was removed in- 
 to the next class above it, in order to go with that into 
 the third at the end of the year. But my father, in 
 the meantime, from a view of the expense of a col- 
 lege education, which having so large a family he 
 could not well afford, and the mean living many so 
 educated were afterward able to obtain— reasons that 
 he gave to his friends in my hearing — altered his first 
 intention, took me from the grammar-school, and 
 sent me to a school for writing and arithemtic, kept 
 by a then famous man, Mr. George Brownell, very 
 successful in his profession generally, and that by 
 mild, encouraging methods. Under him I acquired 
 fair writing pretty soon, but I failed in the arith- 
 metic, and made no progress in it. At ten years old 
 I was taken home to assist my father in his business, 
 which was that of a tallow-chandler and soap-boiler; 
 a business he was not bred to, but had assumed on his 
 arrival in New England, and on finding his dyeing 
 trade would not maintain his family, being in little 
 request. Accordingly, I was employed in cutting 
 
 440 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 wick for the candles, filling the dipping mold and 
 the molds for cast candles, attending the shop, going 
 of errands, etc. 
 
 I disliked the trade, and had a strong inclination 
 for the sea, but my father declared against it; how- 
 ever, living near the water, I was much in and about 
 it, learned early to swim well, and to manage boats ; 
 and when in a boat or canoe with other boys, I was 
 commonly allowed to govern, especially in any case 
 of difficulty; and upon other occasions I was gener- 
 ally a leader among the boys, and sometimes led 
 them into scrapes, of which I will mention one in- 
 stance, as it shows an early projecting public spirit, 
 though not then justly conducted. 
 
 There was a salt marsh that bounded part of the 
 mill pond, on the edge of which, at high water, we 
 used to stand to fish for minnows. By much tram- 
 pling, we had made it a mere quagmire. My pro- 
 posal was to build a wharf there fit for us to stand 
 upon, and I showed my comrades a large heap of 
 stones, which were intended for a new house near 
 the marsh, and which would very well suit our pur- 
 pose. 
 
 Accordingly, in the evening, when the work- 
 men were gone, I assembled a number of my play- 
 fellows, and working with them diligently, like so 
 many emmets, sometimes two or three to a stone, 
 we brought them all away and built our little wharf. 
 The next morning the workmen were surprised at 
 
 441 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 missing the stones, which were found in our wharf. 
 Inquiry was made after the removers; we were dis- 
 covered and complained of; several of us were cor- 
 rected by our fathers; and, though I pleaded the use- 
 fulness of the work, mine convinced me that nothing 
 was useful which was not honest. 
 
 I think you may like to know something of his 
 person and character. He had an excellent consti- 
 tution of body, was of middle stature, but well set, 
 and very strong; he was ingenious, could draw pret- 
 tily, was skilled a little in music, and had a clear, 
 pleasing voice, so that when he played psalm tunes 
 on his violin and sung withal, as he sometimes did in 
 an evening after the business of the day was over, it 
 was extremely agreeable to hear. He had a mechan- 
 ical genius, too, and, on occasion, was very handy in 
 the use of other tradesmen's tools ; but his great excel- 
 lence lay in a sound understanding and solid judg- 
 ment in prudential matters, both in private and 
 public affairs. In the latter, indeed, he was never 
 employed, the numerous family he had to educate 
 and the straitness of his circumstances keeping him 
 close to his trade; but I remember well his being 
 frequently visited by leading people, who consulted 
 him for his opinion in affairs of the town or of the 
 church he belonged to, and showed a good deal of 
 respect for his judgment and advice; he was also 
 much consulted by private persons about their af- 
 fairs when any difficulty occurred, and frequently 
 
 442 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 chosen an arbitrator between contending parties. 
 At his table he liked to have, as often as he could, 
 some sensible friend or neighbor to converse with, 
 and always took care to start some ingenious or use- 
 ful topic for discourse, which might tend to improve 
 the minds of his children. By this means he turned 
 our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in 
 the conduct of life; and little or no notice was ever 
 taken of what related to the victuals on the table, 
 whether it was well or ill dressed, in or out of sea- 
 son, of good or bad flavor, preferable or inferior to 
 this or that other thing of the kind, so that I was 
 brought up in such a perfect inattention to those mat- 
 ters as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was 
 set before me, and so unobservant of it, that to this 
 day if I am asked I can scarce tell a few hours after 
 dinner what I dined upon. This has been a con- 
 venience to me in travelling, where my companions 
 have been sometimes very unhappy for want of a 
 suitable gratification of their more delicate, because 
 better instructed, tastes and appetites. 
 
 My mother had likewise an excellent constitu- 
 tion; she suckled all her ten children. I never knew 
 either my father or mother to have any sickness but 
 that of which they died, he at 89, and she at 85 
 years of age. They lie buried together at Boston, 
 where I some years since placed a marble over their 
 grave, with this inscription: 
 
 443 
 
 Vol. IS— 15 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 JosiAH Franklin, 
 
 and 
 
 Abiah his wife, 
 
 lie here interred. 
 
 They Hved lovingly together in wedlock 
 
 fifty-five years. 
 
 Without an estate, or any gainful employment, 
 
 By constant labor and industry, 
 
 with God's blessing, 
 They maintained a large family 
 
 comfortably, 
 
 and brought up thirteen children 
 
 and seven grandchildren 
 
 reputably. 
 
 From this instance, reader, 
 
 Be encouraged to diligence in thy calling, 
 
 And distrust not Providence. 
 
 He was a pious and prudent man; 
 
 She, a discreet and virtuous woman. 
 
 Their youngest son. 
 
 In filial regard to their memory, 
 
 Places this stone. 
 
 J. F. born 1655, died 1744, ^tat 89. 
 
 A. F. born 1667, died 1752, 85. 
 
 By my rambling digressions I perceive myself 
 to be grown old. I used to write more methodically. 
 But one does not dress for private company as for a 
 public ball. 'Tis perhaps only negligence. 
 
 To return: I continued thus employed in my 
 father's business for two years, that is, till I was 
 twelve years old; and my brother John, who was 
 bred to that business, having left my father, married, 
 
 444 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 and set up for himself at Rhode Island, there was all 
 appearance that I was destined to supply his place, 
 and become a tallow-chandler. But my dislike to 
 the trade continuing, my father was under appre- 
 hensions that if he did not find one for me more 
 agreeable, I should break away and get to sea, as his 
 son Josiah had done, to his great vexation. He 
 therefore sometimes took me to walk with him, and 
 see joiners, bricklayers, turners, braziers, etc., at their 
 work, that he might observe my inclination, and en- 
 deavor to^ fix it on some trade or other on land. It 
 has ever since been a pleasure to me to see good work- 
 men handle their tools, and it has been useful to me, 
 having learned so much by it as to be able to do lit- 
 tle jobs myself in my house when a workman could 
 not readily be got, and to construct little machines for 
 my experiments, while the intention of making the 
 experiment was fresh and warm in my mind. My 
 father at last fixed upon the cutler's trade, and my 
 uncle Benjamin's son Samuel, who was bred to that 
 business in London, being about that time established 
 in Boston, I was sent to be with him some time on 
 liking. But his expectations of a fee with me dis- 
 pleasing my father, I was taken home again. 
 
 From a child I was fond of reading, and all the 
 little money that came into my hands was ever laid 
 out in books. Pleased with the "Pilgrim's Prog- 
 ress," my first collection was of John Bunyan's 
 works in separate little volumes. I afterward sold 
 
 445 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 them to enable me to buy R. Burton's '^Historical 
 Collections;" they were small chapmen's books, and 
 cheap, forty or fifty in all. My father's little library 
 consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most 
 of which I read, and have since often regretted that, 
 at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, 
 more proper books had not fallen in my way, since 
 it was now resolved I should not be a clergyman. 
 Plutarch's "Lives" there was in which I read abun- 
 dantly, and I still think that time spent to great ad- 
 vantage. There was also a book of De Foe's called 
 an "Essay on Projects," and another of Dr. Mather's, 
 called "Essays to do Good," which perhaps gave me 
 a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of 
 the principal future events of my life. 
 
 This bookish inclination at length determined my 
 father to make me a printer, though he had already 
 one son (James) of that profession. In 1717 my 
 brother James returned from England with a press 
 and letters to set up his business in Boston. I liked 
 it much better than that of my father, but still had a 
 hankering for the sea. To prevent the apprehended 
 effect of such an inclination, my father was impa- 
 tient to have me bound to my brother. I stood out 
 some time, but at last was persuaded, and signed 
 the indentures when I was yet but twelve years old. 
 I was to serve as an apprentice till I was twenty- 
 one years of age, only I was to be allowed journey- 
 man's wages during the last year. In a little time 
 
 446 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 I made great proficiency in the business, and became 
 a useful hand to my brother. I now had access 
 to better books. An acquaintance with the appren- 
 tices of booksellers enabled me sometimes to bor- 
 row a small one, which I was careful to return soon 
 and clean. Often I sat up in my room reading the 
 greater part of the night, when the book was bor- 
 rowed in the evening and to be returned early in 
 the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted. 
 
 And after some time an ingenious tradesman, Mr. 
 Matthew Adams, who had a pretty collection of 
 books, and who frequented our printing-house, took 
 notice of me, invited me to his library, and very 
 kindly lent me such books as I chose to read. I 
 now took a fancy to poetry, and made some little 
 pieces; my brother, thinking it might turn to ac- 
 count, encouraged me, and put me on composing 
 occasional ballads. One was called "The Light- 
 house Tragedy," and contained an account of the 
 drowning of Captain Worthilake, with his two 
 daughters ; the other was a sailor's song, on the tak- 
 ing of Teach (or Blackbeard), the pirate. They 
 were wretched stuff, in the Grub Street ba.llad style ; 
 and when they were printed he sent me about the 
 town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the 
 event being recent, having made a great noise. This 
 flattered my vanity; but my father discouraged me by 
 ridiculing my performances, and telling me verse- 
 makers were generally beggars. So I escaped being 
 
 447 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 a poet, most probably a very bad one; but as prose 
 writing has been of great use to me in the course of 
 my life, and was a principal means of my advance- 
 ment, I shall tell you how, in such a situation, I 
 acquired what little ability I have in that way. 
 
 There was another bookish lad in the town, John 
 Collins by name, with whom I was intimately ac- 
 quainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond we 
 were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one 
 another, which disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to 
 become a very bad habit, making people often ex- 
 tremely disagreeable in company by the contradiction 
 that is necessary to bring it into practice; and thence, 
 besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is pro- 
 ductive of disgusts and perhaps enmities w^here you 
 may have occasion for friendship. I had caught it by 
 reading my father's books of dispute about religion. 
 Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom 
 fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men 
 of all sorts that have been bred at Edinburgh. 
 
 A question was once, somehow or other, started 
 between Collins and me, of the propriety of educat- 
 ing the female sex in learning, and their abilities for 
 study. He was of opinion that it was improper, and 
 that they were naturally unequal to it. I took the 
 contrary side, perhaps a little for dispute's sake. He 
 was naturally more eloquent, had a ready plenty of 
 words; and sometimes, as I thought, bore me down 
 more by his fluency than by the strength of his rea- 
 
 448 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 sons. As we parted without settling the point, and 
 were not to see one another again for some time, I sat 
 down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied 
 fair and sent to him. He answered, and I replied. 
 Three or four letters of a side had passed, when my 
 father happened to find my papers and read them. 
 Without entering into the discussion, he took occasion 
 to talk to me about the manner of my writing; ob- 
 served that, though I had the advantage of my an- 
 tagonist in correct spelling and pointing (which I 
 owed to the printing-house), I fell far short in ele- 
 gance of expression, in method, and in perspicuity, of 
 which he convinced me by several instances. I saw 
 the justice of his remarks, and thence grew more at- 
 tentive to the manner in writing, and determined to 
 endeavor at improvement. 
 
 About this time I met with an odd volume of the 
 "Spectator." It was the third. I had never before 
 seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, 
 and was much delighted with it. I thought the writ- 
 ing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. 
 With this view I took some of the papers, and making 
 short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid 
 them by a few days, and then, without looking at the 
 book, tried to complete the papers again, by express- 
 ing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it 
 had been expressed before, in any suitable words that 
 should come to hand. Then I compared my "Spec- 
 tator" with the original, discovered some of my 
 
 449 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a 
 stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and 
 using them, which I thought I should have acquired 
 before that time if I had gone on making verses ; since 
 the continual occasion for words of the same import, 
 but of different length, to suit the measure, or of dif- 
 ferent sound for the rhyme, would have laid me un- 
 der a constant necessity of searching for variety, and 
 also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and 
 make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the 
 tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, 
 when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned 
 them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my col- 
 lections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks 
 endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before 
 I began to form the full sentences and complete the 
 paper. This was to teach me method in the arrange- 
 ment of thoughts. By comparing my work after- 
 ward with the original, I discovered many faults and 
 amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of 
 fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, 
 I had been lucky enough to improve the method or 
 the language, and this encouraged me to think I 
 might possibly in time come to be a tolerable En- 
 glish writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. 
 My time for these exercises and for reading was at 
 night, after work, or before it began in the morning, 
 or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing- 
 house alone, evading as much as I could the common 
 
 450 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 attendance on public worship which my father 
 used to exact of me when I was under his care, 
 and which indeed I still thought a duty, though I 
 could not, as it seemed to me, afiford time to prac- 
 tice it. 
 
 When about sixteen years of age I happened to 
 meet with a book, written by one Tryon, recommend- 
 ing a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it. My 
 brother, being yet unmarried, did not keep house, but 
 boarded himself and his apprentices in another fam- 
 ily. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an incon- 
 veniency, and I was frequently chid for my singu- 
 larity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon's man- 
 ner of preparing some of his dishes, such as boiling 
 potatoes or rice, making hasty pudding, and a few 
 others, and then proposed to my brother that if he 
 would give me, weekly, half the money he paid for 
 my board, I would board myself. He instantly 
 agreed to it and I presently found that I could save 
 half what he paid me. This was an additional fund 
 for buying books. But I had another advantage in it. 
 My brother and the rest going from the printing- 
 house to their meals, I remained there alone, and des- 
 patching presently my light repast, which often was 
 no more than a biscuit or a slice of bread, a handful 
 of raisins or a tart from the pastry-cook's, and a glass 
 of water, had the rest of the time till their return for 
 study, in which I made the greater progress, from 
 that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehen- 
 
 451 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 sion which usually attend temperance in eating and 
 drinking. 
 
 And now it was that, being on some occasion made 
 ashamed of my ignorance in figures, which I had 
 twice failed in learning when at school, I took 
 Cocker's book of Arithmetic, and went through the 
 whole by myself with great ease. I also read Sel- 
 ler's and Shermy's books of Navigation, and became 
 acquainted with the little geometry they contain ; but 
 never proceeded far in that science. And I read 
 about this time Locke, "On the Human Understand- 
 ing," and the "Art of Thinking," by Messrs. du Port 
 Royal. 
 
 While I was intent on improving my language, I 
 met with an English Grammar ( I think it was Green- 
 wood's), at the end of which there were two little 
 sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter 
 finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic 
 method; and soon after I procured Xenophon's 
 "Memorable Things of Socrates," wherein there are 
 many instances of the same method. I was charmed 
 with it, adopted it, dropped my abrupt contradiction 
 and positive argumentation, and put on the humble 
 inquirer and doubter. And being then, from reading 
 Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in 
 many points of our religious doctrine, I found this 
 method safest for myself and very embarrassing to 
 those against whom I used it; therefore I took a de- 
 light in it, practiced it continually, and grew very 
 
 452 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior 
 knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of 
 which they did not foresee, entangling them in diffi- 
 culties out of which they could not extricate them- 
 selves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself 
 nor my cause always deserved. I continued this 
 method some few years, but gradually left it, retain- 
 ing only the habit of expressing myself in terms of 
 modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced 
 anything that may possibly be disputed, the words 
 certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air 
 of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I con- 
 ceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears 
 to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such 
 reasons ; or / imagine it to be so; or it is so if I am not 
 mistaken. This habit, I believe, has been of great 
 advantage to me when I have had occasion to incul- 
 cate my opinions, and persuade men into measures 
 that I have been from time to time engaged in pro- 
 moting; and as the chief ends of conversation are to 
 inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, 
 I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen 
 their power of doing good by a positive, assuming 
 manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create 
 opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes 
 for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or re- 
 ceiving information or pleasure. For if you would 
 inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advanc- 
 ing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and 
 
 453 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 prevent a candid attention. If you wish information 
 and improvement from the knowledge of others, and 
 yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fixed 
 in your present opinions, modest, sensible men who 
 do not love disputation will probably leave you un- 
 disturbed in the possession of your error. And by 
 such a manner you can seldom hope to recommend 
 yourself in pleasing your hearers, or to persuade those 
 whose concurrence you desire. Pope says, judi- 
 ciously: 
 
 "Men should be taught as if you taught them not, 
 And things unknown propos'd as things forgot;" 
 
 further recommending to us 
 
 "To speak, tho' sure, with seeming diffidence." 
 
 And he might have coupled with this line that which 
 he has coupled with another, I think less properly, 
 
 "For want of modesty is want of sense." 
 
 If you ask, Why less properly? I must repeat the 
 lines: 
 
 "Immodest words admit of no defence, 
 For want of modesty is want of sense." 
 
 Now, is not nvant of sense (where a man is so unfortu- 
 nate as to want it) some apology for his iimnt of mod- 
 esty? and would not the lines stand more justly thus? 
 
 "Immodest words admit of no defence, 
 That want of modesty is want of sense." 
 
 This, however, I should submit to better judgments. 
 
 454 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 My brother had, in 1720 or 1721 begun to print a 
 newspaper. It was the second that appeared in 
 America, and was called the "New England Cour- 
 ant." The only one before it was the "Boston News- 
 Letter." I remember his being dissuaded by some 
 of his friends from the undertaking, as not likely to 
 succeed, one newspaper being, in their judgment, 
 enough for America. At this time (1771) there are 
 not less than five-and-twenty. He went on, however, 
 with the undertaking, and after having worked in 
 composing the types and printing ofif the sheets, I was 
 employed to carry the papers through the streets to 
 the customers. 
 
 He had some ingenious men among his friends, 
 who amused themselves by writing little pieces for 
 this paper, which gained it credit and made it more 
 in demand, and these gentlemen often visited us. 
 Hearing their conversations, and their accounts of 
 the approbation their papers were received with, I 
 was excited to try my hand among them; but being 
 still a boy, and suspecting that my brother would ob- 
 ject to printing anything of mine in his paper if he 
 knew it to be mine, I contrived to disguise my hand, 
 and writing an anonymous paper, I put it in at night 
 under the door of the printing-house. It was found 
 in the morning, and communicated to his writing 
 friends when they called in as usual. They read it, 
 commented on it in my hearing, and I had the exqui- 
 site pleasure of finding it met with their approbation, 
 
 455 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 and that in their different guesses at the author, none 
 were named but men of some character among us for 
 learning and ingenuity. I suppose now that I was 
 rather lucky in my judges, and that perhaps they 
 were not really so very good ones as I then esteemed 
 them. 
 
 Encouraged, however, by this, I wrote and con- 
 veyed in the same way to the press several more pa- 
 pers which were equally approved ; and I kept my se- 
 cret till my small fund of sense for such performances 
 was pretty well exhausted, and then I discovered it, 
 when I began to be considered a little more by my 
 brother's acquaintance, and in a manner that did not 
 quite please him, as he thought, probably with rea- 
 son, that it tended to make me too vain. And, per- 
 haps, this might be one occasion of the differences 
 that we began to have about this time. Though a 
 brother, he considered himself as my master, and me 
 as his apprentice, and, accordingly, expected the same 
 services from me as he would from another, while I 
 thought he demeaned me too much in some he re- 
 quired of me, who from a brother expected more in- 
 dulgence. Our disputes were often brought before 
 our father, and I fancy I was either generally in the 
 right, or else a better pleader, because the judgment 
 was generally in my favor. But my brother was pas- 
 sionate, and had often beaten me, which I took ex- 
 tremely amiss; and, thinking my apprenticeship very 
 tedious, I was continually wishing for some oppor- 
 
 456 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 tunity of shortening it, which at length offered in a 
 manner unexpected. 
 
 One of the pieces in our newspaper on some po- 
 litical point, which I have now forgotten, gave of- 
 fence to the Assembly. He was taken up, censured, 
 and imprisoned for a month, by the speaker's war- 
 rant, I suppose, because he would not discover his 
 author. I too was taken up and examined before the 
 council; but, though I did not give them any satis- 
 faction, they contented themselves with admonish- 
 ing me, and dismissed me, considering me, perhaps, 
 as an apprentice, who was bound to keep his master's 
 secrets. 
 
 During my brother's confinement, which I re- 
 sented a good deal, notwithstanding our private dif- 
 ferences, I had the management of the paper; and I 
 made bold to give our rulers some rubs in it, which 
 my brother took very kindly, while others began to 
 consider me in an unfavorable light, as a young 
 genius that had a turn for libelling and satire. My 
 brother's discharge was accompanied with an order 
 of the House (a very odd one) , that ''James Franklin 
 should no longer print the paper called the 'New 
 England Courant.' " 
 
 There was a consultation held in our printing- 
 house among his friends, what he should do in this 
 case. Some proposed to evade the order by chang- 
 ing the name of the paper; but my brother, seeing in- 
 conveniences in that, it was finally concluded on as a 
 
 457 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 better way, to let it be printed for the future under 
 the name of Benjamin Franklin; and to avoid the 
 censure of the Assembly, that might fall on him as 
 still printing it by his apprentice, the contrivance was 
 that my old indenture should be returned to me, with 
 a full discharge on the back of it, to be shown on oc- 
 casion, but to secure to him the benefit of my service, 
 I was to sign new indentures for the remainder of the 
 term, which were to be kept private. A very flimsy 
 scheme it was ; however, it was immediately executed, 
 and the paper went on accordingly, under my name 
 for several months. 
 
 At length, a fresh difference arising between my 
 brother and me, I took upon me to assert my free- 
 dom, presuming that he would not venture to pro- 
 duce the new indentures. It was not fair in me to 
 take this advantage, and this I therefore reckon one 
 of the first errata of my life; but the unfairness of it 
 weighed little with me, when under the impressions 
 of resentment for the blows his passion too often 
 urged him to bestow upon me, though he was other- 
 wise not an ill-natured man; perhaps I was too saucy 
 and provoking. 
 
 When he found I would leave him, he took care 
 to prevent my getting employment in any other print- 
 ing-house of the town, by going round and speaking 
 to every master, who accordingly refused to give me 
 work. I then thought of going to New York, as the 
 nearest place where there was a printer; and I was 
 
 458 
 
Education of Franklin 
 
 rather inclined to leave Boston when I reflected that 
 I had already made myself a little obnoxious to the 
 governing party, and from the arbitrary proceedings 
 of the Assembly in my brother's case, it was likely I 
 might, if I stayed, soon bring myself into scrapes; 
 and further, that my indiscreet disputations about re- 
 ligion began to make me pointed at with horror by 
 good people as an infidel or atheist. I determined on 
 the point, but my father now siding with my brother, 
 I was sensible that if I attempted to go openly, means 
 would be used to prevent me. My friend Collins, 
 therefore, undertook to manage a little for me. He 
 agreed with the captain of a New York sloop for my 
 passage, under the notion of my being a young ac- 
 quaintance of his. So I sold some of my books to 
 raise a little money, was taken on board privately, and 
 as we had a fair wind, in three days I found myself 
 in New York, near 300 miles from home, a boy 
 of but 17, without the least recommendation to, or 
 knowledge of, any person in the place, and with very 
 little money in my pocket. 
 
 459 
 
THE BARRING OUT, OR PARTY SPIRIT 
 
 "'T'HE mother of mischief," says an old proverb, 
 ^ "is no bigger than a midge's wing." 
 
 At Doctor Middleton's school, there was a great 
 tall dunce of the name of Fisher, who never could be 
 taught how to look out a word in the dictionary. He 
 used to torment everybody with: "Do pray help me! 
 I can't make out this one word." The person who 
 usually helped him in his distress was a very clever, 
 good-natured boy of the name of De Grey, who had 
 been many years under Dr. Middleton's care, and 
 who, by his abilities and good conduct, did him great 
 credit. The doctor certainly was both proud and 
 fond of him; but he was so well beloved, or so much 
 esteemed by his companions, that nobody had ever 
 called him by the odious name of favorite, until the 
 arrival of a new scholar of the name of Archer. 
 
 Till Archer came, the ideas of favorites and 
 parties were almost unknown at Dr. Middleton's ; but 
 he brought all these ideas fresh from a great public 
 school, at which he had been educated — at which he 
 had acquired a sufficient quantity of Greek and Latin, 
 and a superabundant quantity of party spirit. His 
 aim, the moment that he came to a new school, was to 
 get to the head of it, or at least to form the strongest 
 party. His influence, for he was a boy of consider- 
 
 460 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 able abilities, was quickly felt, though he had a 
 powerful rival, as he thought proper to call him, in 
 De Grey; and, with him, a rival was always an 
 enemy. De Grey, so far from giving him any cause 
 of hatred, treated him with a degree of cordiality, 
 which would probably have had an effect upon 
 Archer's mind, if it had not been for the artifices of 
 Fisher. 
 
 It may seem surprising that a great dunce should 
 be able to work upon a boy like Archer, who was 
 called a great genius; but when genius is joined to a 
 violent temper, instead of being united to good sense, 
 it is at the mercy even of dunces. 
 
 Fisher was mortally offended one morning by 
 De Grey's refusing to translate his whole lesson for 
 him. He went over to Archer, who, considering him 
 as a partisan deserting from the enemy, received him 
 with open arms, and translated his whole lesson, 
 without expressing much contempt for his stupidity. 
 From this moment Fisher forgot all De Grey's for- 
 mer kindness, and considered only how he could in 
 his turn mortify the person whom he felt to be so 
 much his superior. 
 
 De Grey and Archer were now reading for a pre- 
 mium, which was to be given in their class. Fisher 
 betted on Archer's head, who had not sense enough 
 to despise the bet of a blockhead. On the contrary, 
 he suffered him to excite the spirit of rivalship in its 
 utmost fury by collecting the bets of all the school, 
 
 461 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 so that this premium now became a matter of the 
 greatest consequence; and Archer, instead of taking 
 the means to secure a judgment in his favor, was lis- 
 tening to the opinions of all his companions. It was 
 a prize which was to be won by his own exertions ; but 
 he suffered himself to consider it as an affair of 
 chance. The consequence was that he trusted to 
 chance; his partisans lost their wagers, and he the 
 premium — and his temper. 
 
 "Mr. Archer," said Dr. Middleton, after the 
 grand affair was decided, "you have done all that 
 genius alone could do; but you, De Grey, have done 
 all that genius and industry united could do." 
 
 "Well!" cried Archer with affected gayety, as 
 soon as the doctor had left the room — "well, I'm 
 content with my sentence. Genius alone for me! — 
 industry for those who want it," added he, with a sig- 
 nificant look at De Grey. 
 
 Fisher applauded this as a very spirited speech; 
 and, by insinuations that Dr. Middleton "always 
 gave the premium to De Grey," and that "those who 
 had lost their bets might thank themselves for it, for 
 being such simpletons as to bet against the favorite," 
 he raised a murmur highly flattering to Archer 
 among some of the most credulous boys, while 
 others loudly proclaimed their belief in Dr. Middle- 
 ton's impartiality. These warmly congratulated De 
 Grey. At this Archer grew more and more angry, 
 and when Fisher was proceeding to speak nonsense 
 
 462 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 for him pushed forward into the circle to De Grey, 
 crying, "I wish, Mr. Fisher, you would let me fight 
 my own battles!" 
 
 "And / wish," said young Townsend, who was 
 fonder of diversions than of premiums, or battles, or 
 of anything else — "7 wish, that we were not to have 
 any battles; after having worked like horses, don't 
 set about to fight like dogs. Come," said he, tapping 
 De Grey's shoulder, "let us see your new playhouse, 
 do ; it's a holiday, and let us make the most of it. Let 
 us have the 'School for Scandal,' do; and I'll play 
 Charles for you, and you, De Grey, shall be my little 
 Premium. Come, do open this new playhouse of 
 yours to-night." 
 
 "Come, then!" said De Grey, and he ran across 
 the playground to a waste building at the furthest 
 end of it, in which, at the earnest request of the whole 
 community, and with the permission of Dr. Middle- 
 ton, he had with much pains and ingenuity erected a 
 theatre. 
 
 "The new theatre is going to be opened! Follow 
 the manager! Follow the manager!" echoed a mul- 
 titude of voices. 
 
 "Follow the manager!" echoed very disagreeably 
 in Archer's ear; but as he could not be left alone, he 
 was also obliged to follow the manager. The .mo- 
 ment that the door was unlocked, the crowd rushed 
 in; the delight and wonder expressed at the sight 
 was great, and the applauses and thanks which 
 
 463 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 were bestowed upon the manager were long and 
 loud. 
 
 Archer, at least, thought them long, for he was 
 impatient till his voice could be heard. When at 
 length the acclamations had spent themselves, he 
 walked across the stage with a knowing air, and look- 
 ing round contemptuously: 
 
 "And is this your famous playhouse?" cried he. 
 "I wish you had any of you seen the playhouse I have 
 been used to!" 
 
 These words made a great and visible change in 
 the feelings and opinions of the public. "Who would 
 be a servant of the public? or who would toil for 
 popular applause?" A few words spoken in a de- 
 cisive tone by a new voice operated as a charm, and 
 the playhouse was in an instant metamorphosed in 
 the eyes of the spectators. All gratitude for the past 
 was forgotten, and the expectation of something bet- 
 ter justified to the capricious multitude their disdain 
 of what they had so lately pronounced to be excellent. 
 
 Every one now began to criticise. One observed, 
 "that the green curtain was full of holes, and would 
 not draw up." Another attacked the scenes : "Scenes ! 
 they were not like real scenes; Archer must know 
 best, because he was used to these things." So every- 
 body crowded to hear something of the other play- 
 house. They gathered round Archer to hear the de- 
 scription of his playhouse, and at every sentence in- 
 sulting comparisons were made. When he had done, 
 
 464 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 his auditors looked round, sighed, and wished that 
 Archer had been their manager. They turned from 
 De Grey as from a person who had done them an in- 
 jury. Some of his friends — for he had friends who 
 were not swayed by the popular opinion — felt indig- 
 nation at this ingratitude, and were going to express 
 their feelings; but De Grey stopped them, and 
 begged that he might speak for himself. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said he, coming forward, as soon as 
 he felt that he had sufficient command of himself — 
 "My friends, I see you are discontented with me and 
 my playhouse. I have done my best to please you; 
 but if anybody else can please you better, I shall be 
 glad of it. I do not work so hard for the glory of be- 
 ing your manager. You have my free leave to tear 
 down" — here his voice faltered, but he hurried on — 
 "you have my free leave to tear down all my work as 
 fast as you please. Archer, shake hands first, how- 
 ever, to show that there's no malice in the case." 
 
 Archer was touched by what his rival said, 
 and, stopping the hand of his new partisan Fisher, 
 cried, "No, Fisher, no! — no pulling down. We can 
 alter it. There is a great deal of ingenuity in it, con- 
 sidering." In vain Archer would now have recalled 
 the public to reason — the time for reason was past; 
 enthusiasm had taken hold of their minds. 
 
 "Down with it! Down with it! Archer for- 
 ever!" cried Fisher, and tore down the curtain. 
 
 The riot once begun, nothing could stop the little 
 
 465 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 mob, till the whole theatre was demolished. The 
 love of power prevailed in the mind of Archer; he 
 was secretly flattered by the zeal of his party, and he 
 mistook their love of mischief for attachment to him- 
 self. 
 
 De Grey looked on superior. "I said I could 
 bear to see all this, and I can," said he — "now it is all 
 over." And now it was all over, there was silence. 
 The rioters stood still to take breath, and to look at 
 what they had done. There was a blank space before 
 them. 
 
 In this moment of silence there was heard some- 
 thing like a female voice. "Hush! — What strange 
 voice is that?" said Archer. 
 
 Fisher caught fast hold of his arm. Everybody 
 looked round to see where the voice came from. It 
 was dusk. Two window-shutters at the furthest end 
 of the building were seen to move slowly inward. 
 De Grey, and in the same instant Archer, went for- 
 ward; and as the shutters opened, there appeared 
 through the hole the dark face and shrivelled hands 
 of a very old gypsy. She did not speak; but she 
 looked first at one, and then at another. At length 
 she fixed her eyes upon De Grey. 
 
 "Well, my good woman," said he, "what do you 
 want with me?" 
 
 "Want! — nothing — with you," said the old wo- 
 man; "do you want nothing with me?" 
 
 "Nothing," said De Grey. 
 
 466 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 Her eye immediately turned upon Archer. "You 
 want something with me," said she, with emphasis. 
 
 "I! — What do I want?" replied Archer. 
 
 "No," said she, changing her tone, "you want 
 nothing — nothing will you ever want, or I am much 
 mistaken in that face." 
 
 In that watch-chain, she should have said, for her 
 quick eye had espied Archer's watch-chain. He was 
 the only person in the company who had a watch, and 
 she therefore judged him to be the richest. 
 
 "Had you ever your fortune told, sir, in your 
 life?" 
 
 "Not I!" said he, looking at De Grey, as if he 
 were afraid of his ridicule, if he listened to the 
 gypsy. 
 
 "Not you! — no! for you will make your own for- 
 tune, and the fortune of all that belong to you!" 
 
 "There's good news for my friends!" cried 
 Archer. 
 
 "And I'm one of them, remember that!" cried 
 Fisher. 
 
 "And I" — "and I" — joined a number of voices. 
 
 "Good luck to them!" cried the gypsy, "good luck 
 to them all !" 
 
 Then, as soon as they had acquired sufficient con- 
 fidence in her good-will, they pressed up to the win- 
 dow. 
 
 "There," cried Townsend, as he chanced to stum- 
 ble over the carpenter's mitre-box, which stood in the 
 
 467 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 way, "there's a good omen for me. I've stumbled on 
 the mitre-box; I shall certainly be a bishop." 
 
 Happy he who had sixpence, for he bid fair to be 
 a judge upon the bench. And happier he who had 
 a shilling, for he was in the high-road to be one day 
 upon the woolsack, Lord High Chancellor of Eng- 
 land. No one had half a crown, or no one would 
 surely have kept it in his pocket upon such an occa- 
 sion, for he might have been an archbishop, a king, 
 or what he pleased. 
 
 Fisher, who like all weak people was extremely 
 credulous, had kept his post immovable in the front 
 row all the time, his mouth open and his stupid eyes 
 fixed upon the gypsy, in whom he felt implicit faith. 
 
 Those who have least confidence in their own 
 powers, and who have least expectation from the 
 success of their own exertions, are always most dis- 
 posed to trust in fortune-tellers and fortune. They 
 hope to win, when they cannot earn ; and as they can 
 never be convinced by those who speak sense, it is no 
 wonder they are always persuaded by those who talk 
 nonsense. 
 
 "I have a question to put," said Fisher, in a sol- 
 emn tone. 
 
 "Put it, then," said Archer; "what hinders you?" 
 
 "But they will hear me," said he, looking suspi- 
 ciously at De Grey. 
 
 "I shall not hear you," said De Grey; "I am go- 
 ing." 
 
 468 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 Everybody else drew back, and left him to whis- 
 per his question in the gypsy's ear. "What is be- 
 come of my Livy?" 
 
 "Your sister Livy, do you mean?" said the gypsy. 
 
 "No, my Latin Livy." 
 
 The gypsy paused for further information. 
 
 "It had a leaf torn out in the beginning, and I 
 hate Dr. Middleton — '' 
 
 "Written in it," interrupted the gypsy. 
 
 "Right — the very book!" cried Fisher, with joy. 
 "But how could you know it was Dr. Middleton's 
 name? I thought I had scratched it so that nobody 
 could make it out." 
 
 "Nobody could make it out but me," replied the 
 gypsy. "But never think to deceive me," said she, 
 shaking her head at him in a manner that made him 
 tremble. 
 
 "I don't deceive you, indeed : I tell you the whole 
 truth. I lost it a week ago." 
 
 "True." 
 
 "And when shall I find it?" 
 
 "Meet me here at this hour to-morrow evening, 
 and I will answer you. No more! I must be gone. 
 Not a word more to-night." 
 
 She pulled the shutters toward her, and left the 
 youth in darkness. All his companions were gone. 
 He had been so deeply engaged in this conference 
 that he had not perceived their departure. He 
 found all the world at supper; but no entreaties 
 
 469 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 could prevail upon him to disclose his secret. Town- 
 send rallied in vain. As for Archer, he was not dis- 
 posed to destroy by ridicule the effect which he saw 
 that the old woman's predictions in his favor had had 
 upon the imagination of many of his little partisans. 
 He had privately slipped two good shillings into the 
 gypsy's hand to secure her; for he was willing to pay 
 any price for any means of acquiring power. 
 
 The watch-chain had not deceived the gypsy, for 
 Archer was the richest person in the community. His 
 friends had imprudently supplied him with more 
 money than is usually trusted to boys of his age. Dr. 
 Middleton had refused to give him a larger monthly 
 allowance than the rest of his companions; but he 
 brought to school with him secretly the sum of five 
 guineas. This appeared to his friends and to him- 
 self an inexhaustible treasure. 
 
 Riches and talents would, he flattered himself, se- 
 cure to him that ascendency of which he was so am- 
 bitious. "Am I your manager, or not?" was now 
 his question. "I scorn to take advantage of a hasty 
 moment; but since last night you have had time to 
 consider. If you desire me to be your manager, you 
 shall see what a theatre I will make for you. In this 
 purse," said he, showing through the network a 
 glimpse of the shining treasure — "in this purse is 
 Aladdin's wonderful lamp. Am I your manager? 
 Put it to the vote." 
 
 It was put to the vote. About ten of the most 
 
 470 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 reasonable of the assembly declared their gratitude 
 and high appreciation of their old friend De Grey; 
 but the numbers were in favor of the new friend. 
 And as no metaphysical distinctions relative to the 
 idea of a majority had ever entered their thoughts, the 
 most numerous party considered themselves as now 
 beyond dispute in the right. They drew off on one 
 side in triumph, and their leader, who knew the con- 
 sequence of a name in party matters, immediately 
 distinguished his partisans by the gallant name of 
 Archers, stigmatizing the friends of De Grey by the 
 odious epithet of Greybeards. 
 
 Among the Archers was a class not very remark- 
 able for their mental qualifications, but who, by their 
 bodily activity, and by the peculiar advantages an- 
 nexed to their way of life, rendered themselves of the 
 highest consequence, especially to the rich and enter- 
 prising. 
 
 The judicious reader will apprehend that I al- 
 lude to the persons called day-scholars. Among 
 these, Fisher was distinguished by his knowledge of 
 all the streets and shops in the adjacent town; and 
 though a dull scholar, he had such reputation as a 
 man of business that whoever had commissions to ex- 
 ecute at the confectioner's were sure to apply to him. 
 Some of the youngest of his employers had, it is true, 
 at times complained that he made mistakes of half- 
 pence and pence in their accounts ; but as these affairs 
 could never be brought to a public trial, Fisher's 
 
 471 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 character and consequence were undiminished, till 
 the fatal day when his aunt Barbara forbade his visits 
 to the confectioner's; or rather, till she requested the 
 confectioner, who had his private reasons for obeying 
 her, not to receive her nephew's visits, as he had 
 made himself sick at his house, and Mrs. Barbara's 
 fears for his health were incessant. 
 
 Though his visits to the confectioner's were thus 
 at an end, there were many other shops open to him; 
 and with officious zeal he offered his services to the 
 new manager, to purchase whatever might be want- 
 ing for the theatre. 
 
 Since his father's death Fisher had become a 
 boarder at Dr. Middleton's, but his frequent visits 
 to his aunt Barbara afforded him opportunities of 
 going into the town. The carpenter, De Grey's 
 friend, was discarded by Archer, for having said 
 "lackadaisy!" when he saw that the old theatre was 
 pulled down. A new carpenter and paper-hanger, 
 recommended by Fisher, were appointed to attend, 
 with their tools, for orders at two o'clock. Archer, 
 impatient to show his ingenuity and his generosity, 
 gave his plans and his orders in a few minutes, in a 
 most decided manner. "These things," he observed, 
 "should be done with some spirit." 
 
 To which the carpenter readily assented, and 
 added that "gentlemen of spirit never looked to the 
 expense, but always to the efifect." Upon this prin- 
 ciple Mr. Chip set to work with all possible alacrity. 
 
 472 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 In a few hours' time he promised to produce a grand 
 effect High expectations were formed. Nothing 
 was talked of but the new playhouse; and so intent 
 upon it was every head that no lessons could be got. 
 Archer was obliged, in the midst of his various occu- 
 pations, to perform the part of grammar and diction- 
 ary for twenty different people. 
 
 "O ye Athenians!" he exclaimed, "how hard do 
 I work to obtain your praise!" 
 
 Impatient to return to the theatre, the moment 
 the hours destined for instruction, or, as they are 
 termed by schoolboys, school-hours, were over, each 
 prisoner started up with a shout of joy. 
 
 "Stop one moment, gentlemen, if you please," said 
 Dr. Middleton, in an^ awful voice. "Mr. Archer, re- 
 turn to your place. Are you all here?" The names 
 of all the boys were called over, and when each had 
 answered to his name. Dr. Middleton said: 
 
 "Gentlemen, I am sorry to interrupt your amuse- 
 ments ; but, till you have contrary orders from me, no 
 one, on pain of my serious displeasure, must go into 
 that building" (pointing to the place where the the- 
 atre was erecting) . "Mr. Archer, your carpenter is 
 at the door. You will be so good as to dismiss him. 
 I do not think proper to give my reasons for these 
 orders; but you who know me," said the doctor, and 
 his eye turned toward De Grey, "will not suspect me 
 of caprice. I depend, gentlemen, upon your obedi- 
 
 ence." 
 
 473 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 To the dead silence with which these orders were 
 received succeeded in a few minutes a universal 
 groan. 
 
 "So!" said Townsend, "all our diversion is over." 
 
 "So," whispered Fisher in the manager's ear, "this 
 is some trick of the Greybeards. Did you not ob- 
 serve how he looked at De Grey?" 
 
 Fired by this idea, which had never entered his 
 mind before, Archer started from his revery, and, 
 striking his hand upon the table, swore that he would 
 not be outwitted by any Greybeard in Europe — no, 
 nor by all of them put together. The Archers were 
 surely a match for them. He would stand by them, 
 if they would stand by him, he declared with a loud 
 voice, "against the whole world, and Dr. Middleton 
 himself, with 'little Premium' at his right hand." 
 
 Everybody admired Archer's spirit, but were a 
 little appalled at the sound of standing against Dr. 
 Middleton. 
 
 "Why not?" resumed the indignant manager. 
 "Neither Dr. Middleton nor any doctor upon earth 
 shall treat me with injustice. This, you see, is a 
 stroke at me and my party, and I won't bear it." 
 
 "Oh, you are mistaken!" said De Grey, who was 
 the only one who dared to oppose reason to the angry 
 orator. "It cannot be a stroke aimed at 'you and 
 your party,' for he does not know that you have a 
 party." 
 
 "I'll make him know it, and I'll make you know 
 
 474 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 it, too," said Archer. "Before I came here you 
 reigned alone; now your reign is over, Mr. De Grey. 
 Remember my majority this morning, and your the- 
 atre last night." 
 
 "He has remembered it," said Fisher. "You see, 
 the moment he was not to be our manager, we were 
 to have no theatre, no playhouse, no plays. We must 
 all sit down with our hands before us, all for 'good 
 reasons' of Dr. Middleton's, which he does not vouch- 
 safe to tell us." 
 
 "I won't be governed by any man's reasons that 
 he won't tell me," cried Archer. "He cannot have 
 good reasons, or why not tell them?" 
 
 "Nonsense!" said De Grey. "We shall not sus- 
 pect him of caprice." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Because we who know him have never known 
 him capricious." 
 
 "Perhaps not. I know nothing about him," said 
 Archer. 
 
 "No," said De Grey; "for that very reason I 
 speak who do know him. Don't be in a passion. 
 Archer." 
 
 "I will be in a passion. I won't submit to 
 tyranny. I won't be made a fool of by a few soft 
 words. You don't know me, De Grey. I'll go 
 through with what I've begun. I am manager, and 
 I will be manager; and you shall see my theatre fin- 
 ished in spite of you, and my party triumphant." 
 
 475 
 
 Vol. 15—16 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "Party," repeated De Grey. "I cannot imagine 
 what is in the word 'party' that seems to drive you 
 mad. We never heard of parties till you came 
 among us." 
 
 "No; before I came, I say, nobody dared oppose 
 you ; but I dare ; and I tell you to your face, take care 
 of me! A warm friend and a bitter enemy, is my 
 motto." 
 
 "I am not your enemy. I believe you are out of 
 your senses. Archer!" said he, laughing. 
 
 "Out of my senses! No; you are my enemy! Are 
 not you my rival? Did not you win the premium? 
 Did not you want to be manager? Answer me, are 
 not you, in one word, a Greybeard?" 
 
 "You called me a Greybeard, but my name is De 
 Grey," said he, still laughing. 
 
 "Laugh on!" cried the other, furiously. "Come, 
 Archers, follow me! We shall laugh by and by, I 
 promise you." 
 
 At the door Archer was stopped by Mr. Chip. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Chip, I am ordered to discharge you." 
 
 "Yes, sir; and here is a little bill — " 
 
 "Bill, Mr. Chip; why, you have not been at work 
 for two hours!" 
 
 "Not much over, sir; but if you'll please to look 
 into it, you'll see it's for a few things you ordered. 
 The stuff is all laid out and delivered. The paper, 
 and the festoon-bordering for the drawing-room 
 scene, is cut out, and left y^^nder, within," 
 
 476 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 "Y<3nder, within! I wish you had not been in 
 such a confounded hurry — six-and-twenty shillings!" 
 cried he; "but I can't stay to talk about it now. I'll 
 tell you, Mr. Chip," said Archer, lowering his voice, 
 "what you must do for me, my good fellow." 
 
 Then drawing Mr. Chip aside, he begged him to 
 pull down some of the woodwork which had been put 
 up, and to cut it into a certain number of wooden bars, 
 of which he gave him the dimensions, with orders to 
 place them all, when ready, under a haystack, which 
 he pointed out. 
 
 Mr. Chip scrupled and hesitated, and began to 
 talk of "the doctor." Archer immediately began to 
 talk of the bill, and throwing down a guinea and a 
 half, the conscientious carpenter pocketed the money 
 directly, and made his bow. 
 
 "Well, Master Archer," said he, "there's no re- 
 fusing you nothing. You have such a way of talk- 
 ing one out of it. You manage me just like a 
 child." 
 
 "Ay, ay!" said Archer, knowing that he had been 
 cheated and yet proud of managing a carpenter — 
 "ay, ay, I know the way to manage everybody. Let 
 the things be ready in an hour's time; and hark 'e! 
 leave your tools by mistake behind you, and a thou- 
 sand of twenty-penny nails. Ask no questions, and 
 keep your own counsel, like a wise man. Ofif with 
 you, and take care of 'the doctor.' " 
 
 "Archers! Archers! To the Archers' tree; fol- 
 
 477 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 low your leader," cried he, sounding his well-known 
 whistle as a signal. His followers gathered round 
 him, and he, raising himself upon the mount at the 
 foot of the tree, counted his numbers, and then, in a 
 voice lower than usual, addressed them thus: 
 
 "My friends, is there a Greybeard among us? If 
 there is, let him walk off now; he has my free leave." 
 No one stirred. "Then we are all Archers, and we 
 will stand by one another. Join hands, my friends." 
 They all joined hands. "Promise me not to betray 
 me, and I will go on; I ask no security but your 
 honor." They all gave their honor to be secret and 
 faithful, as he called it, and he went on: 
 
 "Did you ever hear of such a thing as a 'Barring 
 out,' my friends?" They had heard of such a thing; 
 but they had only heard of it. 
 
 Archer gave the history of a "Barring out," in 
 which he had been concerned at his school; in which 
 the boys stood out two days against the master, and 
 gained their point at last, which was a week's more 
 holidays at Easter. 
 
 "But if we should not succeed," said they, "Dr. 
 Middleton is so steady; he never goes back from what 
 he has said." 
 
 "Did you ever try to push him back? Let us be 
 steady, and he'll tremble. Tyrants always tremble 
 when — " 
 
 "Oh!" interrupted a number of voices; "but he Is 
 not a tyrant, is he?" 
 
 478 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 "AU schoolmasters are tyrants, are not they?" 
 replied Archer; "and is not he a schoolmaster?" 
 
 To this logic there was no answer; but, still reluc- 
 tant, they asked, What they should get by a Barring 
 out? 
 
 "Get! — everything! — what we want! — which is 
 everything to lads of spirit — victory and liberty! Bar 
 him out till he repeals his tyrannical law; till he lets 
 us into our own theatre again, or till he tells us his 
 'good reasons' against it." 
 
 "But perhaps he has reasons for not telling 
 us." 
 
 "Impossible!" cried Archer; "that's the way we 
 are always to be governed by a man in a wig, who 
 says he has good reasons, and can't tell them. Are 
 you fools? Go; go back to De Grey. I see you are 
 all Greybeards. Go ; who goes first?" Nobody would 
 go first. "I will have nothing to do with ye, if ye 
 are resolved to be slaves!" 
 
 "We won't be slaves!" they all exclaimed at 
 once. 
 
 "Then," said Archer, "stand out in the right, and 
 be free." 
 
 "The right." It would have taken up too mucK 
 time to examine what "the right" was. Archer was 
 always sure that "the right" was what his party chose 
 to do, that is what he chose to do himself; and such is 
 the influence of numbers upon each other, in conquer- 
 ing the feelings of shame, and in confusing the powers 
 
 479 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 of reasoning, that in a few minutes "the right" was 
 forgotten, and each said to himself, "To be sure. 
 Archer is a very clever boy, and he can't be mis- 
 taken;" or, "To be sure, Townsend thinks so, and he 
 would not do anything to get us into a scrape;" or, 
 "To be sure, everybody will agree to this but myself, 
 and I can't stand out alone, to be pointed at as a 
 Greybeard and a slave. Everybody thinks it is right, 
 and everybody can't be wrong." 
 
 By some of these arguments, which passed rapidly 
 through the mind, without his being conscious of 
 them, each boy decided, and deceived himself; what 
 none would have done alone, none scrupled to do as 
 a party. It was determined, then, that there should 
 be a Barring out. The arrangement of the affair 
 was left to their new manager, to whom they all 
 pledged implicit obedience. Obedience, it seems, 
 is necessary even from rebels to their ringleaders; 
 not reasonable, but implicit obedience. 
 
 Scarcely had the assembly adjourned to the Ball 
 Alley, when Fisher, with an important length of face, 
 came up to the manager, and desired to speak one 
 word to him. 
 
 "My advice to you. Archer, is, to do nothing in 
 this till we have consulted — you know who — about 
 whether it's right or wrong." 
 
 "You know who! Whom do you mean? Make 
 haste, and don't make so many faces, for I'm in a 
 hurry. Who is 'You know who'?" 
 
 480 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 "The old woman," said Fisher, gravely; "the 
 
 gypsy-" 
 
 "You may consult the old woman,." said Archer, 
 bursting out a-laughing, "about what's right and 
 wrong, if you please; but no old woman shall decide 
 for me." 
 
 "No; but you don't take me," said Fisher; "you 
 don't take me. By right and wrong, I mean lucky 
 and unlucky." 
 
 "Whatever I do will be lucky," replied Archer. 
 "My gypsy told you that already." 
 
 "I know, I know," said Fisher, "and what she said 
 about your friends being lucky — that went a great 
 way with many," added he, with a sagacious nod of 
 his head, "I can tell you that — more than you think. 
 Do you know," said he, laying hold of Archer's but- 
 ton, "I'm in the secret. There are nine of us have 
 crooked our little fingers upon it, not to stir a step 
 till we get her advice ; and she has appointed me to 
 meet her about particular business) of my own at 
 eight. So I'm to consult her and to bring her 
 answer." 
 
 Archer knew too well how to govern fools to at- 
 tempt to reason with them; and, instead of laughing 
 any longer at Fisher's ridiculous superstition, he was 
 determined to take advantage of it. He afifected to be 
 persuaded of the wisdom of the measure; looked at 
 his watch; urged him to be exact to a moment; con- 
 jured him to remember exactly the words of the 
 
 481 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 oracle, and, above all things, to demand the lucky 
 hour and minute when the Barring out should begin. 
 With these instructions Archer put his watch into the 
 solemn dupe's hand, and left him to count the sec- 
 onds, till the moment of his appointment, while he 
 ran ofif himself to prepare the oracle. 
 
 At a little gate which looked into a lane, through 
 which he guessed that the gypsy must pass, he sta- 
 tioned himself, saw her, gave her half a crown and 
 her instructions, made his escape, and got back un- 
 suspected to Fisher, whom he found in the attitude in 
 which he had left him, watching the motion of the 
 minute-hand. 
 
 Proud of his secret commission, Fisher slouched 
 his hat, he knew not why, over his face, and pro- 
 ceeded toward the appointed spot. To keep, as he 
 had been charged to do by Archer, within the letter 
 of the law, he stood behind the forbidden building, 
 and waited some minutes. Through a gap in the 
 hedge the old woman at length made her appear- 
 ance, muffled up, and looking cautiously about her. 
 
 "There's nobody near us!" said Fisher, and he 
 began to be a little afraid. "What answer," said he, 
 recollecting himself, "about my Livy?" 
 
 "Lost! lost! lost!" said the gypsy, lifting up her 
 hands; "never, never, never to be found! But no 
 matter for that now; that is not your errand to-night; 
 no tricks with me; speak to me of what is next your 
 heart." 
 
 482 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 Fisher, astonished, put his hand upon his heart, 
 told her all that she knew before, and received the 
 answers which Archer had dictated : "That the Arch- 
 ers should be lucky as long as they stuck to their 
 manager and to one another; that the Barring out 
 should end in woe, if not begun precisely as the clock 
 should strike nine on Wednesday night; but if begun 
 in that lucky moment, and all obedient to their lucky 
 leader, all should end well." 
 
 A thought, a provident thought, now struck 
 Fisher; for even he had some foresight, where his 
 favorite passion was concerned. 
 
 "Pray, in our Barring out, shall we be starved?" 
 
 "No," said the gypsy, "not if you trust to me for 
 food, and if you give me money enough. Silver won't 
 do for so many; gold is what must cross my hand." 
 
 "I have no gold," said Fisher, "and I don't know 
 what you mean by 'so many.' I'm only talking of 
 number one, you know. I must take care of that first." 
 
 So, as Fishei^ thought it possible that Archer, 
 clever as he was, might be disappointed in his sup- 
 plies, he determined to take secret measures for him- 
 self. His aunt Barbara's interdiction had shut him 
 out of the confectioner's shop, but he flattered him- 
 self that he could outwit his aunt; he therefore begged 
 the gypsy to procure him twelve buns by Thursday 
 morning, and bring them secretly to one of the win- 
 dows of the schoolroom. 
 
 As Fisher did not produce any money when he 
 
 483 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 made this proposal, it was at first absolutely rejected ; 
 but a bribe at length conquered his difficulties; and 
 the bribe which Fisher found himself obliged to give 
 — for he had no pocket-money left of his own, he be- 
 ing as much restricted in that article as Archer was 
 indulged — the bribe that he found himself obliged to 
 give to quiet the gypsy was half a crown, which 
 Archer had intrusted to him to buy candles for the 
 theatre. 
 
 "Oh," thought he to himself, "Archer's so care- 
 less about money, he will never think of asking me 
 for the half-crown again; and now he'll want no 
 candles for the theatre ; or, at any rate, it will be some 
 time first; and maybe aunt Barbara may be got to 
 give me that much at Christmas; then, if the worst 
 comes to the worst, one can pay Archer. My mouth 
 waters for the buns, and have 'em I must now." 
 
 So, for the hope of twelve buns, he sacrificed the 
 money which had been intrusted to him. Thus the 
 meanest motives, in mean minds, often prompt to the 
 commission of those great faults to which, one should 
 think, nothing but some violent passion could have 
 tempted. 
 
 The ambassador, having thus, in his opinion, con- 
 cluded his own and the public business, returned well 
 satisfied with the result, after receiving the gypsy's 
 reiterated promise to tap three times at the window 
 on Thursday morning. 
 
 The day appointed for the Barring out at length 
 
 484 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 arrived; and Archer, assembling the confederates, in- 
 formed them that all was prepared for carrying their 
 design into execution ; that he now depended for suc- 
 cess upon their punctuality and courage. He had, 
 within the last two hours, got all the bars ready to 
 fasten the doors and window-shutters of the school- 
 room; he had, with the assistance of two of the day- 
 scholars who were of the party, sent into the town for 
 provisions, at his own expense, which would make a 
 handsome supper for that night; he had also nego- 
 tiated with some cousins of his, who lived in the 
 town, for a constant supply in future. 
 
 "Bless me," exclaimed Archer, suddenly stopping 
 in this narration of his services, "there's one thing, 
 after all, I've forgot; we shall be undone without it. 
 Fisher, pray did you ever buy the candles for the 
 playhouse?" 
 
 "No, to be sure," replied Fisher, extremely 
 frightened; "you know you don't want candles for 
 the playhouse now." 
 
 "Not for the playhouse, but for the Barring out. 
 We shall be in the dark, man. You must run this 
 minute; run." 
 
 "For candles?" said Fisher, confused; "how 
 many? — what sort?" 
 
 "Stupidity!" exclaimed Archer, "you are a pretty 
 fellow at a dead lift! Lend me a pencil and a bit of 
 paper, do; FU write down what I want myself! 
 Well, what are you fumbling for?" 
 
 485 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "For money," said Fisher, coloring. 
 
 "Money, man! Didn't I give you half a crown 
 the other day?" 
 
 "Yes," replied Fisher, stammering; "but I wasn't 
 sure that that might be enough." 
 
 "Enough! yes, to be sure it will. I don't know 
 what you are at." 
 
 "Nothing, nothing," said Fisher; "here, write 
 upon this, then," said Fisher, putting a piece of paper 
 into Archer's hand, upon which Archer wrote his 
 orders. 
 
 "Away, away!" cried he. 
 
 Away went Fisher. He returned ; but not until a 
 considerable time afterward. They were at supper 
 when he returned. 
 
 "Fisher always comes in at supper-time," observed 
 one of the Greybeards, carelessly. 
 
 "Well, and would you have him come in after 
 supper-time?" said Townsend, who always supplied 
 his party with ready wit. 
 
 "Fve got the candles," whispered Fisher, as he 
 passed by Archer to his place. 
 
 "And the tinder-box?" said Archer. 
 
 "Yes; I got back from my aunt Barbara under 
 pretence that I must study for repetition-day an hour 
 later to-night. So I got leave. Was not that 
 clever?" 
 
 A dunce always thinks it clever to cheat even by 
 sober lies. How Mr. Fisher procured the candles 
 
 486 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 and the tinder-box without money and without credit, 
 for he had no credit, we shall discover in future. 
 
 Archer and his associates had agreed to stay the 
 last in the schoolroom; and as soon as the Grey- 
 beards were gone out to bed, he, as the signal, was 
 to shut and lock one door, Townsend the other. A 
 third conspirator was to strike a light, in case they 
 should not be able to secure a candle. A fourth was 
 to take charge of the candle as soon as lighted; and 
 all the rest were to run to their bars, which were 
 secreted in the room ; then to fix them to the common 
 fastening-bars of the window in the manner in which 
 they had been previously instructed by the manager. 
 Thus each had his part assigned, and each was 
 warned that the success of the whole depended upon 
 their order and punctuality. 
 
 Order and punctuality, it appears, are necessary 
 even in a Barring out; and even rebellion must have 
 its laws. 
 
 The long-expected moment at length arrived. De 
 Grey and his friends, unconscious of what was going 
 forward, walked out of the schoolroom as usual at 
 bedtime. The clock began to strike nine. There 
 was one Greybeard left in the room, who was pack- 
 ing up some of his books, which had been left about 
 by accident. It is impossible to describe the impa- 
 tience with which he was watched, especially by 
 Fisher and the nine who depended upon the gypsy 
 oracle. 
 
 487 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 When he had got all his books together under his 
 arm, he let one of them fall; and while he stooped to 
 pick it up, Archer gave the signal. The doors were 
 shut, locked, and double-locked in an instant. A 
 light was struck, and each ran to his post. The bars 
 were all in the same moment put up to the windows, 
 and Archer, when he had tried them all, and seen 
 that they were secure, gave a loud "Huzza!" — in 
 which he was joined by all the party most manfully 
 — by all but the poor Greybeard, who, the picture 
 of astonishment, stood stock-still in the midst of them 
 with his books under his arm; at which spectacle 
 Townsend, who enjoyed the frolic of the fray more 
 than anything else, burst into an immoderate fit of 
 laughter. 
 
 So, my little Greybeard," said he, holding a can- 
 dle full in his eyes, "what think you of all this? How 
 came you among the wicked ones?" 
 
 "I don't know, indeed," said the little boy, very 
 gravely: "you shut me up among you. Won't you 
 let me out?" 
 
 "Let you out! No, no, my little Greybeard," said 
 Archer, catching hold of him, and dragging him to 
 the window-bars. "Look ye here — touch these — 
 put your hand to them — pull, push, kick — put a 
 little spirit into it, man — kick like an Archer, if you 
 can; away with ye. It's a pity that the king of the 
 Greybeards is not here to admire me. I should like 
 to show him our fortifications. But come, my merr)^ 
 
 488 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 men all, now to the feast. Out with the table into 
 the middle of the room. Good cheer, my jolly Arch- 
 ers! I'm your manager!" 
 
 Townsend, delighted with the bustle, rubbed his 
 hands and capered about the room, while the prepa- 
 rations for the feast were hurried forward. "Four 
 candles! — four candles on the tables. Let's have 
 things in style when we are about it, Mr. Manager," 
 cried Townsend. "Places! Places! There's noth- 
 ing like a fair scramble, my boys. Let every one 
 take care of himself. Halloo! Greybeard — I've 
 knocked Greybeard down here in the scuffle. Get 
 up again, my lad, and see a little of life." 
 
 "No, no," cried Fisher, "he sha'n't sup with us." 
 
 "No, no," cried the manager, "he sha'n't live with 
 us; a Greybeard is not fit company for Archers." 
 
 "No, no," cried Townsend, " ^evil communica- 
 tions corrupt good manners.' " 
 
 So with one unanimous hiss they hunted the poor 
 little gentle boy into a corner; and having pent him 
 up with benches, Fisher opened his books for him, 
 which he thought the greatest mortification, and set 
 up a candle beside him. 
 
 "There, now he looks like a Greybeard as he is!" 
 cried they. 
 
 "Tell me, what's the Latin for cold roast beel?" 
 said Fisher, exulting; and they returned to their 
 feast. Long and loud they revelled. They had a few 
 bottles of cider. 
 
 489 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "Give me the corkscrew; the cider sha'n't be kept 
 till it's sour," cried Townsend, in answer to the man- 
 ager, who, when he beheld the provisions vanishing 
 with surprising rapidity, began to fear for the mor- 
 row. "Hang to-morrow!" cried Townsend; "let 
 Greybeards think of to-morrow. Mr. Manager, 
 here's your good health." 
 
 The Archers all stood up as their cups were filled 
 to drink the health of their chief with a universal 
 cheer. But at the moment that the cups were at their 
 lips, and as Archer bowed to thank the company, a 
 sudden shower from above astonished the whole as- 
 sembly. They looked up, and beheld the rose of a 
 watering-engine, whose long neck appeared through 
 a trap-door in the ceiling. "Your good health, Mr. 
 Manager!" said a voice which was known to be the 
 gardener's; and in the midst of their surprise and 
 dismay the candles were suddenly extinguished, the 
 trap-door shut down, and they were left in utter 
 darkness. 
 
 "The !" said Archer. 
 
 "Don't swear, Mr. Manager," said the same voice 
 from the ceiling. "I hear every word you say." 
 
 "Mercy upon us!" exclaimed Fisher. "The 
 clock," added he, whispering, "must have been 
 wrong, for it had not done striking when we began. 
 Only you remember. Archer, it had just done before 
 you had done locking your door." 
 
 "Hold your tongue, blockhead!" said Archer. 
 
 490 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 "Well, boys! were ye never in the dark before? You 
 are not afraid of a shower of rain, I hope. Is any- 
 body drowned?" 
 
 ''No," said they with a faint laugh; "but what 
 shall we do here in the dark all night long, and all 
 day to-morrow? We can't unbar the shutters." 
 
 "It's a wonder nobody ever thought of that trap- 
 door!" said Townsend. 
 
 The trap-door had indeed escaped the man- 
 ager's observation. As the house was new to him, 
 and the ceiling newly whitewashed, the opening was 
 scarcely perceptible. Vexed to be out-generalled, and 
 still more vexed to have it remarked. Archer poured 
 forth a volley of incoherent exclamations and re- 
 proaches against those who were thus so soon dis- 
 couraged by a trifle; and groping-for the tinder-box, 
 he asked if anything could be easier than to strike a 
 light again. The light appeared. But at the. mo- 
 ment that it made the tinder-box visible, another 
 shower from above, aimed, and aimed exactly, at the 
 tinder-box, drenched it with water, and rendered 
 it totally unfit for further service. Archer in a fury 
 dashed it to the ground. And now for the first time 
 he felt what it was to be the unsuccessful head of a 
 party. He heard in his turn the murmurs of the dis- 
 contented, changeable populace; and recollecting all 
 his bars and bolts and ingenious contrivances, he was 
 more provoked at their blaming him for this one only 
 oversight than he was grieved at the disaster itself. 
 
 491 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "Oh, my hair is all wet!" cried one, dolefully. 
 
 "Wring it, then," said Archer. 
 
 "My hand's cut with your broken glass!" cried 
 another. 
 
 "Glass!" cried a third; "mercy! is there broken 
 glass? and it's all about, I suppose, amongst the sup- 
 per; and I had but one bit of bread all the time." 
 
 "Bread!" cried Archer. "Eat, if you want it 
 Here's a piece here, and no glass near it." 
 
 "It's all wet; and I don't like dry bread by itself; 
 that's no feast," 
 
 "Heigh-day! What, nothing but moaning and 
 grumbling! If these are the joys of a Barring out," 
 cried Townsend, "I'd rather be snug in my bed. I 
 expected that we should have sat up till twelve 
 o'clock, talking, and laughing, and singing." 
 
 "So you may still; what hinders you?" said 
 Archer. "Sing, and we'll join you; and I should be 
 glad those fellows overhead heard us singing. Be- 
 gin, Townsend: 
 
 or else 
 
 "Come, now, all ye social Powers, 
 Spread your influence o'er us" — 
 
 'Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves! 
 Britons never will be slaves." 
 
 Nothing can be more melancholy than forced 
 merriment. In vain they roared in chorus. In vain 
 they tried to appear gay. It would not do. The 
 
 492 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 voices died away, and dropped ofif one by one. They 
 had each provided himself with a great-coat to sleep 
 upon; but now in the dark there was a peevish 
 scrambling contest for the coats, and half the com- 
 pany, in very bad humor, stretched themselves upon 
 the benches for the night. 
 
 There is great pleasure in bearing anything that 
 has the appearance of hardship, as long as there is 
 any glory to be acquired by it; but when people feel 
 themselves foiled, there is no further pleasure in en- 
 durance; and if, in their misfortune, there is any mix- 
 ture of the ridiculous, the motives for heroism are 
 immediately destroyed. Dr. Middleton had prob- 
 ably considered this in the choice he made of his first 
 attack. 
 
 Archer, who had spent the night as a man who 
 had the cares of government upon his shoulders, rose 
 early in the morning, while everybody else was fast 
 asleep. In the liight he had revolved the affair of 
 the trap-door, and a new danger had alarmed him. 
 It was possible that the enemy might descend upon 
 them through the trap-door. The room had been 
 built high to admit a free circulation of air. It was 
 twenty feet high, so that it was in vain to think of 
 reaching to the trap-door. 
 
 As soon as the daylight appeared. Archer rose 
 softly, that he might reconnoitre, and devise some 
 method of guarding against this new danger. Luck- 
 ily there were round holes in the top of the window- 
 
 493 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 shutters, which admitted sufficient light for him to 
 work by. The remains of the soaked feast, wet can- 
 dles, and broken glass spread over the table in the 
 middle of the room looked rather dismal this morn- 
 ing. 
 
 "A pretty set of fellows I have to manage!" said 
 Archer, contemplating the group of sleepers before 
 him. "It is well they have somebody to think for 
 them. Now if I wanted — which, thank goodness, I 
 don't — but if I did want to call a cabinet council to 
 my assistance, whom could I pitch upon? Not this 
 stupid snorer, who is dreaming of gypsies, if he is 
 dreaming of anything," continued Archer, as he 
 looked into Fisher's open mouth. "This next chap is 
 quick enough ; but then he is so fond of having every- 
 thing his own way. And this curl-pated monkey, 
 who is grinning in his sleep, is all tongue and no 
 brains. Here are brains, though nobody would 
 think it, in this lump," said he, looking at a fat, 
 rolled-up, heavy-breathing sleeper; "but what sig- 
 nify brains to such a lazy dog! I might kick him for 
 my football this half-hour before I should get him 
 awake. This lank-jawed harlequin beside him is a 
 handy fellow, to be sure; but then if he has hands, he 
 has no head, and he'd be afraid of his own shadow 
 too, by this light, he is such a coward! And Town- 
 send, why, he has puns in plenty; but when there's 
 any work to be done, he's the worst fellow to be near 
 one in the world — he can do nothing but laugh at his 
 
 494 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 own puns. This poor little fellow, that we hunted 
 into the corner, has more sense than all of them put 
 together; but then he is a Greybeard." 
 
 Thus speculated the chief of a party upon his 
 sleeping friends. And how did it happen that he 
 should be so ambitious to please and govern this set, 
 when, for each individual of which it was composed, 
 he felt such supreme contempt? He had formed 
 them into a party, had given them a name, and he 
 was at their head. If these be not good reasons, none 
 better can be assigned for Archer's conduct. 
 
 "I wish ye could all sleep on," said he; "but I 
 must waken ye, though you will be only in my way. 
 The sound of my hammering must waken them; so I 
 may as well do the thing handsomely, and flatter 
 some of them by pretending to ask their advice." 
 
 Accordingly, he pulled two or three to waken 
 them. "Come, Townsend, waken, my boy! Here's 
 some diversion for you — up! up!" 
 
 "Diversion!" cried Townsend. "I'm your man! 
 I'm up — up to anything." 
 
 So under the name of diversion. Archer set Town- 
 send to work at four o'clock in the morning. They 
 had nails, a few tools, and several spars, still left 
 from the wreck of the playhouse. These, by Archer's 
 directions, they sharpened at one end, and nailed to 
 the ends of several forms. 
 
 All hands were now called to clear away the sup- 
 per things, and to erect these forms perpendicularly 
 
 495 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 under the trap-door; and with the assistance of a few 
 braces a cheval-de-frise was formed, upon which 
 nobody could venture to descend. At the furthest 
 end of the room they likewise formed a penthouse 
 of the tables, under which they proposed to break- 
 fast, secure from the pelting storm, if it should again 
 assail them through the trap-door. They crowded 
 under the penthouse as soon as it was ready, and their 
 admiration of its ingenuity paid the workmen for the 
 job. 
 
 "Lord! I shall like to see the gardener's phiz 
 through the trap-door, when he beholds the spikes 
 under him!" cried Townsend. "Now for break- 
 fast!" 
 
 "Ay, now for breakfast," said Archer, looking at 
 his watch; "past eight o'clock, and my town boys not 
 come! I don't understand this!" 
 
 Archer had expected a constant supply of provi- 
 sions from two boys who lived in the town, who were 
 cousins of his, and who had promised to come every 
 day and put food in at a certain hole in the wall, in 
 which a ventilator usually turned. This ventilator 
 Archer had taken down, and had contrived it so that 
 it could be easily removed and replaced at pleasure; 
 but, upon examination, it was now perceived that the 
 hole had been newly stopped up by an iron back, 
 which it was impossible to penetrate or remove. 
 
 "It never came into my head that anybody would 
 ever have thought of the ventilator but myself!" ex- 
 
 496 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 claimed Archer, in great perplexity. He listened 
 and waited for his cousins; but no cousins came; and 
 at a late hour the company were obliged to breakfast 
 upon the scattered fragments of the last night's feast. 
 That feast had been spread with such imprudent 
 profusion that little now remained to satisfy the hun- 
 gry guests. 
 
 Archer, who well knew the effect which the ap- 
 prehension of a scarcity would have upon his asso- 
 ciates, did everything, that could be done by a bold 
 countenance and reiterated assertions, to persuade 
 them that his cousins would certainly come at last, 
 and that the supplies were only delayed. The delay, 
 however, was alarming. 
 
 Fisher alone heard the manager's calculations and 
 saw the public fears unmoved. Secretly rejoicing in 
 his own wisdom, he walked from window to window, 
 slyly listening for the gypsy's signal. "There it is!" 
 cried he, with more joy sparkling in his eyes than had 
 ever enlightened them before. "Come this way. 
 Archer; but don't tell anybody. Hark! do ye hear 
 those three taps at the window? This is the old 
 woman with twelve buns for me! I'll give you one 
 whole one for yourself, if you will unbar the win- 
 dow for me." 
 
 "Unbar the window!" interrupted Archer; "no, 
 that I won't, for you or the gypsy either; I have head 
 enough to get your buns without that. But stay; 
 there is something of more consequence than your 
 
 497 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 twelve buns. I must think for ye all, I see, regu- 
 larly." 
 
 So he summoned a council and proposed that 
 every one should subscribe, and trust the subscrip- 
 tion to the gypsy, to purchase a fresh supply of pro- 
 visions. Archer laid down a guinea of his own 
 money for his subscription; at which sight all the 
 company clapped their hands, and his popularity 
 rose to a high pitch with their renewed hopes of 
 plenty. Now, having made a list of their wants, they 
 folded the money in the paper, put it into a bag, 
 which Archer tied to a long string, and, having 
 broken the pane of glass behind the round hole in the 
 window-shutter, he let down the bag to the gypsy. 
 She promised to be punctual, and having filled the 
 bag with Fisher's twelve buns, they were drawn up 
 in triumph, and everybody anticipated the pleasure 
 with which they should see the same bag drawn up at 
 dinner-time. The buns were a little squeezed in be- 
 ing drawn through the hole in the window-shutter, 
 but Archer immediately sawed out a piece of the 
 shutter, and broke the corresponding panes in each 
 of the other windows, to prevent suspicion, and to 
 make it appear that they had all been broken to admit 
 air. 
 
 What a pity that so much ingenuity should have 
 been employed to no purpose! 
 
 It may have surprised the intelligent reader that 
 the gypsy was so punctual to her promise to Fisher; 
 
 498 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 but we must recollect that her apparent integrity was 
 only cunning; she was punctual that she might be 
 employed again, that she might be intrusted with 
 the contribution which, she foresaw, must be raised 
 among the famishing garrison. No sooner had she 
 received the money than her end was gained. 
 
 Dinner-time came; it struck three, four, five, six. 
 They listened with hungry ears, but no signal was 
 heard. The morning had been very long, and Archer 
 had in vain tried to dissuade them from devouring 
 the remainder of the provisions before they were 
 sure of a fresh supply. And now, those who had 
 been the most confident were the most impatient of 
 their disappointment. 
 
 Archer, in the division of the food, had attempted, 
 by the most scrupulous exactness, to content the pub- 
 lic, and he was both astonished and provoked to per- 
 ceive that his impartiality was impeached. So dif- 
 ferently do people judge in different situations! He 
 was the first person to accuse his master of injustice, 
 and the least capable of bearing such an imputation 
 upon himself from others. He now experienced 
 some of the joys of power, and the delight of manag- 
 ing unreasonable numbers. 
 
 "Have not I done everything I could to please 
 you? Have not I spent my money to buy you food? 
 Have not I divided the last morsel with you? I 
 have not tasted one mouthful to-day! Did not I set 
 to work for you at sunrise? Did not I lie awake all 
 
 499 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 night for you? Have not I had all the labor and all 
 the anxiety? Look round and see my contrivances, 
 my work, my generosity! And after all, you think 
 me a tyrant, because I want you to have common 
 sense. Is not this bun which I hold in my hand my 
 own? Did not I earn it by my own ingenuity from 
 that selfish dunce" (pointing to Fisher), "who could 
 never have gotten one of -his twelve buns if I had not 
 shown him how? Eleven of them he has eaten since 
 morning for his own share, without offering any one 
 a morsel; but I scorn to eat even what is justly my 
 own, when I see so many hungry creatures longing 
 for it. I was not going to touch this last morsel my- 
 self. I only begged you to keep it till supper-time, 
 when perhaps you'll want it more; and Townsend, 
 who can't bear the slightest thing that crosses his own 
 whims, and who thinks there's nothing in this world 
 to be minded but his own diversion, calls me a tyrant. 
 You all of you promised to obey me. The first thing 
 I ask you to do for your own good, and when, if you 
 had common sense, you must know I can want noth- 
 ing but your good, you rebel against me. Traitors I 
 fools! ungrateful fools!" 
 
 Archer walked up and down, unable to command 
 his emotion, while, for the moment, the discontented 
 multitude was silenced. 
 
 "Here," said he, striking his hand upon the little 
 boy's shoulder, "here's the only one among you who 
 has not uttered one word of reproach or complaint, 
 
 500 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 and he has had but one bit of bread — a bit that I gave 
 him myself this day. Here!" said he, snatching the 
 bun, which nobody had dared to touch, "take it — 
 it's mine — I give it to you, though you are a Grey- 
 beard; you deserve it; eat it, and be an Archer. You 
 shall be my captain; will you?" said he, lifting him 
 up in his arms above the rest. 
 
 "I like you now," said the little boy courageously, 
 "but I love De Grey better; he has always been my 
 friend, and he advised me never to call myself any 
 of those names. Archer or Greybeard; so I won't. 
 Though I am shut in here, I have nothing to do with 
 it. I love Dr. Middleton; he was never unjust to 
 me; and I dare say that he has very good reasons, as 
 De Grey said, for forbidding us to go into that house. 
 Besides, it's his own." 
 
 Instead of admiring the good sense and steadiness 
 of this little lad. Archer suffered Townsend to snatch 
 the untasted bun out of his hands. He flung it at 
 the hole in the window; but it fell back. The Arch- 
 ers scrambled for it, and Fisher ate it. 
 
 Archer saw this, and was sensible that he had not 
 done handsomely in suffering it. A few moments ago 
 he had admired his own generosity, and though he 
 had felt the injustice of others, he had not accused 
 himself of any. He turned away from the little boy, 
 and, sitting down at one end of the table, hid his face 
 in his hands. He continued immovable in this pos- 
 ture for some time. 
 
 501 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "It was an excellent joke!" said Townsend. 
 
 "Pooh!" said Fisher; "what a fool, to think so 
 much about a bun!" 
 
 "Never mind, Mr. Archer, if you are thinking 
 about me," said the little boy, trying gently to pull his 
 hands from his face. 
 
 Archer stooped down and lifted him upon the 
 table ; at which sight the enraged partisans set up a 
 general hiss. 
 
 "He has forsaken us! He deserts his party! He 
 wants to be a Greybeard ! After he has got us all into 
 this scrape, he will leave us!" 
 
 "I am not going to leave you," cried Archer. "No 
 one shall ever accuse me of deserting my party. I'll 
 stick by the Archers, right or wrong, I tell you, to 
 the last moment. But this little fellow — take it as 
 you please; mutiny if you will, and throw me out of 
 the window; call me traitor! coward! Greybeard! — 
 this little fellow is worth you all put together, and 
 I'll stand by him against any one who dares to lay a 
 finger upon him; and the next morsel of food that I 
 see shall be his. Touch him who dares!" 
 
 The commanding air with which Archer spoke 
 and looked, and the belief that the little boy deserved 
 his protection, silenced the crowd. But the storm 
 was only hushed. 
 
 No sound of merriment was now to be heard — 
 no battledore and shuttlecock, no ball, no marbles. 
 Some sat in a corner, whispering their wishes that 
 
 502 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 Archer would unbar the doors, and give up. Others, 
 stretching their arms, and gaping as they sauntered 
 up and down the room, wished for air, or food, or 
 water. Fisher and his nine, who had such firm de- 
 pendence upon the gypsy, now gave themselves up to 
 utter despair. It was eight o'clock, growing darker 
 and darker every minute, and no candles, no light, 
 could they have. The prospect of another long dark 
 night made them still more discontented. 
 
 Townsend at the head of the yawners, and Fisher 
 at the head of the hungry malcontents, gathered 
 round Archer and the few yet unconquered spirits, 
 demanding "how long he meant to keep them in this 
 dark dungeon? and whether he expected that they 
 should starve themselves to death for his sake?" 
 
 The idea of giving up was more intolerable to 
 Archer than all the rest. He saw that the majority, 
 his own convincing argument, was against him. He 
 was therefore obliged to condescend to the arts of 
 persuasion. He flattered some with hopes of food 
 from the town boys. Some he reminded of their 
 promises; others he praised for former prowess; and 
 others he shamed by the repetition of their high 
 vaunts in the beginning of the business. 
 
 It was at length resolved that at all events they 
 would hold out. With this determination they 
 stretched themselves again to sleep, for the second 
 night, in weak and weary obstinacy. 
 
 Archer slept longer and more soundly than usual 
 
 S03 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 the next morning; and when he awoke, he found his 
 hands tied behind him! Three or four boys had just 
 got hold of his feet, which they pressed down, while 
 the trembling hands of Fisher were fastening the 
 cord round them. 
 
 With all the force which rage could inspire, 
 Archer struggled and roared to "his Archers!" — his 
 friends, his party — for help against the traitors. But 
 all kept aloof. Townsend, in particular, stood laugh- 
 ing and looking on. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, Archer, but really you look 
 so droll. All alive and kicking! Don't be angry. 
 I'm so weak, I cannot help laughing to-day." 
 
 The packthread cracked. 
 
 "His hands are free! He's loose!" cried the least 
 of the boys, and ran away, while Archer leaped up, 
 and, seizing hold of Fisher with a powerful grasp, 
 sternly demanded "what he meant by this?" 
 
 "Ask my party," said Fisher, terrified; "they set 
 me on; ask my party." 
 
 "Your party!" cried Archer, with a look of in- 
 effable contempt; "you reptile! — your party! Can 
 such a thing as you have a party?" 
 
 "To be sure," said Fisher, settling his collar, 
 which Archer in his surprise had let go; "to be sure 
 — why not? Any man who chooses it may have a 
 party as well as yourself, I suppose. I have my nine 
 Fishermen." 
 
 At these words, spoken with much swollen impor- 
 
 504 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 tance, Archer, in spite of his vexation, could not help 
 laughing. 
 
 "Fishermen!" cried he, "Fishermen!" 
 
 "And why not Fishermen as well as Archers?" 
 cried they. "One party is just as good as another; it 
 is only a question which can get the upper hand ; and 
 we had your hands tied just now." 
 
 "That's right, Townsend," said Archer; "laugh 
 on, my boy. Friend or foe, it's all the same to you. 
 I know how to value your friendship now. You are 
 a mighty good fellow when the sun shines ; but let a 
 storm come, and how you slink away!" 
 
 At this instant Archer felt the difference between 
 a good companion and a good friend, a difference 
 which some people do not discover till late in life. 
 
 "Have I no friend? no real friend among you all? 
 And could ye stand by and see my hands tied behind 
 me like a thief's? What signifies such a party? All 
 mute." 
 
 "We want something to eat," answered the Fish- 
 ermen. "What signifies such a party, indeed, and 
 such a manager, who can do nothing for one?" 
 
 "And have I done nothing?" 
 
 "Don't let's hear any more prosing," said Fisher; 
 "we are too many for you. Fve advised my party, if 
 they've a mind not to be starved, to give you up for 
 the ringleader, as you were; and Dr. Middleton will 
 let us all off, I dare say." 
 
 So depending upon the sullen silence of the as- 
 
 5^S 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 sembly, he again approached Archer with a cord. A 
 cry of "No! no! no! don't tie him," was feebly raised. 
 
 Archer stood still; but the moment Fisher 
 touched him he knocked him down to the ground, 
 and turning to the rest with eyes sparkling with in- 
 dignation, "Archers!" cried he. A voice at this in- 
 stant was heard at the door; it was De Grey's voice. 
 
 "I have a large basket of provisions for your 
 breakfast." 
 
 A general shout of joy was sent forth by the 
 voracious public. 
 
 "Breakfast! provisions! a large basket. De Grey 
 forever! huzza!" 
 
 De Grey promised upon his honor that if they 
 would unbar the door nobody should come in with 
 him, and no advantage should be taken of them. This 
 promise was enough even for Archer. 
 
 "I will let him in," said he, "myself; for I'm sure 
 he'll never break his word." He pulled away the 
 bar; the door opened; and having bargained for the 
 liberty of Melsom, the little boy who had been shut 
 in by mistake, De Grey entered with his basket of 
 provisions, when he locked and barred the door in- 
 stantly. 
 
 Joy and gratitude sparkled in every face when he 
 unpacked his basket, and spread the table with a 
 plentiful breakfast. A hundred questions were asked 
 him at once. 
 
 "Eat first," said he, "and we will talk afterward." 
 
 506 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 This business was quickly despatched by those who 
 had not tasted food for a long while. Their curios- 
 ity increased as their hunger diminished. 
 
 "Who sent us breakfast? Does Dr. Middleton 
 know?" were questions reiterated from every mouth. 
 
 "He does know," answered De Grey; "and the 
 first thing I have to tell you is, that I am your fellow- 
 prisoner. I am to stay here till you give up. This 
 was the only condition on which Dr. Middleton 
 would allow me to bring you food, and he will allow 
 no more." 
 
 Every one looked at the empty basket. But 
 Archer, in whom half-vanquished party-spirit re- 
 vived with the strength he had got from his break- 
 fast, broke into exclamations in praise of De Grey's 
 magnanimity, as he now imagined that De Grey was 
 become one of themselves. 
 
 "And you will join us, will you? — that's a noble 
 fellow!" 
 
 "No," answered De Grey, calmly; "but I hope 
 to persuade, or rather to convince you that you ought 
 to join me." 
 
 "You would have found it no hard task to have 
 persuaded or convinced us, whichever you pleased," 
 said Townsend, "if you had appealed to Archers fast- 
 ing; but Archers feasting are quite other animals. 
 Even Caesar himself, after breakfast, is quite another 
 thing!" added he, pointing to Archer. 
 
 "You may speak for yourself, Mr. Townsend," 
 
 507 
 
 -^ ' Vol. 15—17 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 replied the insulted hero, "but not for me, or for 
 Archers in general, if you please. We unbarred the 
 door upon the faith of De Grey's promise — that was 
 not giving up. And it would have been just as diffi- 
 cult, I promise you, to persuade or convince me, 
 either, that I should give up against my honor, be- 
 fore breakfast as after," 
 
 This spirited speech was applauded by many, who 
 had now forgotten the feelings of famine. Not so 
 Fisher, whose memory was upon this occasion very 
 distinct. 
 
 "What nonsense — " and the orator paused for a 
 synonymous expression, but none was at hand. "What 
 nonsense and — nonsense is here! Why, don't you 
 remember that dinner-time and supper-time and 
 breakfast-time will come again? So what signifies 
 mouthing about persuading and convincing? We 
 will not go through again what we did yesterday! 
 Honor me no honor — I don't understand it. I'd 
 rather be flogged at once, as I have been many's the 
 good time for a less thing. I say, we'd better all be 
 flogged at once, which must be the end of it sooner 
 or later, than wait here to be without dinner, break- 
 fast, and supper, all only because Mr. Archer won't 
 give up because of his honor and nonsense!" 
 
 Many prudent faces among the Fishermen 
 seemed to deliberate at the close of this oration, in 
 which the arguments were brought so "home to each 
 man's business and bosom." 
 
 508 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 "But," said De Grey, "when we yield, I hope it 
 will not be merely to get our dinner, gentlemen. 
 When we yield, Archer — " 
 
 "Don't address yourself to me," interrupted 
 Archer, struggling with his pride; "you have no 
 further occasion to try to win me. I have no power, 
 no party, you see! And now I find that I have no 
 friends, I don't care what becomes of myself. I sup- 
 pose I'm to be given up as ringleader. Here's this 
 Fisher, and a party of his Fishermen, were going to 
 tie me hand and foot, if I had not knocked him down, 
 just as you came to the door, De Grey; and now per- 
 haps you will join Fisher's party against me." 
 
 De Grey was going to assure him that he had no 
 intention of joining any party, when a sudden change 
 appeared in Archer's countenance. 
 
 "Silence!" cried Archer in an imperious tone, 
 and there was silence. Some one was heard to whis- 
 tle the beginning of a tune, that was perfectly new 
 to everybody present except to Archer, who imme- 
 diately whistled the conclusion. "There!" cried he, 
 looking at De Grey with triumph; "that's a method 
 of holding secret correspondence, while a prisoner, 
 which I learned from 'Richard Coeur de Lion.' I 
 know how to make use of everything. Holla! friend! 
 are you there at last?" cried he, going to the ven- 
 tilator. 
 
 "Yes, but we are barred out here." 
 
 "Round to the window, then, and fill our bag. 
 
 509 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 We'll let it down, my lad, in a trice; bar me out who 
 can!" 
 
 Archer let down the bag with all the expedition 
 of joy, and it was filled with all the expedition of fear. 
 
 "Pull away! make haste, for Heaven's sake!" said 
 the voice from without; "the gardener will come 
 from dinner else, and we shall be caught. He 
 mounted guard all yesterday at the ventilator; and 
 though I watched and watched, till it was darker than 
 pitch, I could not get near you. I don't know what 
 has taken him out of the way now. Make haste, pull 
 away!" The heavy bag was soon pulled up. 
 
 "Have you any more?" said Archer. 
 
 "Yes, plenty. Let down quick! I've got the 
 tailor's bag full, which is three times as large as 
 yours; and I've changed clothes with the tailor's boy; 
 so nobody took notice of me as I came down the 
 street." 
 
 "There's my own cousin!" exclaimed Archer — 
 "there's a noble fellow! there's my own cousin, I 
 acknowledge. Fill the bag, then." 
 
 Several times the bag descended and ascended; 
 and at every unlading of the crane, fresh acclama- 
 tions were heard. 
 
 "I have no more!" at length the boy with the 
 tailor's bag cried. 
 
 "Off with you, then; we've enough, and thank 
 you." 
 
 A delightful review was now made of their treas- 
 
 510 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 ure. Busy hands arranged and sorted the hetero- 
 geneous mass. Archer, in the height of his glory, 
 looked on, the acknowledged master of the whole. 
 Townsend, who, in prosperity as in adversity, saw 
 and enjoyed the comic foibles of his friends, pushed 
 De Grey, who was looking on with a more good-nat- 
 ured and more thoughtful air. 
 
 "Friend," said he, "you look like a great philoso- 
 pher, and Archer like a great hero." 
 
 "And you, Townsend," said Archer, "may look 
 like a wit, if you will ; but you will never be a hero." 
 
 "No, no," replied Townsend ; "wits are never he- 
 roes, because they are wits. You are out of your 
 wits, and therefore may set up for a hero." 
 
 "Laugh, and welcome. I'm not a tyrant. I don't 
 want to restrain anybody's wit; but I cannot say I 
 admire puns." 
 
 "Nor I either," said the time-serving Fisher, 
 sidling up to the Manager, and picking the ice ofif a 
 piece of plum-cake — "nor I either; I hate puns. I 
 can never understand Townsend's puns. Besides, 
 anybody can make puns; and one doesn't want wit 
 either at all times; for instance, when one is going 
 to settle about dinner, or business of consequence. 
 Bless us all, Archer!" continued he, with sudden fa- 
 miliarity; "what a sight of good things are here! 
 I'm sure we are much obliged to you and your 
 cousin. I never thought he'd have come. Why, 
 now we can hold out as long as you please. Let us 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 see," said he, dividing the provisions upon the table, 
 "we can hold out to-day, and all to-morrow, and part 
 of next day, may be. Why, now we may defy the 
 doctor and the Greybeards. The doctor will surely 
 give up to us; for, you see, he knows nothing of all 
 this, and he'll think we are starving all this while; 
 and he'd be afraid, you see, to let us starve quite, 
 in reality, for three whole days, because of what 
 would be said in the town. My aunt Barbara, for 
 one, would be at him long before that time was out; 
 and besides, you know, in that case, he'd be hanged 
 for murder, which is quite another thing, in law, 
 from a Barring out, you know." 
 
 Archer had not given to this harangue all the at- 
 tention which it deserved; for his eye was fixed upon 
 De Grey. 
 
 "What is De Grey thinking of?" he asked, im- 
 patiently. 
 
 "I am thinking," said De Grey, "that Dr. Mid- 
 dleton must believe that I have betrayed his confi- 
 dence in me. The gardener was ordered away from 
 his watch-post for one half-hour when I was ad- 
 mitted. This half-hour the gardener has made 
 nearly an hour. I never would have come among 
 you if I had foreseen all this. Dr. Middleton trusted 
 me, and now he will repent of his confidence in me." 
 
 "De Grey!" cried Archer, with energy, "he shall 
 not repent of his confidence in you, nor shall you re- 
 pent of coming among us. You shall find that we 
 
 512 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 have some honor as well as yourself ; and I will take 
 care of your honor as if it were my own!" 
 
 "Heighday!" interrupted Townsend; "are heroes 
 allowed to change sides, pray? And does the chief 
 of the Archers stand talking sentiment to the chief of 
 the Greybeards? In the middle of his own party, 
 too!" 
 
 "Party!" repeated Archer, disdainfully; "I have 
 done with parties! I see what parties are made of! 
 I have felt the want of a friend, and I am determined 
 to make one if I can." 
 
 "That you may do," said De Grey, stretching out 
 his hand. 
 
 "Unbar the doors! unbar the windows!" ex- 
 claimed Archer. "Away with all these things! I 
 give up for De Grey's sake. He shall not lose his 
 credit on my account." 
 
 "No," said De Grey, "you shall not give up for 
 my sake." 
 
 "Well, then, I'll give up to do what is honorable," 
 said Archer. 
 
 "Why not to do what is reasonable?" said De 
 Grey. 
 
 "Reasonable! Oh, the first thing that a man of 
 spirit should think of is what is honorable." 
 
 "But how will he find out what is honorable, un- 
 less he can reason?" replied De Grey. 
 
 "Oh," said Archer, "his own feelings always tell 
 him what is honorable." 
 
 S^3 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "Have not your feelings," asked De Grey, 
 "changed within these few hours?" 
 
 "Yes, with circumstances," replied Archer; "but 
 right or wrong, as long as I think it honorable to do 
 so and so, I'm satisfied." 
 
 "But you cannot think anything honorable, or the 
 contrary," observed De Grey, "without reasoning; 
 and as to what you call feeling, it's only a quick sort 
 of reasoning." 
 
 "The quicker the better," said Archer. 
 
 "Perhaps not," said De Grey. "We are apt to 
 reason best when we are not in quite so great a 
 hurry." 
 
 "But," said Archer, "we have not always time 
 enough to reason at first." 
 
 "You must, however, acknowledge," replied De 
 Grey, smiling, "that no man but a fool thinks it hon- 
 orable to be in the wrong at last. Is it not, therefore, 
 best to begin by reasoning to find out the right at 
 first?" 
 
 "To be sure," said Archer. 
 
 "And did you reason with yourself at first? And 
 did you find out that it was right to bar Dr. Middle- 
 ton out of his own schoolroom, because he desired you 
 not to go into one of his own houses?" 
 
 "No," replied Archer; "but I should never have 
 thought of heading a Barring out, if he had not 
 shown partiality; and if you had flown into a passion 
 with me openly at once for pulling down your seen- 
 
 5H 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 ery, which would have been quite natural, and 
 not have gone slyly and forbid us the house out 
 of revenge, there would have been none of this 
 work." 
 
 "Why," said De Grey, "should you suspect me of 
 such a mean action, when you have never seen or 
 known me do anything mean, and when in this in- 
 stance you have no proofs?" 
 
 "Will you give me your word and honor now, De 
 Grey, before everybody here, that you did not do 
 what I suspected?" 
 
 "I do assure you, upon my honor, I never, directly 
 or indirectly, spoke to Dr. Middleton about the play- 
 house." 
 
 "Then," said Archer, "I'm as glad as if I had 
 found a thousand pounds! Now you are my friend 
 indeed." 
 
 "And Dr. Middleton — why should you suspect 
 him without reason any more than me?" 
 
 "As to that," said Archer, "he is your friend, and 
 you are right to defend him; and I won't say an- 
 other word against him. Will that satisfy you?" 
 
 "Not quite." 
 
 "Not quite! Then, indeed, you are unreason- 
 able!" 
 
 "No," replied De Grey; "for I don't wish you to 
 yield out of friendship to me, any more than to 
 honor. If you yield to reason, you will be governed 
 by reason another time." 
 
 515 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "Well; but then don't triumph over me, because 
 you have the best side of the argument." 
 
 "Not I! How can I?" said De Grey; "for now 
 you are on the best side as well as myself, are not 
 you? So we may triumph together." 
 
 "You are a good friend!" said Archer; and with 
 great eagerness he pulled down the fortifications, 
 while every hand assisted. The room, was restored 
 to order in a few minutes, the shutters were thrown 
 open, the cheerful light let in. The windows were 
 thrown up, and the first feeling of the fresh air was 
 delightful. The green playground appeared before 
 them, and the hopes of exercise and liberty bright- 
 ened the countenances of these voluntary prisoners. 
 
 But, alas! they were not yet at liberty! The idea 
 of Dr. Middleton, and the dread of his vengeance, 
 smote their hearts! When the rebels had sent an 
 ambassador with their surrender, they stood in pale 
 and silent suspense, waiting for their doom. 
 
 "Ah!" said Fisher, looking up at the broken panes 
 in the windows, "the doctor will think the most of 
 that; he'll never forgive us for that." 
 
 "Hush! here he comes!" 
 
 His steady step was heard approaching nearer and 
 nearer. Archer threw open the door, and Dr. Mid- 
 dleton entered. Fisher instantly fell on his knees. 
 
 "It is no delight to me to see people on their 
 knees. Stand up, Mr. Fisher. I hope you are all 
 conscious that you have done wrong?" 
 
 5'6 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 "Sir," said Archer, "they are conscious that they 
 have done wrong, and so am I. I am the ringleader. 
 Punish me as you think proper. I submit. Your 
 punishment, your vengeance, ought to fall on me 
 alone!" 
 
 "Sir," said Dr. Middleton calmly, "I perceive 
 that, whatever else you may have learned in the course 
 of your education, you have not been taught the mean- 
 ing of the word punishment. Punishment and ven- 
 geance do not with us mean the same thing. Punish- 
 ment is pain given, with the reasonable hope of 
 preventing those on whom it is inflicted from doing, 
 in future, what will hurt themselves or others. Ven- 
 geance never looks to the future, but is the expres- 
 sion of anger for an injury that is past. I feel no 
 anger; you have done me no injury." 
 
 Here many of the little boys looked timidly up to 
 the windows. 
 
 "Yes; I see that you have broken my windows; 
 that is a small evil." 
 
 "Oh, sir! how good! how merciful!" exclaimed 
 those who had been most panic-struck. "He forgives 
 us!" 
 
 "Stay," resumed Dr. Middleton; "I cannot for- 
 give you. I shall never revenge, but it is my duty 
 to punish. You have rebelled against the just au- 
 thority which is necessary to conduct and govern you 
 while you have not sufficient reason to govern and 
 conduct yourselves. Without obedience to your 
 
 517 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 master, as children, you cannot be educated. With- 
 out obedience to the laws," added he, turning to 
 Archer, "as men, you cannot be suffered in society. 
 You, sir, think yourself a man, I observe; and you 
 think it the part of a man not to submit to the will of 
 another. I have no pleasure in making others, 
 whether men or children, submit to my will ; but my 
 reason and experience are superior to yours. Your 
 parents, at least, think so, or they would not have 
 intrusted me with the care of your education. As 
 long as they do intrust you to my care, and as long as 
 I have any hopes of making you wiser and better by 
 punishment, I shall steadily inflict it, whenever I 
 judge it to be necessary; and I judge it to be neces- 
 sary now. This is a long sermon, Mr. Archer, not 
 preached to show my own eloquence, but to convince 
 your understanding. Now as to your punishment!" 
 
 "Name it, sir," said Archer; "whatever it is, I 
 will cheerfully submit to it." 
 
 "Name it yourself," said Dr. Middleton; "and 
 show me that you now understand the nature of pun- 
 ishment." 
 
 Archer, proud to be treated like a reasonable 
 creature, and sorry that he had behaved like a foolish 
 schoolboy, was silent for some time, but at length 
 replied "that he would rather not name his own pun- 
 ishment." He repeated, however, that he "trusted 
 he should bear it well, whatever it might be." 
 
 *'I shallj theUj" said Dr. Middleton, "deprive you, 
 
 518 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 for two months, of pocket-money, as you have had too 
 much, and have made a bad use of it." 
 
 "Sir," said Archer, "I brought five guineas with 
 me to school. This guinea is all that I have 
 left." 
 
 Dr. Middleton received the guinea which Archer 
 offered him, with a look of approbation, and told 
 him that it should be applied to the repairs of the 
 schoolroom. The rest of the boys waited in silence 
 for the doctor's sentence against them, but not with 
 those looks of abject fear with which boys usually 
 expect the sentence of a schoolmaster. 
 
 "You shall return from the playground, all of 
 you," said Dr. Middleton, "one quarter of an hour 
 sooner, for two months to come, than the rest of your 
 companions. A bell shall ring at the appointed 
 time. I give you an opportunity of recovering my 
 confidence by your punctuality." 
 
 "Oh, sir, we will come the instant, the very in- 
 stant, the bell rings ; you shall have confidence in us," 
 cried they, eagerly. 
 
 "I deserve your confidence, I hope," said Dr. 
 Middleton; "for it is my first wish to make you 
 all happy. You do not know the pain that it has 
 cost me to deprive you of food for so many 
 hours." 
 
 Here the boys, with one accord, ran to the place 
 where they had deposited their last supplies. Archer 
 delivered thern up to the doctor, proud to show that 
 
 5^9 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 they were not reduced to obedience merely by neces- 
 sity. 
 
 "The reason," resumed Dr. Middleton, having 
 now returned to the usual benignity of his manner — 
 "the reason why I desired that none of you should 
 go to that building," pointing out of the window, 
 "was this : I had been informed that a gang of gypsies 
 had slept there the night before I spoke to you, one 
 of whom was dangerously ill of a putrid fever. I did 
 not choose to mention my reason to you at that time, 
 for fear of alarming you or your friends. I have had 
 the place cleaned, and you may return to it when you 
 please. The gypsies were yesterday removed from 
 the town." 
 
 "De Grey, you were in the right," whispered 
 Archer, "and it was I that was unjust." 
 
 "The old woman," continued the doctor, "whom 
 you employed to buy food has escaped the fever, but 
 she has not escaped a jail, whither she was sent 
 yesterday, for having defrauded you of your 
 money." 
 
 "Mr. Fisher," said Dr. Middleton, "as to you, I 
 shall not punish you. I have no hope of making you 
 either wiser or better. Do you know this paper?" 
 The paper appeared to be a bill for candles and a 
 tinder-box. 
 
 "I desired him to buy those things, sir," said 
 Archer, coloring. 
 
 "And did you desire him not to pay for them?" 
 
 520 
 
The Barring Out, or Party Spirit 
 
 "No," said Archer; "he had half a crown on pur- 
 pose to pay for them." 
 
 "I know he had; but he chose to apply it to his 
 own private use, and gave it to the gypsy to buy 
 twelve buns for his own eating. To obtain credit for 
 the tinder-box and candles, he made use of this name," 
 said he, turning to the other side of the bill, and 
 pointing to De Grey's name, which was written at the 
 end of a copy of one of De Grey's exercises. 
 
 "I assure you, sir — " cried Archer. 
 
 "You need not assure me, sir," said Dr. Middle- 
 ton; "I cannot suspect a boy of your temper of hav- 
 ing any part in so base an action. When the people 
 in the shop refused to let Mr. Fisher have the things 
 without paying for them, he made use of De Grey's 
 name, who was known there. Suspecting some mis- 
 chief, however, from the purchase of the tinder-box, 
 the shopkeeper informed me of the circumstance. 
 Nothing in this whole business gave me half so much 
 pain as I felt for a moment, when I suspected that 
 De Grey was concerned in it." 
 
 A loud cry, in which Archer's voice was heard 
 most distinctly, declared De Grey's innocence. 
 
 Dr. Middleton looked round at their eager, hon- 
 est faces with benevolent approbation. "Archer," 
 said he, taking him by the hand, "I am heartily glad 
 to see that you have got the better of your party 
 spirit. I wish you may keep such a friend as you 
 have now beside you : one such friend is worth two 
 
 521 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 such parties. As for you, Mr. Fisher, depart; you 
 must never return hither again." 
 
 In vain he solicited Archer and De Grey to inter- 
 cede for him. Everybod}?^ turned away with con- 
 tempt; and he sneaked out, whimpering in a doleful 
 voice, "What shall I say to my aunt Barbara?" 
 
 522 
 
MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 "^/T ITHIN the next week or two several important 
 ^^ events had happened to one and another of 
 our St. Ambrose friends. Tom had introduced Blake 
 to Hardy, after some demur on the part of the latter. 
 Blake was his senior by a term; might have called 
 on him any time these three years; why should he 
 want to make his acquaintance now? But when Tom 
 explained to him that it would be a kind thing to let 
 Blake come and coach up history with him, for that 
 unless he took a high degree in the coming examina- 
 tion, he would have to leave the college, and prob- 
 ably be ruined for life. Hardy at once consented. 
 
 Tom did not venture to inquire for a day or two 
 how the two hit it off together. When he began 
 cautiously to approach the subject, he was glad to 
 find that Hardy liked Blake. "He is a gentleman, 
 and very able," he said; "it is curious to see how 
 quickly he is overhauling Grey, and yet how Grey 
 takes to him. He has never looked scared at him (as 
 he still does at you, by the way) since the first night 
 they met. Blake has the talent of setting people at 
 their ease without saying anything. I shouldn't won- 
 der if Grey thinks he has sound Church notions. It's 
 a dangerous talent, and may make a man very false 
 if he doesn't take care." Tom asked if Blake would 
 
 S^3 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 be up in his history in time. Hardy thought he 
 might perhaps, but he had great lee-way to make up. 
 If capacity for taking in cram would do it, he would 
 be all right. He had been well crammed in his 
 science, and had put him (Hardy) up to many 
 dodges which might be useful in the schools, and 
 which you couldn't get without a private tutor. 
 
 Then Tom's first wine had gone off most success- 
 fully. Jervis and Miller had come early and stayed 
 late, and said all that was handsome of the port, so 
 that he was already a social hero with the boating set. 
 Drysdale, of course, had been there, rattling away to 
 everybody in his reckless fashion, and setting a good 
 example to the two or three fast men whom Tom 
 knew well enough to ask, and who consequently be- 
 haved pretty well, and gave themselves no airs, 
 though as they went away together they grumbled 
 slightly that Brown didn't give claret. The rest of 
 the men had shaken together well, and seemed to en- 
 joy themselves. The only drawback to Tom had 
 been that neither Hardy nor Grey had appeared. 
 They excused themselves afterward on the score of 
 reading, but Tom felt aggrieved in Hardy's case; he 
 knew that it was only an excuse. 
 
 Then the training had begun seriously. Miller 
 had come up specially for the first fortnight, to get 
 them well in hand, as he said. After they were once 
 fairly started, he would have to go down till just be- 
 fore the races; but he thought he might rely on the 
 
 5^4 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 Captain to keep them up to their work in the inter- 
 val. 
 
 So Miller, the coxswain, took to drawing the bow 
 up to the ear at once. At the very beginning of the 
 term, five or six weeks before the races, the St. Am- 
 brose boat was to be seen every other day at Abing- 
 don; and early dinners, limitation of liquids and to- 
 bacco, and abstinence from late supper parties, pas- 
 try, ice, and all manner of trash, likely in Miller's 
 opinion to injure nerve or wind, were hanging over 
 the crew, and already, in fact, to some extent en- 
 forced. The Captain shrugged his shoulders, sub- 
 mitted to it all himself, and worked away with im- 
 perturbable temper; merely hinting to Miller, in 
 private, that he was going too fast, and that it would 
 be impossible to keep it up. Diogenes highly ap- 
 proved; he would have become the willing slave of 
 any tyranny which should insist that every adult male 
 subject should pull twenty miles, and never imbibe 
 more than a quart of liquid, in the twenty-four hours. 
 Tom was inclined to like it, as it helped him to real- 
 ize the proud fact that he was actually in the boat. 
 The rest of the crew were in all stages of mutiny, and 
 were only kept from breaking out by their fondness 
 for the Captain and the knowledge that Miller was 
 going in a few days. As it was, Blake was the only 
 one who openly rebelled. Once or twice he stayed 
 away. Miller swore and grumbled, the Captain 
 shook his head, and the crew in general rejoiced. 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 It is to one of these occasions to which we must 
 now turn. If the usual casual voyager of novels had 
 been standing on Sandford lock at about four, on the 
 afternoon of April — th, 184-, he might have beheld 
 the St. Ambrose eight-oar coming with a steady 
 swing up the last reach. If such voyager were in the 
 least conversant with the glorious mystery of rowing, 
 he would have felt his heart warm at the magnificent 
 sweep and life of the stroke, and would, on the whole, 
 have been pleased with the performance of the crew 
 generally, considered as a college crew in the early 
 stages of training. They came "hard all" up to the 
 pool below the lock, the coxswain standing in the 
 stern with a tiller-rope in each hand, and then 
 shipped oars; the lock-gates opened, and the boat en- 
 tered, and in another minute or two was moored to 
 the bank above the lock, and the crew strolled into 
 the little inn which stands by the lock, and, after stop- 
 ping in the bar to lay hands on several pewters full 
 of porter, passed through the house into the quoit and 
 skittle grounds behind. These were already well 
 filled with men of other crews, playing in groups or 
 looking on at the players. One of these groups, as 
 they passed, seized on the Captain, and Miller 
 stopped with him ; the rest of the St. Ambrose men, 
 in no humor for skittles, quoits, or any relaxation ex- 
 cept rest and grumblino;, took possession of the first 
 table and seats which offered, and came to anchor. 
 
 Then followed a moment of intense enjoyment, of 
 
 526 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 a sort only appreciable by those who have had a 
 twelve miles' training pull with a coxswain as sharp 
 as a needle, and in an awful temper. 
 
 "Ah," said Drysdale, taking the pewter down 
 from his lips, with a sigh, and handing it to Tom, 
 who sat next him, "by Jove, I feel better." 
 
 "It's almost worth while pulling 'hard all' from 
 Abingdon to get such a thirst," said another of the 
 crew. 
 
 "I'll tell you what, though," said Drysdale, "to- 
 day's the last day you'll catch me in this blessed 
 boat." 
 
 Tom had just finished his draught, but did not 
 reply; it was by no means the first time that Drysdale 
 had announced this resolve. The rest were silent 
 also. 
 
 "It's bad enough to have to pull your heart out, 
 without getting abused all the way into the bargain. 
 There Miller stands in the stern — and a devilish easy 
 thing it is to stand there and walk into us — I can see 
 him chuckle as he comes to you and me, Brown — 
 'Now, 2, well forward;' '3, don't jerk;' 'Now, 2, 
 throw your weight on the oar; come, now, you can 
 get another pound on.' I hang on like grim Death — 
 then its 'Time, 2 ; now, — ' " 
 
 "Well, it's a great compliment," broke in Tom, 
 with a laugh: "he thinks he can make something of 
 us." 
 
 "He'll make nothing of us first, I think," said 
 
 527 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Drysdale. "I've lost eight pounds in a fortnight." 
 The Captain ought to put me in every place in the 
 boat, in turn, to make it watertight. I've larded the 
 bottom boards under my seat so that not a drop of 
 water will ever come through again." 
 
 "A very good thing for you, old fellow," said 
 Diogenes; "you look ten times better than you did at 
 the beginning of term." 
 
 "I don't know what you call a good thing, you old 
 fluter. I'm obliged to sit on my hip-bones — I can't 
 go to a lecture — all the tutors think I'm poking fun 
 at them, and put me on directly. I haven't been able 
 to go to lecture these ten days." 
 
 "So fond of lecture as he is, too, poor fellow," put 
 in Tom. 
 
 "But they've discommonsed me for staying 
 away," said Drysdale; "not that I care much for that, 
 though." 
 
 "Well, Miller goes down to-morrow morning — I 
 heard him say so," said another. 
 
 "Then we'll memorialize the Captain and get out 
 of these Abingdon pulls. Life isn't worth having at 
 this rate." 
 
 "No other boat has been below Sandford yet." 
 
 And so they sat on and plotted, and soon most of 
 the other crews started. And then they took their 
 turn at skittles, and almost forgot their grievances, 
 which must be explained to those who don't know 
 the river at Oxford. 
 
 528 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 The river runs along the south of the city, getting 
 into the university quarter after it passes under the 
 bridge connecting 'Berks and Oxfordshire, over 
 which is the road to Abingdon. Just below this 
 bridge are the boat-builders' establishments on both 
 sides of the river, and then on the Oxfordshire side is 
 Christchurch meadow, opposite which is moored the 
 university barge. Here is the goal of all university 
 races; and the racecourse stretches away down the 
 river for a mile and a half, and a little below the 
 starting-place of the races is Iffley Lock. The next 
 lock below Iffley is the Sandford Lock (where we 
 left our boat's crew playing at skittles), which is 
 about a mile and a half below Iffley. Below Sand- 
 ford there is no lock till you get to Abingdon, a dis- 
 tance of six miles and more by the river. Now, inas- 
 much as the longest distance to be rowed in the races 
 is only the upper mile and a half from Iffley to the 
 university barge, of course all the crews think them- 
 selves very hardly treated if they are taken further 
 than to Sandford. Pulling "hard all" from Sand- 
 ford to Iffley, and then again from Iffley over the 
 regular course, ought to be enough in all conscience. 
 So chorus the crews; and most captains and coxswains 
 give in. But here and there some enemy of his kind 
 — some uncomfortable, worriting, energizing mortal, 
 like Miller — gets command of a boat, and then the 
 unfortunate crew are dragged, bemoaning their fate, 
 down below Sandford, where no friendly lock inter- 
 
 529 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 venes to break the long, steady swing of the training 
 pull every two miles, and the result for the time is 
 blisters and mutiny. I am bound to add that it gen- 
 erally tells, and that the crew which has been under- 
 going that peine forte et dure is very apt to get the 
 change out of it on the nights of hard races. 
 
 So the St. Ambrose crew played out their skittles, 
 and settled to appeal to the Captain in a body the next 
 day, after Miller's departure; and then, being sum- 
 moned to the boat, they took to the water again, and 
 paddled steadily up home, arriving just in time for 
 hall for those who liked to hurry. Drysdale never 
 liked hurrying himself; besides, he could not dine in 
 hall, as he was discommonsed for persistent absence 
 from lectures, and neglect to go to the Dean when 
 sent for to explain his absence. 
 
 "I say. Brown, hang hall," he said to Tom, who 
 was throwing on his things; "come and dine with me 
 at the Mitre. I'll give you a bottle of hock; it's very 
 good there." 
 
 "Hock's about the worst thing you can drink in 
 training," said Miller. "Isn't it, Jervis?" 
 
 "It's no good, certainly," said the Captain, as he 
 put on his cap and gown; "come along. Miller." 
 
 "There, you hear?" said Miller. "You can drink 
 a glass of sound sherry, if you want wine;" and he 
 followed the Captain. 
 
 Drysdale performed a defiant pantomime after 
 the retiring coxswain, and then easily carried his 
 
 530 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 point with Tom, except as to the hock. So they 
 walked up to the Mitre together, where Drysdale or- 
 dered dinner and a bottle of hock in the coffee-room. 
 
 ''Don't order hock, Drysdale ; I shan't drink any." 
 
 "Then I shall have it all to my own check. If you 
 begin making a slave of yourself to that Miller, he'll 
 very soon cut you down to a glass of water a day, 
 with a pinch of rhubarb in it, and make you drink 
 that standing on your head." 
 
 "Gammon; but I don't think it's fair on the rest 
 of the crew not to train as well as one can." 
 
 "You don't suppose drinking a pint of hock to- 
 night will make you pull any the worse this day six 
 weeks, when the races begin, do you?" 
 
 "No; but—" 
 
 "Hullo! look here," said Drysdale, who was in- 
 specting a printed bill pinned up on the wall of the 
 coffee-room; "Wombwell's menagerie is in the town, 
 somewhere down by Worcester. What fun! We'll 
 go there after dinner." 
 
 The food arrived, with Drysdale's hock, which he 
 seemed to enjoy all the more from the assurance 
 which every glass gave him that he was defying the 
 coxswain, and doing just the thing he would most 
 dislike. So he drank away, and facetiously specu- 
 lated how he could be such an idiot as to go on pull- 
 ing. Every day of his life he made good resolutions 
 in the reach above the Gut that it should be his last 
 performance, and always broke them next day. He 
 
 53^ 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 supposed the habit he had of breaking all good reso- 
 lutions was the way to account for it. 
 
 After dinner they set ofi to find the wild-beast 
 show; and, as they will be at least a quarter of an 
 hour reaching it, for the pitch is in a part of the sub- 
 urbs little known to gownsmen, the opportunity may 
 be seized of making a few remarks to the patient 
 reader, which impatient readers are begged to skip. 
 
 Our hero, on his first appearance in public some 
 years since, was without his own consent at once 
 patted on the back by the good-natured critics, and 
 enrolled for better or worse in the brotherhood of 
 muscular Christians, who at that time were begin- 
 ning to be recognized as an actual and lusty por- 
 tion of general British life. As his biographer, I 
 am not about to take exceptions to his enrolment; for, 
 after considering the persons up and down her maj- 
 esty's dominions to whom the new nickname has 
 been applied, the principles which they are supposed 
 to hold, and the sort of lives they are supposed to 
 lead, I cannot see where he could in these times have 
 fallen upon a nobler brotherhood. I am speaking 
 of course under correction, and with only a slight ac- 
 quaintance with the faith of muscular Christianity, 
 gathered almost entirely from the witty expositions 
 and comments of persons of a somewhat dyspeptic 
 habit, who are not among the faithful themselves. 
 Tndeed, I am not aware that any authorized articles 
 of belief have been sanctioned or published by the 
 
 S3^ 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 sect, Church, or whatever they may be. Moreover, 
 at the age at which our hero has arrived, and having 
 regard to his character, I should say that he has in all 
 likelihood thought very little on the subject of belief, 
 and would scarcely be able to give any formal ac- 
 count of his own, beyond that contained in the Church 
 Catechism, which I for one think may very well sat- 
 isfy him for the present. Nevertheless, had he been 
 suddenly caught at the gate of St. Ambrose's College, 
 by one of the gentlemen who do the classifying for 
 the British public, and accosted with, "Sir, you be- 
 long to a body whose creed is to fear God, and walk 
 i,ooo miles in i,ooo hours;" I believe he would have 
 replied, "Do I, sir? I'm very glad to hear it. They 
 must be a very good set of fellows. How many 
 weeks' training do they allow?" 
 
 But in the course of my inquiries on the subject 
 of muscular Christians, their works and ways, a fact 
 has forced itself on my attention, which, for the sake 
 of ingenious youth, like my hero, ought not to be 
 passed over. I find, then, that, side by side with 
 these muscular Christians, and apparently claiming 
 some sort of connection with them (the same con- 
 cern, as the pirates of trade-marks say), have risen up 
 another set of persons, against whom I desire to cau- 
 tion my readers and my hero, and to warn the latter 
 that I do not mean on any pretence whatever to al- 
 low him to connect himself with them, however much 
 he may be taken with their ofif-hand, "hail-brother- 
 
 S33 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 well-met" manner and dress, which may easily lead 
 careless observers to take the counterfeit for the true 
 article. I must call the persons in question ''muscle- 
 men," as distinguished from muscular Christians; the 
 only point in common between the two being, that 
 both hold it to be a good thing to have strong and 
 well-exercised bodies, ready to be put at the shortest 
 notice to any work of which bodies are capable, and 
 to do it well. Here all likeness ends; for the "mus- 
 cleman" seems to have no belief whatever as to the 
 purposes for which his body has been given him, ex- 
 cept some hazy idea that it is to go up and down the 
 world with him, belaboring men and captivating 
 women for his benefit or pleasure, at once the servant 
 and fomenter of those fierce and brutal passions 
 which he seems to think it a necessity, and rather a 
 fine thing than otherwise, to indulge and obey. 
 Whereas, so far as I know, the least of the muscular 
 Christians has hold of the old chivalrous and Chris- 
 tian belief, that a man's body is given him to be 
 trained and brought into subjection, and then used 
 for the protection of the weak, the advancement of 
 all righteous causes, and the subduing of the earth 
 which God has given to the children of men. He 
 does not hold that mere strength or activity are in 
 themselves worthy of any respect or worship, or that 
 one man is a bit better than another because he can 
 knock him down, or carry a bigger sack of potatoes 
 than he. For mere power, whether of body or intel- 
 
 534 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 iect, he has (I hope and believe) no reverence what- 
 ever, though, caeteris paribus, he would probably 
 himself, as a matter of taste, prefer the man who can 
 lift a hundred weight round his head with his little 
 finger to the man who can construct a string of perfect 
 Sorites, or expound the doctrine of "contradictory 
 inconceivables." 
 
 The above remarks occur as our hero is marching 
 innocently down toward his first "town and gown" 
 row, and I should scarcely like to see him in the mid- 
 dle of it, without protesting that it is a mistake. I 
 know that he, and other youngsters of his kidney, will 
 have fits of fighting, or desiring to fight with their 
 poorer brethren, just as children have the measles. 
 But the shorter the fit the better for the patient, for 
 like the measles it is a great mistake, and a most un- 
 satisfactory complaint. If they can escape it alto- 
 gether so much the better. But instead of treating 
 the fit as a disease, "musclemen" professors are wont 
 to represent it as a state of health, and to let their dis- 
 ciples run about in middle age with the measles on 
 them as strong as ever. Now although our hero had 
 the measles on him at this particular time, and the 
 passage of arms which I am about shortly to describe 
 led to results of some importance in his history, and 
 can not therefore be passed over, yet I wish at the 
 same time to disclaim, both in my sponsorial and in- 
 dividual character, all sympathy with town and 
 gown rows, and with all other class rows and quar 
 
 SZS 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 rels of every sort and kind, whether waged with 
 sword, pen, tongue, fist, or otherwise. Also to say 
 that in all such rows, so far as I have seen or read, 
 from the time when the Roman plebs marched out 
 to Mons Sacer, down to 1848, when the English 
 chartists met on Kennington Common, the upper 
 classes are most to blame. It may be that they are 
 not the aggressors on any given occasion : very pos- 
 sibly they may carry on the actual fighting with more 
 fairness (though this is by no means true as a rule) ; 
 nevertheless the state of feeling which makes such 
 things possible, especially in England, where men in 
 general are only too ready to be led and taught by 
 their superiors in rank, may be fairly laid at their 
 door. Even in the case of strikes, which just now will 
 of course be at once thrown in my teeth, I say fear- 
 lessly. Let any man take the trouble to study the 
 question honestly, and he will come to the conviction 
 that all combinations of the men for the purpose of 
 influencing the labor market, whether in the much 
 and unjustly abused Trades' Societies, or in other 
 forms, have been defensive organizations, and that 
 the masters might, as a body, over and over again 
 have taken the sting out of them if they would have 
 acted fairly, as many individuals among them have 
 done. Whether it may not be too late now, is a tre- 
 mendous question for England, but one which time 
 only can decide. 
 
 When Drysdale and Tom at last found the cara- 
 
 S3^ 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 vans, it was just getting dark. Something of a 
 crowd had collected outside, and there was some 
 hissing as they ascended the short flight of steps 
 which led to the platform in front of the show; 
 but they took no notice of it, paid their money, 
 and entered. 
 
 Inside they found an exciting scene. The place 
 was pretty well lighted, and the birds and beasts were 
 all alive in their several dens and cages, walking up 
 and down, and each uttering remonstrances after its 
 own manner, the shrill notes of birds mingling with 
 the moan of the beasts of prey and chattering of the 
 monkeys. Feeding time had been put ofif till night to 
 suit the undergraduates, and the undergraduates were 
 proving their appreciation of the attention by playing 
 ofif all manner of practical jokes on birds and beasts, 
 their keepers, and such of the public as had been rash 
 enough to venture in. At the further end was the 
 keeper, who did the showman, vainly endeavoring to 
 go through his usual jogtrot description. His mono- 
 tone was drowned every minute by the chorus of 
 voices, each shouting out some new fact in natural 
 history touching the biped or quadruped whom the 
 keeper was attempting to describe. At that day a 
 great deal of this sort of chaff was current, so that the 
 most dunderheaded boy had plenty on the tip of his 
 tongue. A small and indignant knot of townspeople, 
 headed by a stout and severe middle-aged woman, 
 with two big boys, her sons, followed the keeper, 
 
 537 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 endeavoring by caustic remarks and withering 
 glances to stop the flood of chaff, and restore the 
 legitimate authority and the reign of keeper and 
 natural history. 
 
 At another point was a long Irishman in cap and 
 gown, who had clearly had as much wine as he could 
 carry, close to the bars of the panther's den, through 
 which he was earnestly endeavoring, with the help of 
 a crooked stick, to draw the tail of whichever of the 
 beasts stopped for a moment in its uneasy walk. On 
 the other side were a set of men bent on burning the 
 wretched monkeys' fingers with the lighted ends of 
 their cigars, in which they seemed successful enough, 
 to judge by the angry chatterings and shriekings of 
 their victims. 
 
 The two new-comers paused for a moment on the 
 platform inside the curtain; and then Drysdale, rub- 
 bing his hands, and in high glee at the sight of so 
 much misrule in so small a place, led the way down 
 on to the floor deep in sawdust, exclaiming, "Well, 
 this is a lark! We're just in for all the fun of the 
 fair." 
 
 Tom followed his friend, who made straight for 
 the showman, and planted himself at his side, just 
 as that worthy, pointing with his pole, was proceed- 
 ing— 
 
 "This is the jackal, from — " 
 
 "The Caribee Hielands, of which I'm a native 
 mysel'," shouted a gownsman. 
 
 S3^ 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 "This is the jackal, or lion's provider," began 
 again the much-enduring keeper. 
 
 "Who always goes before the lion to purwide his 
 purwisions, purwiding there's anything to purwide," 
 put in Drysdale. 
 
 "Hem — really I do think it's scandalous not to let 
 the keeper tell about the beasteses," said the unfortu- 
 nate matron, with a half turn toward the persecutors, 
 and grasping her bag. 
 
 "My dear madam," said Drysdale, in his softest 
 voice, "I assure you he knows nothing about the 
 beasteses. We are Doctor Buckland's favorite pu- 
 pils, are also well known to the great Panjandrum, 
 and have eaten more beasteses than the keeper has 
 ever seen." 
 
 "I don't know who you are, young man, but you 
 don't know how to behave yourselves," rejoined the 
 outraged female; and the keeper, giving up the 
 jackal as a bad job, pointing with his pole, pro- 
 ceeded — 
 
 "The little hanimal in the upper cage is the ho- 
 possum, of North America — " 
 
 "The misguided ofifspring of the raccoon and the 
 gum-tree," put in one of his tormentors. 
 
 Here a frightful roaring and struggling at a little 
 distance, mingled with shouts of laughter, and "Hold 
 on, Pat!" "Go it, panther!" interrupted the lecture, 
 and caused a rush to the other side, where the long 
 Irishman, Donovan, by name, with one foot against 
 
 Vol. 15—18 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 the bars, was holding on to the tail of one of the pan- 
 thers, which he had at length managed to catch hold 
 of. The next moment he was flat on his back in the 
 sawdust, and his victim was bounding wildly about 
 the cage. The keeper hurried away to look after the 
 outraged panther; and Drysdale, at once installing 
 himself as showman, began at the next cage — 
 
 "This is the wild man of the woods, or whangee- 
 tangee, the most untamable — good heavens, ma'am, 
 take care!" and he seized hold of the unfortunate 
 woman and pulled her away from the bars. 
 
 "Oh, goodness!" she screamed, "it's got my tip- 
 pet; oh, Bill, Peter, catch hold!" Bill and Peter 
 proved unequal to the occasion, but a gownsman 
 seized the vanishing tippet, and after a moment's 
 struggle with the great ape, restored a meagre half 
 to the proper owner, while Jacko sat grinning over 
 the other half, picking it to pieces. The poor woman 
 had now had enough of it, and she hurried off with 
 her two boys, followed by the few townspeople who 
 were still in the show, to lay her case directly before 
 the mayor, as she informed the delinquents from the 
 platform before disappearing. Her wrongs were 
 likely to be more speedily avenged, to judge by 
 the angry murmurs which arose outside immediately 
 after her exit. 
 
 But still the high jinks went on, Donovan leading 
 all mischief, until the master of the menagerie ap- 
 peared inside, and remonstrated with the men. "He 
 
 540 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 must send for the police," he said, "if they would not 
 leave the beasts alone. He had put ofif the feeding in 
 order to suit them ; would they let his keepers feed the 
 beasts quietly?" The threat of the police was re- 
 ceived with shouts of defiance by some of the men, 
 though the greater part seemed of the opinion that 
 matters were getting serious. 
 
 The proposal for feeding, however, was wel- 
 comed by all, and comparative quiet ensued for some 
 ten minutes, while the baskets of joints, bread, stale 
 fish, and potatoes were brought in, and the contents 
 distributed to the famishing occupants of the cages. 
 In the interval of peace the showman-keeper, on a 
 hint from his master, again began his round. But the 
 spirit of mischief was abroad, and it only needed this 
 to make it break out again. In another two minutes 
 the beasts, from the lion to the smallest monkey, were 
 struggling for their suppers with one or miOre under- 
 graduates ; the elephant had torn the gown off Dono- 
 van's back, having only just missed his arm; the man- 
 ager in a confusion worthy of the tower of Babel, 
 sent off a keeper for the city police, and turned the 
 gas out. 
 
 The audience, after the first moment of surprise 
 and indignation, groped their way toward the steps 
 and mounted the platform, where they held a council 
 of war. Should they stay where they were, or make 
 a sally at once, break through the crowd and get back 
 to their colleges? It was curious to see how in that 
 
 541 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 short minute individual character came out, and the 
 coward, the cautious man, the resolute, prompt En- 
 glishman, each was there, and more than one species 
 of each. 
 
 Donovan was one of the last up the steps, and as 
 he stumbled up caught something of the question be- 
 fore the house. He shouted loudly at once for de- 
 scending, and offering battle. "But, boys," he added, 
 "first wait till I adthress the meeting," and he made 
 for the opening in the canvas through which the out- 
 side platform was reached. Stump oratory and a 
 free fight were just the two temptations which Dono- 
 van was wholly unable to resist; and it was with a 
 face radiant with devil-may-care delight that he 
 burst through the opening, followed by all the rest 
 (who felt that the matter was out of their hands, and 
 must go its own way after the Irishman), and rolling 
 to the front of the outside platform, rested one hand 
 on the rail, and waved the other gracefully toward 
 the crowd. This was the signal for a burst of defiant 
 shouts and hissing. Donovan stood blandly waving 
 his hand for silence. Drysdale, running his eye over 
 the mob, turned to the rest and said, "There's nothing 
 to stop us, not twenty grown men in the whole lot." 
 Then one of the men lighting upon the drumsticks, 
 which the usual man in corduroys had hidden away, 
 began beating the big drum furiously. One of the 
 unaccountable whims which influence crowds seized 
 on the mob, and there was almost perfect silence. 
 
 542 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 This seemed to take Donovan by surprise; the open 
 air was having the common effect on him; he was 
 getting unsteady on his legs, and his brains were 
 wandering. "Now's your time, Donovan, my boy — 
 begin." 
 
 "Ah, yes, to be sure, what'U I say? let's see," said 
 Donovan, putting his head on one side — 
 
 "Friends, Romans, countrymen," suggested some 
 wag. 
 
 "To be sure," cried Donovan; "Friends, Romans, 
 countrymen, lend me your ears." 
 
 "Bravo, Pat, well begun; pull their ears well 
 when you've got 'em." 
 
 "Bad luck to it! where was I? you divels — I mean 
 ladies and gentlemen of Oxford city as I was saying, 
 the poets — " 
 
 Then the storm of shouting and hissing arose 
 again, and Donovan, after an ineffectual attempt or 
 two to go on, leaned forward, and shook his fist gen- 
 erally at the mob. Luckily for him, there were no 
 stones about; but one of the crowd, catching the first 
 missile at hand, which happened to be a cabbage- 
 stalk, sent it with true aim at the enraged orator. He 
 perked his head on one side to avoid it; the motion 
 unsteadied his cap; he threw up his hand, which, in- 
 stead of catching the falling cap, as it was meant to 
 do, sent it spinning among the crowd below. The 
 owner, without a moment's hesitation, clapped both 
 hands on the bar before him and followed his prop- 
 
 543 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 erty, vaulting over on to the heads of those nearest the 
 platform, among whom he fell, scattering them right 
 and left. 
 
 "Come on, gown, or he'll be murdered," sang out 
 one of Donovan's friends. Tom was one of the first 
 down the steps; they rushed to the spot in another 
 moment, and the Irishman rose, plastered with dirt, 
 but otherwise none the worse for his feat; his cap, 
 covered with mud, was proudly stuck on, hind part 
 before. He was of course thirsting for battle, but 
 not quite so much master of his strength as usual ; so 
 his two friends, who were luckily strong and big men, 
 seized him, one to each arm. 
 
 "Come along, keep together," was the word; 
 "there's no time to lose. Push for the corn- 
 market." 
 
 The cry of "Town! town!" now rose on all sides. 
 The gownsmen in a compact body, with Donovan in 
 the middle, pushed rapidly across the open space in 
 which the caravans were set up and gained the street. 
 Here they were comparatively safe: they were fol- 
 lowed close, but could not be surrounded by the mob. 
 And now again a bystander might have amused him- 
 self by noting the men's characters. Three or four 
 pushed rapidly on, and were out of sight ahead in no 
 time. The greater part, without showing any actual 
 signs of fear, kept steadily on, at a good pace. Close 
 behind these, Donovan struggled violently with his 
 two conductors, and shouted defiance to the town; 
 
 544 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 while a small and silent rearguard, among whom 
 were Tom and Drysdale, walked slowly and, to all 
 appearance, carelessly behind, within a few yards of 
 the crowd of shouting boys who headed the advanc- 
 ing town. Tom himself felt his heart beating quick, 
 and I don't think had any particular desire for the 
 fighting to begin, with such long odds on the town 
 side; but he was resolved to be in it as soon as any 
 one if there was to be any. Thus they marched 
 through one or two streets without anything more 
 serious than an occasional stone passing their ears. 
 Another turn would have brought them into the 
 open parts of the town, within hearing of the col- 
 leges, when suddenly Donovan broke loose from his 
 supporters, and rushing with a shout on the advanced 
 guard of the town, drove them back in confusion for 
 some yards. The only thing to do was to back him 
 up; so the rearguard, shouting "Gown! gown!" 
 charged after him. The effect of the onset was like 
 that of Blount at Flodden, when he saw Marmion's 
 banner go down — a wide space was cleared for a mo- 
 ment, the town driven back on to the pavements, and 
 up the middle of the street, and the rescued Donovan 
 caught, set on his legs, and dragged away again some 
 paces toward college. But the charging body was 
 too few in number to improve the first success, or 
 even to ensure its own retreat. "Darkly closed the 
 war around." The town lapped on them from the 
 pavements, and poured on them down the middle of 
 
 545 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 the street, before they had time to rally and stand to- 
 gether again. What happened to the rest — who was 
 down, who up, who fought, who fled — Tom had no 
 time to inquire; for he found himself suddenly the 
 centre of a yelling circle of enemies. So he set his 
 teeth and buckled to his work; and the thought of 
 splendid single combat, and glory such as he had 
 read of in college stories, and tradition handing him 
 down as the hero of that great night, flashed into his 
 head as he cast his eye round for foemen worthy of 
 his steel. None such appeared; so, selecting the one 
 most of his own size, he squared and advanced on 
 him. But the challenged one declined the combat, 
 and kept retreating; while from behind, and the 
 sides, one after another of the "town" rushing out 
 dealt Tom a blow and vanished again into the crowd. 
 For a moment or two he kept his head and temper; 
 the assailants individually were too insignificant to 
 put out his strength upon; but head and temper were 
 rapidly going; — he was like a bull in the arena with 
 the picadores sticking their little javelins in him. A 
 smart blow on the nose, which set a myriad of stars 
 dancing before his eyes, finished the business, and he 
 rushed after the last assailant, dealing blows to right 
 and left, on small and great. The mob closed in on 
 him, still avoiding attacks in front, but on flank and 
 rear they hung on him, and battered at him. He 
 had to turn sharply round after every step to shake 
 himself clear, and at each turn the press thickened, 
 
 546 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 the shouts waxed louder and fiercer; he began to get 
 unsteady; tottered, swayed, and, stumbling over a 
 prostrate youth, at last went down full length on to 
 the pavement, carrying a couple of his assailants with 
 him. And now it would have fared hardly with 
 him, and he would scarcely have reached college with 
 sound bones — for I am sorry to say an Oxford town 
 mob is a cruel and brutal one, and a man who is down 
 has no chance with it — but that for one moment 
 he and his prostrate foes were so jumbled together 
 that the town could not get at him, and the next the 
 cry of "Gown! gown!" rose high above the din; the 
 town were swept back again by the rush of a re-en- 
 forcement of gownsmen, the leader of whom seized 
 him by the shoulders and put him on his legs again; 
 while his late antagonists crawled away to the side 
 of the road. 
 
 "Why, Brown!" said his rescuer — Jervis, the Cap- 
 tain — "this you? Not hurt, eh?" 
 
 "Not a bit," said Tom. 
 
 "Good; come on, then; stick to me." In three 
 steps they joined the rest of the gown, now number- 
 ing some twenty men. The mob was close before 
 them, gathering for another rush. Tom felt a cruel, 
 wild devil beginning to rise in him: he had never felt 
 the like before. This time he longed for the next 
 crash, which, happily for him, was fated never to 
 come off. 
 
 "Your names and colleges, gentlemen," said a 
 
 547 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 voice close behind them at this critical moment. The 
 "town" set up a derisive shout, and, turning round, 
 the gownsmen found the velvet sleeves of one of the 
 proctors at their elbow and his satellites, vulgarly 
 called bulldogs, taking notes of them. They were 
 completely caught, and so quietly gave the required 
 information. 
 
 "You will go to your colleges at once," said the 
 proctor, "and remain within gates. You will see 
 these gentlemen to the High-street," he added to his 
 marshal ; and then strode on after the crowd, which 
 was vanishing down the street. 
 
 The men turned and strolled toward the High- 
 street, the marshal keeping, in a deferential but wide- 
 awake manner, pretty close to them, but without mak- 
 ing any show of watching them. When they reached 
 the High-street he touched his hat and said civilly, 
 "I hope you will go home now, gentlemen, the senior 
 proctor is very strict." 
 
 "All right, marshal; good-night," said the good- 
 natured ones. 
 
 "D — his impudence," growled one or two of the 
 rest, and the marshal bustled away after his master. 
 The men looked at one another for a moment or 
 two. They were of different colleges, and stran- 
 gers. The High-street was quiet; so, without the ex- 
 change of a word, after the manner of British youth, 
 they broke up into twos and threes, and parted. 
 Jervis, Tom, and Drysdale, who turned up quite 
 
 548 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 undamaged, sauntered together toward St. Am- 
 brose's. 
 
 "I say, where are we going?" said Drysdale. 
 
 "Not to college, I vote," said Tom. 
 
 "No, there may be some more fun." 
 
 "Mighty poor fun, I should say, you'll find it," 
 said Jervis; "however, if you will stay, I suppose I 
 must. I can't leave you two boys by yourselves." 
 
 "Come along then, down here." So they turned 
 down one of the courts leading out of the High- 
 street, and so by back streets bore up again for the 
 disturbed districts. 
 
 "Mind and keep a sharp lookout for the proc- 
 tors," said Jervis; "as much row as you please, but 
 we mustn't be caught again." 
 
 "Well, only let's keep together if we have to 
 bolt." 
 
 They promenaded in lonely dignity for some five 
 minutes, keeping eyes and ears on full strain. 
 
 "I tell you what," said Drysdale, at last, "it isn't 
 fair, these enemies in the camp; what with the 'town' 
 and their stones and fists, and the proctors with their 
 'name and college,' we've got the wrong end of the 
 stick." 
 
 "Both wrong ends, I can tell you," said Jervis. 
 "Hollo, Brown, your nose is bleeding." 
 
 "Is it?" said Tom, drawing his hand across his 
 face; " 'twas that confounded little fellow then who 
 ran up to my side while I was squaring at the long 
 
 549 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 party. I felt a sharp crack, and the little rascal 
 bolted into the crowd before I could turn at him." 
 
 "Cut and come again," said Drysdale, laughing. 
 
 "Ay, that's the regular thing in these blackguard 
 street squabbles. Here they come then," said Jervis. 
 "Steady, all." 
 
 They turned round to face the town, which came 
 shouting down the street behind them in pursuit of 
 one gownsman, a little, harmless, quiet fellow, who 
 had fallen in with them on his way back to his col- 
 lege from a tea with his tutor, and, like a wise man, 
 was giving them leg-bail as hard as he could foot it. 
 But the little man was of a courageous, though pru- 
 dent soul, and turned panting and gasping on his foes 
 the moment he found himself among friends again. 
 
 "Now, then, stick together; don't let them get 
 round us," said Jervis. 
 
 They walked steadily down the street, which was 
 luckily a narrow one, so that three of them could 
 keep the whole of it, halting and showing front every 
 few yards, when the crowd pressed too much. "Down 
 with them! Town, town! That's two as was in the 
 show." "Mark the velvet-capped chap. Town, 
 town!" shouted the hinder part of the mob; but it 
 was a rabble of boys as before, and the front rank 
 took very good care of itself, and forbore from close 
 quarters. 
 
 The small gownsman had now got his wind again ; 
 and smarting under the ignominy of his recent flight, 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 was always a pace or two nearer the crowd than the 
 other three, ruffling up like a little bantam, and shout- 
 ing defiance between the catchings of his breath. 
 
 "You vagabonds! you cowards! Come on now, 
 I say! Gown, gown!" And at last, emboldened by 
 the repeated halts of the mob, and thirsting for re- 
 venge, he made a dash at one of the nearest of the 
 enemy. The suddenness of the attack took both sides 
 by surprise, then came a rush by two or three of the 
 town to the rescue. 
 
 "No, no! stand back — one at a time," shouted the 
 Captain, throwing himself between the combatants 
 and the mob. "Go it, little 'un ; serve him out. Keep 
 the rest back, boys: steady!" Tom and Drysdale 
 faced toward the crowd, while the little gownsman 
 and his antagonist — ^who defended himself vigor- 
 ously enough now- — came to close quarters, in the 
 rear of the gown line; too close to hurt one another, 
 but what with hugging and cuffing, the townsman in 
 another half-minute was sitting quietly on the pave- 
 ment with his back against the wall, his enemy squar- 
 ing in front of him, and daring him to renew the 
 combat. "Get up, you coward; get up, I say, you 
 coward! He won't get up," said the little man, ea- 
 gerly turning to the Captain. "Shall I give him a 
 kick?" 
 
 "No, let the cur alone," replied Jervis. "Now, 
 do any more of you want to fight? Come on, like 
 men, one at a time. I'll fight any man in the crowd." 
 
 5S^ 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Whether the challenge would have been an- 
 swered must rest uncertain ; for now the crowd began 
 to look back, and a cry arose, "Here they are, proc- 
 tors! now they'll run." 
 
 "So we must, by Jove, Brown," said the Captain. 
 "What's your college?" to the little hero. 
 
 "Pembroke." 
 
 "Cut away, then; you're close at home." 
 
 "Very well, if I must: good-night," and away 
 went the small man as fast as he had come ; and it has 
 never been heard that he came to further grief or 
 performed other feats that night. 
 
 "Hang it, don't let's run," said Drysdale. 
 
 "Is it the proctors?" said Tom. "I can't see 
 them." 
 
 "Mark the bloody-faced one; kick him over," 
 sang out a voice in the crowd. 
 
 "Thank'ee," said Tom, savagely. "Let's have 
 one rush at them." 
 
 "Look! there's the proctor's cap just through 
 them; come along, boys — well, stay if you like, and 
 be rusticated, I'm oil;" and away went Jervis, and 
 the next moment Tom and Drysdale followed the 
 good example, and, as they had to run, made the best 
 use of their legs, and in two minutes were well ahead 
 of their pursuers. They turned a corner; "Here, 
 Brown! alight in this public, cut in, and it's all 
 right." Next moment they were in the dark passage 
 of a quiet little inn, and heard with a chuckle part 
 
 S5^ 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 of the crowd scurry by the door in pursuit, while they 
 themselves suddenly appeared in the neat little bar, 
 to the no small astonishment of its occupants. These 
 were a stout elderly woman in spectacles, who was 
 stitching away at plain work in an armchair on one 
 side of the fire; the foreman of one of the great boat- 
 builders, who sat opposite her, smoking his pipe, 
 with a long glass of clear ale at his elbow; and a 
 bright-eyed, neat-handed barmaid, who was lean- 
 ing against the table, and talking to the others as 
 they entered. 
 
 The old lady dropped her work, the barmaid 
 turned round with a start and little ejaculation, and 
 the foreman stared with all his eyes for a moment, 
 and then, jumping up, exclaimed — 
 
 "Bless us, if it isn't Muster Drysdale and Muster 
 Brown, of Ambrose's. Why, what's the matter, sir? 
 Muster Brown, you be all covered wi' blood, sir." 
 
 "Oh dear me! poor young gentleman!" cried the 
 hostess: — "Here, Patty, run and tell Dick to go for 
 the doctor, and get the best room — " 
 
 "No, please don't; it's nothing at all," interrupted 
 Tom, laughing; — "a basin of cold water and a towel, 
 if you please, Miss Patty, and I shall be quite pre- 
 sentable in a minute. I'm very sorry to have fright- 
 ened you all." 
 
 Drysdale joined in assurances that It was nothing 
 but a little of his friend's "claret," which he would 
 be all the better for losing, and watched with an en- 
 
 SS3 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 vious eye the interest depicted in Patty's pretty face, 
 as she hurried in with a basin of fresh pumped water, 
 and held the towel. Tom bathed his face, and very 
 soon was as respectable a member of society as usual, 
 save for a slight swelling on one side of his nose. 
 
 Drysdale meantime — seated on the table — ^had 
 been explaining the circumstances to the landlady 
 and the foreman. "And now, ma'am," said he, as 
 Tom joined them and seated himself on a vacant 
 chair, "I'm sure you must draw famous ale." 
 
 "Indeed, sir, I think Dick — that's my ostler, sir — 
 is as good a brewer as is in the town. We always 
 brews at home, sir, and I hope always shall." 
 
 "Quite right, ma'am, quite right," said Drysdale; 
 "and I don't think we can do better than follow Jem 
 here. Let us have a jug of the same ale as he is 
 drinking. And you'll take a glass with us, Jem? or 
 will you have spirits?" 
 
 Jem was for another glass of ale, and bore witness 
 to its being the best in Oxford, and Patty drew the 
 ale, and supplied two more long glasses. Drysdale, 
 with apologies, produced his cigar-case; and Jem, 
 under the influence of the ale and a first-rate Ha- 
 vanna (for which he deserted his pipe, though he 
 did not enjoy it half as much) , volunteered to go and 
 rouse the yard and conduct them safely back to col^ 
 lege. This offer was of course politely declined, 
 and then, Jem's hour for bed having come, he, being 
 a methodical man, as became his position, departed, 
 
 554 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 and left our two young friends in sole possession of 
 the bar. Nothing could have suited the two young 
 gentlemen better, and they set to work to make them- 
 selves agreeable. They listened with lively inter- 
 est to the landlady's statement of the difficulties of 
 a widow woman in a house like hers, and to her 
 praises of her factotum Dick and her niece Patty. 
 They applauded her resolution of not bringing up 
 her two boys in the publican line, though they could 
 offer no very available answer to her appeals for ad- 
 vice as to what trade they should be put to; all trades 
 were so full, and things were not as they used to be. 
 The one thing, apparently, which was wanting to the 
 happiness of Drysdale at Oxford was the discovery 
 of such beer as he had at last found at "The 
 Choughs." Dick was to come up to St. Ambrose's 
 the first thing in the morning and carry off his bar- 
 rel, which would never contain in future any other 
 liquid. At last that worthy appeared in the bar to 
 know when he was to shut up, and was sent out by his 
 mistress to see that the street was clear, for which ser- 
 vice he received a shilling, though his offer of escort 
 was declined. And so, after paying in a splendid 
 manner for their entertainment, they found them- 
 selves in the street, and set off for college, agreeing 
 on the way that "The Choughs" was a great find, the 
 old lady the best old soul in the world, and Patty the 
 prettiest girl in Oxford. They found the streets 
 quiet, and walking quickly along them, knocked at 
 
 S5S 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 the college gates at half-past eleven. The stout 
 porter received them with a long face. 
 
 "Senior proctor's sent down here an hour back, 
 gentlemen, to find whether you was in college." 
 
 "You don't mean that, porter? How kind of 
 him! What did you say?" 
 
 "Said I didn't know, sir; but the marshal said, if 
 you come in after, that you was to go to the senior 
 proctor's at half-past nine to-morrow." 
 
 "Send my compliments to the senior proctor," 
 said Drysdale, "and say I have a very particular en- 
 gagement to-morrow morning, which will prevent 
 my having the pleasure of calling on him." 
 
 "Very good, sir," said the porter, giving a little 
 dry chuckle, and tapping the keys against his leg; 
 "only perhaps you wouldn't mind writing him a note, 
 sir, as he is rather a particular gentleman." 
 
 "Didn't he send after any one else?" said Tom. 
 
 "Yes, sir, Mr. Jervis, sir." 
 
 "Well, and what about him?" 
 
 "Oh, sir, Mr. Jervis! an old hand, sir. He'd 
 been in gates a long time, sir, when the marshal 
 came." 
 
 "The sly old beggar!" said Drysdale, "good 
 night, porter; mind you send my message to the proc- 
 tor. If he is set on seeing me to-morrow, you can 
 say that he will find a broiled chicken and a hand 
 at picquet in my rooms, if he likes to drop in to 
 lunch." 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 The porter looked after them for a moment, and 
 then retired to his deep old chair in the lodge, pulled 
 his night-cap over his ears, put up his feet before the 
 fire on a high stool, and folded his hands on his lap. 
 "The most impidentest thing on the face of the earth 
 is a genTman-commoner in his first year," solilo- 
 quized the little man. " 'Twould ha' done that one 
 a sight of good, now, if he'd got a good hiding in the 
 street to-night. But he's better than most on 'em, 
 too," he went on; "uncommon free with his tongue, 
 but just as free with his arf-sovereigns. Well, I'm 
 not going to peach if the proctor don't send again in 
 the morning. That sort's good for the college; 
 makes things brisk; has his win from town, and don't 
 keep no keys. I wonder, now, if my Peter's been out 
 a fighting? He's pretty nigh as hard to manage, is 
 that boy, as if he was at college hisself." 
 
 And so, muttering over his domestic and profes- 
 sional grievances, the small janitor composed him- 
 self to a nap. I may add, parenthetically, that his 
 hopeful Peter, a precocious youth of seventeen, 
 scout's boy on No. 3 Staircase of St. Ambrose's Col- 
 lege, was represented in the boot cleaning and errand 
 line by a substitute for some days ; and when he re- 
 turned to duty was minus a front tooth. 
 
 "What fools we were not to stick to the Captain. 
 I wonder what we shall get," said Tom, who was 
 troubled in his mind at the proctor's message, and 
 not gifted naturally with the recklessness and con- 
 
 557 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 tempt of authority which in Drysdale's case ap- 
 proached the sublime. 
 
 "Who cares? I'll be bound, now, the old fox came 
 straight home to earth. Let's go and knock him up." 
 
 Tom assented, for he was anxious to consult Jervis 
 as to his proceedings in the morning; so they soon 
 found themselves drumming at his oak, which was 
 opened shortly by "the stroke" in an old boating- 
 jacket. They followed him in. At one end of his 
 table stood his tea-service and the remains of his com- 
 mons, which the scout had not cleared away; at the 
 other, open books, note-books, and maps showed that 
 the Captain read, as he rowed, "hard all." 
 
 "Well, are you two only just in?" 
 
 "Only just, my Captain," answered Drysdale. 
 
 "Have you been well thrashed, then? You don't 
 look much damaged." 
 
 "We are innocent of fight since your sudden de- 
 parture — flight, shall I call it? — my Captain." 
 
 "Where have you been?" 
 
 "Where! why in the paragon of all pothouses; 
 snug little bar with red curtains ; stout old benevolent 
 female in spectacles; barmaid a houri; and for malt, 
 the most touching tap in Oxford — home-brewed, too, 
 wasn't it. Brown?" 
 
 "Yes, the beer was undeniable," said Tom. 
 
 "Well, and you dawdled there till now?" said 
 Jervis. 
 
 "Even so. What with mobs that wouldn't fight 
 
 5S^ 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 fair, and captains who would run away, and proctors 
 and marshals who would interfere, we were 'per- 
 fectly disgusted with the whole proceedings,' as the 
 Scotchman said when he was sentenced to be hanged." 
 
 "Well! Heaven, they say, protects children, sail- 
 ors, and drunken men ; and whatever answers to' 
 Heaven in the academical system protects freshmen," 
 remarked Jervis. 
 
 "Not us, at any rate," said Tom, "for we are to go 
 to the proctor to-morrow morning." 
 
 "What, did he catch you in your famous public?" 
 
 "No; the marshal came round to the porter's 
 lodge, asked if we were in, and left word that, if we 
 were not, we were to go to him in the morning. The 
 porter told us just now as we came in." 
 
 "Pshaw," said the Captain, with disgust; "now 
 you'll both be gated probably, and the whole crew 
 will be thrown out of gear. Why couldn't you have 
 come home when I did?" 
 
 "We do not propose to attend the levee of that 
 excellent person in office to-morrow morning," said 
 Drysdale. "He will forget all about it. Old Copas 
 won't say a word — catch him. He gets too much out 
 of me for that." 
 
 "Well, you'll see; I'll back the proctor's mem- 
 ory." 
 
 "But, Captain, what are you going to stand?" 
 
 "Stand! nothing, unless you like a cup of cold tea. 
 You'll get no wine or spirits here at this time of night, 
 
 559 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 and the buttery is shut. Besides, you've had quite as 
 much beer as is good for you at your paragon public." 
 
 "Come, now. Captain, just two glasses of sherry, 
 and I'll promise to go to bed." 
 
 "Not a thimbleful." 
 
 "You old tyrant!" said Drysdale, hopping off his 
 perch on the elbow of the sofa. "Come along. 
 Brown, let's go and draw for some supper, and a 
 hand at Van John. There's sure to be some going 
 up my staircase; or, at any rate, there's a cool bottle 
 of claret in my rooms." 
 
 "Stop and have a talk. Brown," said the Captain, 
 and prevailed against Drysdale, who, after another 
 attempt to draw Tom ofif, departed on his quest for 
 drink and cards. 
 
 "He'll never do for the boat, I'm afraid," said 
 the Captain; "with his rascally late hours, and drink- 
 ing, and eating all sorts of trash. It's a pity, too, for 
 he's a pretty oar for his weight." 
 
 "He is such uncommon good company, too," said 
 Tom. 
 
 "Yes; but I'll tell you what. He's just a leetle 
 too good company for you and me, or any fellows 
 who mean to take a degree. Let's see, this is only his 
 third term? I'll give him, perhaps, two more to make 
 the place too hot to hold him. Take my word for it, 
 he'll never get to his little-go." 
 
 "It will be a great pity, then," said Tom. 
 
 "So it will. But after all, you see, what does it 
 
 560 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 matter to him? He gets rusticated; takes his name 
 off with a flourish of trumpets — what then? He falls 
 back on 5,000/. a year in land, and a good accumula- 
 tion in consols; runs abroad, or lives in town for a 
 year. Takes the hounds when he comes of age, or 
 is singled out by some discerning constituency, and 
 sent to make laws for his country, having spent the 
 whole of his life hitherto in breaking all the laws he 
 ever came under. You and I, perhaps, go fooling 
 about with him, and get rusticated. We make our 
 friends miserable. We can't take our names oflf, but 
 have to come cringing back at the end of our year, 
 marked men. Keep our tails between our legs for 
 the rest of our time. Lose a year at our professions, 
 and most likely have the slip casting up against us in 
 one way or another for the next twenty years. It's 
 like the old story of the giant and the dwarf, or like 
 fighting a sweep, or any other one-sided business." 
 
 "But I'd sooner have to fight my own way in the 
 world after all; wouldn't you?" said Tom. 
 
 "H — m — m!" said the Captain, throwing himself 
 back in the chair, and smiling; "can't answer off- 
 hand. I'm a third-year man, and begin to see the 
 other side rather clearer than I did when I was a 
 freshman like you. Three years at Oxford, my boy, 
 will teach you something of what rank and money 
 count for, if they teach you nothing else." 
 
 "Why, here's the Captain singing the same song 
 as Hardy," thought Tom. 
 
 561 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "So you two have to go to the proctor to-mor- 
 row?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Shall you go? Drysdale won't." 
 
 "Of course I shall. It seems to me childish not 
 to go; as if I were back in the lower school again. 
 To tell you the truth, the being sent for isn't pleas- 
 ant; but the other I couldn't stand." 
 
 "Well, I don't feel anything of that sort. But I 
 think you're right on the whole. The chances are 
 that he'll remember your name, and send for you 
 again if you don't go ; and then you'll be worse off." 
 
 "You don't think he'll rusticate us, or anything 
 of that sort?" said Tom, who had felt horrible twinges 
 at the Captain's picture of the effects of rustication 
 on ordinary mortals. 
 
 "No ; not unless he's in a very bad humor. I was 
 caught three times in one night in my freshman's 
 term, and only got an imposition." 
 
 "Then I don't care," said Tom. "But it's a bore 
 to have been caught in so seedy an affair; if it had 
 been a real good row, one wouldn't have minded so 
 much." 
 
 "Why, what did you expect? It was neither 
 better nor worse than the common run of such 
 things." 
 
 "Well, but three parts of the crowd were boys." 
 
 "So they are always — or nine times out of ten at 
 any rate." 
 
 ^67. 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 "But there was no real fighting: at least, I only 
 know I got none." 
 
 "There isn't any real fighting, as you call it, nine 
 times out of ten." 
 
 "What is there, then?" 
 
 "Why, something of this sort. Five shopboys, or 
 scouts' boys, full of sauciness, loitering at an out-of- 
 the-way street corner. Enter two freshmen, full of 
 dignity and bad wine. Explosion of inflammable 
 material. Freshmen mobbed into High-street or 
 Broad-street, where the tables are turned by the 
 gathering of many more freshmen, and the mob of 
 town boys quietly subsides, puts its hands in its pock- 
 ets, and ceases to shout 'Town, town!' The triumph- 
 ant freshmen march up and down for perhaps half 
 an hour, shouting 'Gown, gown!' and looking furi- 
 ous, but not half sorry that the mob vanishes like mist 
 at their approach. Then come the proctors, who 
 hunt down, and break up the gown in some half-hour 
 or hour. The 'town' again marches about in the as- 
 cendant, and mobs the scattered freshmen, wherever 
 they can be caught in very small numbers." 
 
 "But with all your chaff about freshmen, Cap- 
 tain, you were in it yourself to-night; come now." 
 
 "Of course, I had to look after you two boys." 
 
 "But you didn't know we were in it when you 
 came up." 
 
 "I was sure to find some of you. Besides, I'll 
 admit one don't like to go in while there's any chance 
 
 5^3 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 of a real row, as you call it, and so gets proctorized 
 in one's old age for one's patriotism." 
 
 "Were you ever in a real row?" said Tom. 
 
 "Yes, once, about a year ago. The fighting num- 
 bers were about equal, and the town all grown men, 
 laborers and mechanics. It was desperate hard 
 work, none of your shouting and promenading. That 
 Hardy, one of our Bible clerks, fought like a Pala- 
 din; I know I shifted a fellow in corduroys on to 
 him, whom I had found an uncommon tough cus- 
 tomer, and never felt better pleased in my life than 
 when I saw the light glance on his hobnails as he 
 went over into the gutter two minutes afterward. It 
 lasted, perhaps, ten minutes, and both sides were very 
 glad to draw off." 
 
 "But, of course, you licked them?" 
 
 "We said we did." 
 
 "Well, I believe that a gentleman will always 
 lick in a fair fight." 
 
 "Of course you do, it's the orthodox belief." 
 
 "But don't you?" 
 
 "Yes; if he is as big and strong, and knows how 
 to fight as well as the other. The odds are that he 
 cares a little more for giving in, and that will pull 
 him through." 
 
 "That isn't saying much, though." 
 
 "No, but it's quite as much as is true. I'll tell 
 you what it is, I think just this, that we are generally 
 better in the fighting way than shopkeepers, clerks, 
 
 564 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 flunkies, and all fellows who don't work hard with 
 their bodies all day. But the moment you come to 
 the real hard-fisted fellow, used to nine or ten hours' 
 work a day, he's a cruel hard customer. Take sev- 
 enty or eighty of them at haphazard, the first you 
 meet, and turn them into St. Ambrose any morning 
 — by night I take it they would be lords of this ven- 
 erable establishment if we had to fight for the pos- 
 session; except, perhaps, for that Hardy — he's one of 
 a thousand, and was born for a fighting man; per- 
 haps he might pull us through." 
 
 "Why don't you try him in the boat?" 
 
 "Miller manages all that. I spoke to him about 
 it after that row, but he said that Hardy had refused 
 to subscribe to the club, said he couldn't afiford it, or 
 something of the sort. I don't see why that need 
 matter, myself, but I suppose, as we have rules, we 
 ought to stick to them." 
 
 "It's a great pity, though. I know Hardy well, 
 and you can't think what a fine fellow he is." 
 
 "I'm sure of that. I tried to know him, and we 
 don't get on badly as speaking acquaintance. But he 
 seems a queer, solitary bird." 
 
 Twelve o'clock struck; so Tom wished the Cap- 
 tain good-night and departed, meditating much on 
 what he had heard and seen. The vision of terrific 
 single combats, in which the descendant of a hundred 
 earls polishes ofif the huge representative of the masses 
 in the most finished style, without a scratch on 
 
 565 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 his own aristocratic features, had faded from his 
 mind. 
 
 He went to bed that night, fairly sickened with 
 his experience of a tow^n and gown row, and with a 
 nasty taste in his mouth. But he felt much pleased 
 at having drawn out the Captain so completely. For 
 "the stroke" was in general a man of marvellous few 
 words, having many better uses than talking to put 
 his breath to. 
 
 Next morning he attended at the proctor's rooms 
 at the appointed time, not without some feeling of 
 shame at having to do so; which, however, wore ofif 
 when he found some dozen men of other colleges 
 waiting about on the same errand as himself. In his 
 turn he was ushered in, and, as he stood by the door, 
 had time to look the great man over as he sat making 
 a note of the case he had just disposed of. The in- 
 spection was reassuring. The proctor was a gentle- 
 manly, straightforward-looking man of about thirty, 
 not at all donnish, and his address answered to his 
 appearance. 
 
 "Mr. Brown, of St. Ambrose's, I think," he said. 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "I sent you to your college yesterday evening: did 
 you go straight home?" 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 "How was that, Mr. Brown?" 
 
 Tom made no answer, and the proctor looked at 
 him steadily for a few seconds, and then repeated — 
 
 566 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 "How was that?" 
 
 "Well, sir," said Tom, "I don't mean to say I was 
 going straight to college, but I should have been in 
 long before you sent, only I fell in with the mob 
 again, and then there was a cry that you were com- 
 ing. And so — " He paused. 
 
 "Well," said the proctor, with a grim sort of curl 
 about the corners of his mouth. 
 
 "Why, I ran away, and turned into the first place 
 which was open, and stopped till the streets were 
 quiet." 
 
 "A public house, I suppose." 
 
 "Yes, sir; 'The Choughs.' " 
 
 The proctor considered a minute, and again scru- 
 tinized Tom's look and manner, which certainly 
 were straightforward, and without any tinge of 
 cringing or insolence. 
 
 "How long have you been up?" 
 
 "This is my second term, sir." 
 
 "You have never been sent to me before, I 
 think?" 
 
 "Never, sir." 
 
 "Well, I can't overlook this, as you yourself con- 
 fess to a direct act of disobedience. You must write 
 me out 200 lines of Virgil. And now, Mr. Brown, 
 let me advise you to keep out of these disreputable 
 street quarrels in future. Good-morning." 
 
 Tom hurried away, wondering what it would feel 
 like to be writing out Virgil again as a punishment at 
 
 567 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 his time of life, but glad above measure that the 
 proctor had asked him no questions about his com- 
 panion. That hero was, of course, mightily tickled 
 at the result, and seized the occasion to lecture Tom 
 on his future conduct, holding himself up as a living 
 example of the benefits which were sure to accrue to 
 a man who never did anything he was told to do. The 
 soundness of his reasoning, however, was somewhat 
 shaken by the dean, who, on that same afternoon, 
 managed to catch him in quad; and, carrying him 
 ofif, discoursed with him concerning his various and 
 systematic breaches of discipline, pointed out to him 
 that he had already made such good use of his time 
 that if he were to be discommonsed for three more 
 days he would lose his term; and then took ofif his 
 cross, gave him a book of Virgil to write out, and 
 gated him for a fortnight after hall. Drysdale sent 
 out his scout to order his punishment as he might 
 have ordered a waistcoat, presented old Copas with a 
 half-sovereign, and then dismissed punishment and 
 gating from his mind. He cultivated with great suc- 
 cess the science of mental gymnastics, or throwing 
 everything the least unpleasant of]f his mind at once. 
 And no doubt it is a science worthy of all cultivation, 
 if one desires to lead a comfortable life. It gets 
 harder, however, as the years roll over us, to attain 
 to any satisfactory proficiency in it; so that it should 
 be mastered as early in life as may be. 
 
 The town and gown row was the talk of the col- 
 
 568 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 lege for the next week. Tom, of course, talked much 
 about it, like his neighbors, and confided to one and 
 another the Captain's heresies. They were all in- 
 credulous; for no one had ever heard him talk as 
 much in a term as Tom reported him to have done 
 on this one evening. 
 
 So it was resolved that he should be taken to task 
 on the subject on the first opportunity; and, as no- 
 body was afraid of him, there was no difficulty in 
 finding a man to bell the cat. Accordingly, at the 
 next wine of the boating set, the Captain had scarcely 
 entered when he was assailed by the host with : 
 
 "Jervis, Brown says you don't believe a gentle- 
 man can lick a cad, unless he is the biggest and 
 strongest of the two." 
 
 The Captain, who hated coming out with his be- 
 liefs, shrugged his shoulders, sipped his wine, and 
 tried to turn the subject. But, seeing that they were 
 all bent on drawing him out, he was not the man to 
 run from his guns; and so said quietly: 
 
 "No more I do." 
 
 Notwithstanding the reverence in which he was 
 held, this saying could not be allowed to pass, and a 
 dozen voices were instantly raised, and a dozen au- 
 thentic stories told to confute him. He listened pa- 
 tiently, and then, seeing he was in for it, said — 
 
 "Never mind fighting. Try something else; 
 cricket, for instance. The players generally beat the 
 gentlemen, don't they?" 
 
 569 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "Yes; but they are professionals." 
 
 "Well, and we don't often get a university crew 
 which can beat the watermen?" 
 
 "Professionals again." 
 
 "I believe the markers are the best tennis-players, 
 ain't they?" persevered the Captain; "and I gen- 
 erally find keepers and huntsmen shooting and riding 
 better than their masters, don't you?" 
 
 "But that's not fair. All the cases you put are 
 those of men who have nothing else to do, who live 
 by the things which gentlemen only take up for pleas- 
 ure." 
 
 "I only say that the cads, as you call them, man- 
 age, somehow or another, to do them best," said the 
 Captain. 
 
 "How about the army and navy? The officers 
 always lead." 
 
 "Well, there they're all professionals, at any rate," 
 said the Captain. "I admit that the officers lead; but 
 the men follow pretty close. And in a forlorn hope 
 there are fifty men to one officer, after all." 
 
 "But they must be led. The men will never go 
 without an officer to lead." 
 
 "It's the officers' business to lead, I know; and 
 they do it. But you won't find the best judges talk- 
 ing as if the men wanted much leading. Read Na- 
 pier : the finest story in his book is of the sergeant who 
 gave his life for his boy officer's — your namesake, 
 Brown — at the Coa." 
 
 570 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 "Well, I never thought to hear you crying down 
 gentlemen." 
 
 "I'm not crying down gentlemen," said the Cap- 
 tain. "I only say that a gentleman's flesh and blood, 
 and brains, are just the same, and no better than an- 
 other man's. He has all the chances on his side in the 
 way of training, and pretty near all the prizes; so it 
 would be hard if he didn't do most things better than 
 poor men. But give them the chance of training, and 
 they will tread on his heels soon enough. That's all I 
 say." 
 
 That was all, certainly, that the Captain said, and 
 then relapsed into his usual good-tempered monosyl- 
 labic state; from which all the eager talk of the men, 
 who took up the cudgels naturally enough for their 
 own class, and talked themselves before the wine 
 broke up into a renewed consciousness of their nat- 
 ural superiority, failed again to rouse him. 
 
 This was, in fact, the Captain's weak point, if he 
 had one. He had strong beliefs himself; one of the 
 strongest of which was, that nobody could be taught 
 anything except by his own experience; so he never, 
 or very rarely, exercised his own personal influence, 
 but just quietly went his own way, and let other men 
 go theirs. Another of his beliefs was, that there was 
 no man or thing in the world too bad to be tolerated ; 
 faithfully acting up to which belief, the Captain him- 
 self tolerated persons and things intolerable. 
 
 Bearing which facts in mind, the reader will 
 
 571 
 
 Vol. 15 — 19 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 easily guess the result of the application which the 
 crew duly made to him the day after Miller's back 
 was turned. He simply said that the training they 
 proposed would not be enough, and that he himself 
 should take all who chose to go down, to Abingdon 
 twice a week. From that time there were many de- 
 faulters; and the spirit of Diogenes groaned within 
 him, as day after day the crew had to be filled up 
 from the torpid or by watermen. Drysdale would 
 ride down to Sandford, meeting the boat on its way 
 up, and then take his place for the pull up to Oxford, 
 while his groom rode his horse up to Folly bridge to 
 meet him. There he would mount again and ride off 
 to Bullingdon, or to the Isis, or Quentin, or other so- 
 cial meeting equally inimical to good training. Blake 
 often absented himself three days in a week, and 
 other men once or twice. 
 
 From considering which facts, Tom came to un- 
 derstand the difference between his two heroes; their 
 strong likeness in many points he had seen from the 
 first. They were alike in truthfulness, bravery, bod- 
 ily strength, and in most of their opinions. But Jer- 
 vis worried himself about nothing, and let all men 
 and things alone, in the belief that the world was 
 not going so very wrong, or would right itself some- 
 how without him. Hardy, on the other hand, was 
 consuming his heart over everything that seemed to 
 him to be going wrong in himself and round about 
 him — in the college, in Oxford, in England, in the 
 
 572 
 
Muscular Christianity 
 
 ends of the earth, and never letting slip a chance of 
 trying to set right, here a thread, and there a thread. 
 A self-questioning, much-enduring man; a slayer 
 of dragons himself, and one with whom you could 
 not live much without getting uncomfortably aware 
 of the dragons which you also had to slay. 
 
 What wonder that, apart altogether from the dif- 
 ference in their social position, the one man was ever 
 becoming more and more popular, while the other 
 was left more and more to himself. There are few of 
 us at Oxford, or elsewhere, who do not like to see a 
 man living a brave and righteous life, so long as he 
 keeps clear of us ; and still fewer who do like to be in 
 constant contact with one who, not content with so 
 living himself, is always coming across them, and 
 laying bare to them their own faint-heartedness, and 
 sloth, and meanness. The latter, no doubt, inspires 
 the deeper feeling, and lays hold with a firmer grip 
 of the men he does lay hold of, but they are few. For 
 men can't keep always up to high pressure till they 
 have found firm ground to build upon, altogether 
 outside of themselves; and it is hard to be thankful 
 and fair to those who are showing us time after time 
 that our foothold is nothing but shifting sand. 
 
 573 
 
SCHOOL DAYS OF CHARLES DARWIN 
 
 Y mother died in July, 1817, when I was a little 
 over eight years old, and it is odd that I can 
 remember hardly anything about her except her 
 deathbed, her black velvet gown, and her curiously 
 constructed work-table. In the spring of this same 
 year I was sent to a day-school in Shrewsbury, where 
 I stayed a year. I have been told that I was much 
 slower in learning than my younger sister Catherine, 
 and I believe that I was in many ways a naughty boy. 
 
 By the time I went to this day-school my taste for 
 natural history, and more especially for collecting, 
 was well developed. I tried to make out the names 
 of plants, and collected all sorts of things, shells, 
 seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for 
 collecting which leads a man to be a systematic nat- 
 uralist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in me, 
 and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or 
 brother ever had this taste. 
 
 One little event during this year has fixed itself 
 very firmly in my mind, and I hope that it has done 
 so from my conscience having been afterward sorely 
 troubled by it; it is curious as showing that appar- 
 ently I was interested at this early age in the vari- 
 ability of plants! I told another little boy (I believe 
 it was Leighton, who afterward became a well- 
 
 574 
 
School Days of Charles Darwin 
 
 known lichenologist and botanist) , that I could pro- 
 duce variously colored polyanthuses and primroses 
 by watering them with certain colored fluids, which 
 was of course a monstrous fable, and had never been 
 tried by me. I may here also confess that as a little 
 boy I was much given to inventing deliberate false- 
 hoods, and this was always done for the sake of caus- 
 ing excitement. For instance, I once gathered much 
 valuable fruit from my father's trees and hid it in 
 the shrubbery, and then ran in breathless haste to 
 spread the news that I had discovered a hoard of 
 stolen fruit. 
 
 I must have been a very simple little fellow when 
 I first went to the school. A boy of the name of Gar- 
 nett took me into a cake shop one day, and bought 
 some cakes for which he did not pay, as the shopman 
 trusted him. When we came out I asked him why 
 he did not pay for them, and he instantly answered: 
 "Why, do you not know that my uncle left a great 
 sum of money to the town on condition that every 
 tradesman should give whatever was wanted without 
 payment to any one who wore his old hat and moved 
 [it] in a particular manner?" and he then showed me 
 how it was moved. He then went into another shop 
 where he was trusted, and asked for some small 
 article, moving his hat in the proper manner, and of 
 course obtained it without payment. When we came 
 out he said: "Now if you like to go by yourself into 
 that cake shop (how well I remember its exact posi- 
 
 575 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 tion), I will lend you my hat, and you can get what- 
 ever you like if you move the hat on your head prop- 
 erly." I gladly accepted the generous offer, and 
 went in and asked for some cakes, moved the old 
 hat, and was walking out of the shop, when the shop- 
 man made a rush at me, so I dropped the cakes and 
 ran for dear life, and was astonished by being greeted 
 with shouts of laughter by my false friend Garnett. 
 
 I can say in my ov/n favor that I was as a boy hu- 
 mane, but I owed this entirely to the instruction and 
 example of my sisters. I doubt indeed whether hu- 
 manity is a natural or innate quality. I was very 
 fond of collecting eggs, but I never took more than 
 a single egg out of a bird's nest, except on one single 
 occasion, when I took all, not for their value, but 
 from a sort of bravado. 
 
 I had a strong taste for angling, and would sit for 
 any number of hours on the bank of a river or pond 
 watching the float; when at Maer I was told that I 
 could kill the worms with salt and water, and from 
 that day I never spitted a living worm, though at the 
 expense probably of some loss of success. 
 
 Once as a very little boy while at the day school, 
 or before that time, I acted cruelly, for I beat a 
 puppy, I believe, simply from enjoying the sense of 
 power; but the beating could not have been severe, 
 for the puppy did not howl, of which I feel sure as 
 the spot was near the house. This act lay heavily on 
 my conscience, as is shown by my remembering the 
 
 576 
 
School Days of Charles Darwin 
 
 exact spot where the crime was committed. It prob- 
 ably lay all the heavier from my love of dogs being 
 then, and for a long time afterward, a passion. Dogs 
 seemed to know this, for I was an adept in robbing 
 their love from their masters. 
 
 I remember clearly only one other incident dur- 
 ing this year while at Mr. Case's daily school — 
 namely, the burial of a dragoon soldier; and it is sur- 
 prising how clearly I can still see the horse with the 
 man's empty boots and carbine suspended to the sad- 
 dle, and the firing over the grave. This scene deeply 
 stirred whatever poetic fancy there was in me. 
 
 In the summer of 1818 I went to Dr. Butler's 
 great school in Shrewsbury, and remained there for 
 seven years till Midsummer, 1825, when I was six- 
 teen years old. I boarded at this school, so that I 
 had the great advantage of living the life of a true 
 schoolboy; but as the distance was hardly more than 
 a mile to my home, I very often ran there in the 
 longer intervals between the callings over and before 
 locking up at night. This, I think, was in many ways 
 advantageous to me by keeping up home affections 
 and interests. I remember in the early part of my 
 school life that I often had to run very quickly to be 
 in time, and from being a fleet runner was generally 
 successful; but when in doubt I prayed earnestly to 
 God to help me, and I well remember that I attribut- 
 ed my success to the prayers and not to my quick 
 running, and marvelled how generally I was aided. 
 
 577 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 I have heard my father and elder sister say that I 
 had, as a very young boy, a strong taste for long soli- 
 tary walks ; but what I thought about I know not. I 
 often became quite absorbed, and once, while re- 
 turning to school on the summit of the old fortifica- 
 tions round Shrewsbury, which had been converted 
 into a public foot-path with no parapet on one side, 
 I walked off and fell to the ground, but the height 
 was only seven or eight feet. Nevertheless, the num- 
 ber of thoughts which passed through my mind dur- 
 ing this very short, but sudden and wholly unex- 
 pected fall, was astonishing, and seem hardly com- 
 patible with what physiologists have, I believe, 
 proved about each thought requiring quite an ap- 
 preciable amount of time. 
 
 Nothing could have been worse for the develop- 
 ment of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was 
 strictly classical, nothing else being taught, except a 
 little ancient geography and history. The school as a 
 means of education to me was simply a blank. Dur- 
 ing my whole life I have been singularly incapable 
 of mastering any language. Especial attention was 
 paid to verse-making, and this I could never do well. 
 I had many friends, and got together a good collec- 
 tion of old verses, which by patching together, some- 
 times aided by other boys, I could work into any sub- 
 ject. Much attention was paid to learning by heart 
 the lessons of the previous day; this I could effect 
 with great facility, learning forty or fifty lines of 
 
 578 
 
School Days of Charles Darwin 
 
 Virgil or Homer, while I was in morning chapel; 
 but this exercise was utterly useless, for every verse 
 was forgotten in forty-eight hours. I was not idle, 
 and with the exception of versification, generally 
 worked conscientiously at my classics, not using cribs. 
 The sole pleasure I ever received from such studies, 
 was from some of the odes of Horace, which I ad- 
 mired greatly. 
 
 When I left the school I was for my age neither 
 high nor low in it; and I believe that I was consid- 
 ered by all my masters and by my father as a very or- 
 dinary boy, rather below the common standard in in- 
 tellect. To my deep mortification my father once 
 said to me: "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, 
 and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to your- 
 self and all your family." But my father, who was 
 the kindest man I ever knew, and whose memory I 
 love with all my heart, must have been angry and 
 somewhat unjust when he used such words. 
 
 Looking back as well as I can at my character 
 during my school life, the only qualities which at this 
 period promised well for the future, were, that I had 
 strong and diversified tastes, much zeal for whatever 
 interested me, and a keen pleasure in understanding 
 any complex subject or thing. I was taught Euclid 
 by a private tutor, and I distinctly remember the in- 
 tense satisfaction which the clear geometrical proofs 
 gave me. I remember with equal distinctness the de- 
 light which my uncle gave me (the father of Francis 
 
 579 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Galton) by explaining the principle of the vernier of 
 a barometer. With respect to diversified tastes, inde- 
 pendently of science, I was fond of reading various 
 books, and I used to sit for hours reading the histori- 
 cal plays of Shakespeare, generally in an old window 
 in the thick walls of the school. I read also other 
 poetry, such as Thomson's "Seasons," and the re- 
 cently published poems of Byron and Scott. I men- 
 tion this because later in life I wholly lost, to my 
 great regret, all pleasure from poetry of any kind, 
 including Shakespeare. In connection with pleasure 
 from poetry, I may add that in 1822 a vivid delight 
 in scenery was first awakened in my mind, during a 
 riding tour on the borders of Wales, and this has 
 lasted longer than any other aesthetic pleasure. 
 
 Early in my school-days, a boy had a copy of the 
 "Wonders of the World," which I often read, and 
 disputed with other boys about the veracity of some 
 of the statements; and I believe that this book first 
 gave me a wish to travel in remote countries, which 
 was ultimately fulfilled by the voyage of the 
 "Beagle." In the latter part of my school life I be- 
 came passionately fond of shooting; I do not be- 
 lieve that any one could have shown more zeal for 
 the most holy cause than I did for shooting birds. 
 How well I remember killing my first snipe, and 
 my excitement was so great that I had much diffi- 
 culty in reloading my gun from the trembling of my 
 hands. This taste long continued, and I became a 
 
 580 
 
School Days of Charles Darwin 
 
 very good shot. When at Cambridge I used to prac- 
 tice throwing up my gun to my shoulder before a 
 looking glass to see that I threw it up straight. An- 
 other and better plan was to get a friend to wave about 
 a lighted candle, and then to fire at it with a cap on 
 the nipple, and if the aim was accurate the little puff 
 of air would blow out the candle. The explosion of 
 the cap caused a sharp crack, and I was told that the 
 tutor of the college remarked, "What an extraordi- 
 nary thing it is, Mr. Darwin seems to spend hours in 
 cracking a horse-whip in his room, for I often hear 
 the crack when I pass under his windows." 
 
 I had many friends among the schoolboys, whom 
 I loved dearly, and I think that my disposition was 
 then very affectionate. 
 
 With respect to science, I continued collecting 
 minerals with much zeal, but quite unscientifically — 
 all that I cared about was a new-named mineral, and 
 I hardly attempted to classify them. I must have ob- 
 served insects with some little care, for when ten 
 years old (1819) I went for three weeks to Plas Ed- 
 wards on the seacoast in Wales, I was very much in- 
 terested and surprised at seeing a large black and 
 scarlet Hemipterous insect, many moths (Zygoena), 
 and a Cicindela, which are not found in Shropshire. 
 I almost made up my mind to begin collecting all the 
 insects which I could find dead, for on consulting 
 my sister, I concluded that it was not right to kill in- 
 sects for the sake of making a collection. From read- 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ing White's "Selborne," I took much pleasure in 
 watching the habits of birds, and even made notes on 
 the subject. In my simplicity, I remember wonder- 
 ing why every gentleman did not become an orni- 
 thologist. 
 
 Toward the close of my school life, my brother 
 worked hard at chemistry, and made a fair labora- 
 tory with proper apparatus in the toolhouse in the 
 garden, and I was allowed to aid him as a servant in 
 most of his experiments. He made all the gases and 
 many compounds, and I read with care several books 
 on chemistry, such as Henry and Parkes' "Chemical 
 Catechism." The subject interested me greatly, and 
 we often used to go on working till rather late at 
 night. This was the best part of my education at 
 school, for it showed me practically the meaning of 
 experimental science. The fact that we worked at 
 chemistry somehow got known at school, and as it 
 was an unprecedented fact, I was nicknamed "Gas." 
 I was also once publicly rebuked by the head-master. 
 Dr. Butler, for thus wasting my time on such use- 
 less subjects; and he called me very unjustly a "poco 
 curante," and as I did not understand what he meant, 
 it seemed to me a fearful reproach. 
 
 582 
 
THE PLOT AGAINST BULLAM * 
 
 SOMETHING had to be done about the case of 
 Sergeant BuUam. For years he had ruled his 
 beat with a rod of iron. Many a noble spirit had 
 fallen a prey to his desire for notoriety and promo- 
 tion. The slightest offence, the most innocent or 
 technical infringement of the law, was sufficient pre- 
 text for him to indulge his thirst for student incar- 
 ceration. The lettres de cachet and the Bastile were 
 nothing to Bullam and the Cambridge jail. In the 
 dark days when the ungrateful University town went 
 prohibition, the tyrant had revelled in his opportuni- 
 ties. He had raided several of the club-houses and 
 had charged HoUis Holworthy, the president of one 
 of the clubs, with keeping a liquor nuisance. Of 
 course this little joke on the superb Holworthy had 
 exceedingly pleased all his friends; but it did not 
 excuse Bullam. There had been isolated attempts 
 at resistance and vengeance, and these had sometimes 
 been successful, but never yet had Bullam suffered 
 any great public downfall worthy of his oppression. 
 He was wary to a high degree, and never ventured 
 into the sacred Yard, where his uniform would have 
 been only blue cloth and his buttons common brass. 
 
 * From "Harvard Stories." Sketches of the undergraduates by 
 Waldron Kintzing Post. Copyright, 1893, G. P. Putnam's Sons. 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 The crafty Stoughton, however, had a scheme. 
 He had been pondering over the case for some time, 
 and Dick rarely pondered for nothing. He was 
 known to his intimates as Machiavelli, called Mac 
 the Dago for short. This particular plan was in- 
 deed worthy of his great namesake. He imparted it 
 to Jack Randolph, who had the heaviest personal 
 score against BuUam, and, therefore, the best title to 
 share in his humiliation. They fixed the following 
 night as Bullam's Ides and announced it to all their 
 friends. They posted it in all the clubs, and in every 
 way spread the glad tidings that on the morrow Bul- 
 1am should be utterly cast down. They fixed the 
 hour at about ten o'clock in the evening, and exhorted 
 the people to gather themselves together in a great 
 concourse to see their enemy made a cause of laugh- 
 ter unto them. The promise of the avenging proph- 
 ets was to conduct a triumph along the whole length 
 of Harvard Street and to lead in their train the 
 haughty BuUam, humbled and a captive; he should 
 even act as their body-guard if they so chose, and 
 prevent all interference by his brothers of the force. 
 How this millennial spectacle was to be brought 
 about, they kept carefully secret. 
 
 There is, perhaps, in every man a certain element 
 of moral obliquity, which, as he is put through any 
 civilizing process, is squeezed out of him from time 
 to time in varying forms and quantities. It comes to 
 the surface, makes itself acutely felt and apparent 
 
 584 
 
The Plot Against Bullam 
 
 for a short time, and then drops off — just as a physi- 
 cal poison would act in his veins. At any rate, this 
 is the only theory that can explain the highly repre- 
 hensible but firmly established custom among Har- 
 vard Freshmen of "ragging" signs. "Ragging," un- 
 initiated reader, simply means stealing. What 
 amusement, profit, or glory the Freshman finds in it 
 has never been ascertained. He cannot tell exactly 
 himself, and, as soon as he ceases to be a Freshman, 
 wonders why he ever indulged in the habit. Per- 
 haps the charm lies in the chance of getting into a 
 scrape; but in most instances a sign can be taken with 
 perfect safety. Now, I cannot possibly think why I 
 — but that is another story, as Mr. Kipling says. 
 
 I am going to digress, however, for one story in 
 this connection. Ned Burleigh used to tell it on his 
 room-mate, Steve Hudson. Steve always denied it 
 vehemently, and declared that Burleigh did not even 
 deserve the credit of a fabricator; that the story had 
 been in college for years, and he had heard it told 
 by a '42 man. Ned held that made no difference; 
 that some one had to carry it for our four years and 
 Steve was the best man for the position. According 
 to him, Hudson, in walking back from Boston on a 
 dark night in Freshman year, spied a tempting sign 
 hanging on a door-post. He secured it by some diffi- 
 cult climbing, and tucking it under his overcoat, 
 went on his way. On arriving in his room he an- 
 nounced that he had a prize, and, unbuttoning his 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 coat, he displayed to Burleigh's delighted gaze his 
 only evening suit and the sign "Fresh Paint." 
 
 This practice of stealing signs had made BuUam's 
 meat of many a Freshman. In fact, the diligent Ser- 
 geant depended upon it for most of his xudo^, so Dick 
 Stoughton had determined to play upon his keenness 
 in this respect, and use a sign as the bait with which 
 to hook his fish. On the appointed evening he and 
 Randolph went to Cambridgeport, and bought a bar- 
 ber's pole. They were careful to get a receipted bill 
 from the barber with an accurate description of the 
 pole. The latter was marked with the barber's 
 name in gilt letters, and was small enough to be 
 nearly, but not quite, covered with an overcoat. Thus 
 provided, they started back for Cambridge proper 
 (the Port being usually known as Cambridge im- 
 proper) along Main Street, keeping as much as pos- 
 sible in the shadows. At the end of half a dozen 
 blocks, they came on a policeman, and promptly 
 crossed the street in a most alluring manner. The 
 vigilant officer, noticing the suspicious shape of Ran- 
 dolph's overcoat held under his arm, gave chase. 
 The end of the pole stuck out from the coat, and it 
 was useless for the students to protest that they had 
 nothing that did not belong to them. They assured 
 their captor that the pole was theirs, that they had 
 paid for it and could prove the fact; but he insisted 
 upon taking them before the captain of the precinct. 
 
 The captain had had a hard day, and was prepar- 
 
 586 
 
Scbool Bai^s of Cbarlee Barwin 
 
 "The shopman made a rush at me, so I dropped the cakes 
 and ran for dear life." 
 
 —Vol. XV, p. 576. 
 
The Plot Against Bullam 
 
 ing to go to bed when they were brought before him. 
 He was tired and cross, and his humor was not im- 
 proved by this new arrival. When Stoughton 
 showed the receipt, however, he at once discharged 
 the prisoners with much pleasure, and reprimanded 
 the overcareful officer. 
 
 The two then went on to the next guardian of 
 Main Street, and he bit equally well. They warned 
 him of the result, and gave him their word of honor 
 that the pole was not stolen. He hesitated, and for 
 a moment they feared that he was going to be decent 
 enough to believe them. But he was a new and zeal- 
 ous recruit on the force and the bait was too inviting; 
 so he decided not to trust them. He was as polite as 
 possible about it, and when he even apologized for 
 not taking their word, they came near melting and 
 showing the receipt. But the fall of Bullam was not 
 to be averted, simply because gentler tyrants might 
 be entrained. So back they went to headquarters. 
 
 The captain came down in a red dressing-gown, 
 the skirt of which flapped idly in the breeze that 
 came through an open window in the office. His bare 
 feet were shoved into a pair of carpet slippers, each 
 foot in the wrong slipper. With one hand he held 
 a candle that wiggled in the candlestick and dropped 
 wax on his wrist, and with the other hand tried to 
 keep the dressing-gown about his person. His frame 
 of mind faithfully carried out the spirit of the pic- 
 ture. To any guilty prisoner he would have been 
 
 587 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 indeed a terrifying spectacle ; but he could do noth- 
 ing to the innocent and insulted gentlemen who had 
 been haled before him. He therefore relieved him- 
 self on their captor. The poor man got such a 
 dressing down, that when they left the office, Ran- 
 dolph presented him with full forgiveness, a dollar 
 bill, and the advice to learn as soon as possible to tell 
 a Senior from a Freshman. 
 
 The next policeman they met was old George 
 Smith. He held them up with a look of surprise, 
 and a remark that he thought they had been in col- 
 lege too long to be "ragging" barber's poles.. When 
 they explained to him, however, he of course believed 
 them, and grinned as he perceived something in the 
 wind. 
 
 "It is lucky that was George^" said Stoughton, as 
 they went on. "If we had struck a strange cop, 
 who thought we were liars, we should have brought 
 down the wrong bird. That police captain is just 
 exactly primed and loaded to the muzzle, and all 
 ready to go ofif. Now for BuUam!" 
 
 They had now reached Quincy Square, and saw 
 the fated form of Bullam loom in the offing. They 
 made for him boldly; there was no need of finessing 
 in his case. The moment his hawk eye caught sight 
 of the ill-concealed pole, he bore down on them with 
 a grim joy. 
 
 "What have you got under that coat?" he de- 
 manded in his usual suave tone. 
 
 588 
 
The Plot Against Bullam 
 
 "None of your business," responded Jack Ran- 
 dolph, with an inward chuckle. 
 
 "It isn't, eh! Do you think I can't see that pole 
 a-sticking out there? Do you think you can steal 
 signs under my very nose? You come along with 
 me now, and we'll see whether it's none of my busi- 
 ness." 
 
 "If your insulting remarks refer to this barber- 
 pole," replied Randolph, producing the pole with 
 ostentatious confidence, "allow me to tell you that it 
 belongs to us, and we have a perfect right to carry it 
 wherever we please. Although, as I said before, it 
 is none of your business, I will condescend to let you 
 know that I bought it lately, and have a receipt for 
 it in my pocket." 
 
 "You can't give me no such bluff as that," sneered 
 Bullam. "You can tell that to the captain of the 
 precinct. I'll give you a chance to show your 
 receipt." 
 
 "Look here, my man" (nothing makes a gentle- 
 man of Bullam's class more angry than to call him 
 "my man"), answered Stoughton, "you don't deserve 
 it after the language you have used to us, but, never- 
 theless, I give you fair warning not to do anything 
 of the kind. If you take us to the captain, you will 
 get into trouble." 
 
 Bullam was beside himself. The more they said 
 to him the more furious he ibecame, and finally threat- 
 ened to use his club "if they gave him any more 
 
 589 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 guff." So, in high delight, the two injured youths 
 took their way a third time toward the house of the 
 captain. 
 
 The policeman who had last had them in charge 
 turned quickly away as they passed, and shoved his 
 handkerchief into his mouth. It was a grateful balm 
 to the new man to see a veteran going into the same 
 trap that had just lacerated him. Moreover, Bullam 
 was quite as unpopular in the force as with the 
 students. 
 
 All was dark in the house where lay the uneasy 
 head that wore the crown of the precinct. Bullam 
 rang the bell, with a ferocious glare at his prison- 
 ers, as though tolling their death knell. A minute 
 afterward a window opened above, and a head was 
 thrust forth. 
 
 "Who is there?" bellowed a voice, now familiar 
 to our much-arrested pair. 
 
 "Sergeant Bullam, sir, with an arrest." 
 
 Dick and Jack took care to stand under a gas- 
 lamp. 
 
 "Have you got two men there with a barber's 
 pole?" asked the voice, rising from a roar to a 
 shriek. 
 
 "Yes, sir," chuckled Bullam, gleefully, mistak- 
 ing the direction of his superior's wrath. "I 
 caught — " 
 
 "Didn't they tell you that it was their property, 
 bought and paid for?" 
 
 590 
 
The Plot Against Bullam 
 
 "Yes, they had some cock-and-bull — " 
 "Stop!" thundered the captain, "you're too -- — 
 ready to think every gentleman you meet is a liar. 
 
 Don't you be so hot after your promotion. 
 
 If you'll give more attention to your important du- 
 ties, and less to making capital out of the students, 
 you'll get ahead faster. Now, you go all the way 
 back with these gentlemen, and see that they are not 
 troubled any more. If they are brought here agam 
 I'll know who to blame for it. I'll have you up for a 
 breach of special duty, and make it hot for you. 
 What's more, you treat them civilly. I'll have no 
 bullies on my squad. If this man gives you boys any 
 lip, come around and see me about it in the mornmg. 
 Now get out of here, and you, Bullam, mind what I 
 
 tell you, and be — careful." 
 
 All the blanks in the foregoing address were filled 
 in with deep color, and the window went down with 
 a slam that heavily sank in the sickened soul of the 
 astonished Bullam. 
 
 "Come along, sergeant," cried Randolph, cheer- 
 fully, shouldering the barber-pole. He and Dick 
 led the way back through Quincy Square, whistling 
 the "Rogue's March" and the "Pere de la Victoire. 
 The overwhelmed Bullam fell in behind. As they 
 turned down Harvard Street, he walked slowly and 
 tried to drop back to a distance which would dis- 
 guise his connection with the parade; but his con- 
 querors allowed no such break in the procession. 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 They slowed down, too, and kept about ten feet in 
 front of him. 
 
 On the first corner of Harvard Street were sta- 
 tioned three or four small boys (the occasionally use- 
 ful Cambridge muckers) employed as vedettes. 
 Upon the approach of the triumph, they dashed off 
 to the different clubs and gathering-places where the 
 long oppressed people were eagerly awaiting the ar- 
 rival of BuUam in chains. These all flocked to Har- 
 vard Street, Hudson bringing his cornet, Dixey a 
 pair of cymbals, and Ned Burleigh flourishing the 
 drum-major's baton, with which he had done mighty 
 service in the last torch-light procession. It was go- 
 ing to be the most glorious triumph ever seen in the 
 classic shades since Washington rode through them 
 on his white charger. 
 
 But, alas! what a trivial thing may upset the 
 grandest strategy; what a petty boor may defeat 
 Ulysses! Yet it was not such a petty boor who 
 caused the ruin in this case; it was the Cambridge 
 mucker, and he should never have been overlooked 
 by a man of Machiavelli Stoughton's experience. 
 Those who know the Cantabrigian guerilla respect 
 his power, though they abhor his ways. An influ- 
 ential member of this free lancehood, having de- 
 manded a quarter for the vedette service before men- 
 tioned, and being refused employmnt, nursed a vin- 
 dictive spirit. He gathered a band on Harvard 
 Street, near to the advanced scouts, and waited to 
 
 592 
 
The Plot Against Bullam 
 
 see what was going to happen. As soon as Stough- 
 ton and Randolph came up with the attendant Bul- 
 lam, this unforeseen enemy raised a joyful shout and 
 marshalled his comrades behind the trio. As they 
 proceeded along the street, he yelled to every mucker 
 they passed, "Hey, ragsy, come on! Here's two o' 
 de Ha'vards gettin' run in!" 
 
 Muckers gathered from every side like jackals, 
 and Bullam, realizing the sudden turn in the aspect 
 of afifairs, no longer lagged behind, but forged up 
 alongside of his would-be tamers, and assumed his 
 old fierce and haughty air. He could maintain his 
 dignity before the public anyway. 
 
 This was the way Dick Stoughton's great triumph 
 looked when it reached a point opposite the Yard. 
 The expectant crowd of undergraduates looked for 
 a moment in surprise and grief, then, notwithstand- 
 ing their disappointment at BuUam's escape, a great 
 roar of laughter went up, as they concluded that the 
 two daring plotters had egregiously failed in their 
 attempt and were on their way to a dungeon. 
 
 "Let's bail them out," cried two or three. "Bail 
 nothing, you idiots," shouted the chagrined Stough- 
 ton, "we are not arrested; this man is our body- 
 guard. Come on, and we will take the procession 
 around the Square and up Garden Street." 
 
 This had been Dick's original intention as to the 
 line of march ; but just at this moment the Dean of 
 Harvard College came around the corner of Hol- 
 
 S93 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 yoke Street and stopped short. In the direction of 
 Harvard Square lay the jail, and Stoughton at once 
 decided that a triumph of such uncertain appear- 
 ance had better be brought to a close right where 
 they were. He and Randolph halted, therefore, 
 and, waving aloft the barber's pole, gave BuUam 
 their gracious permission to depart. As a little ex- 
 tra effect they ordered him to disperse the rabble, 
 to which mandate he payed no attention. Then, with 
 as much dignity as possible, they retreated into Fos- 
 ter's. It was the best effort they could make to re- 
 trieve the day, a weak ending to so magnificent a 
 scheme. 
 
 They did not hear the last of their "grand pa- 
 geant" for a long time; but their own recollection 
 of it will always be softened by the memory of those 
 sweet moments beneath the captain's window. 
 
 594 
 
CHUMS* 
 
 T^HERE is often a tenderness beyond common 
 *- friendship in the life of college chums; a do- 
 mestic and almost conjugal relation springs from 
 their little housekeeping. Yet chumlock, like wed- 
 lock, is a lottery. I even knew a Junior whose expe- 
 rience had been so unlucky that at last, in a fit of cyn- 
 ical desperation, he advertised for a roommate. The 
 advertisement was inserted under "Matrimonial" in 
 the "College Courant," and bulletined in the uni- 
 versity drugstore. It was answered ; but the saying 
 about college was that Robinson had advertised for 
 a chum in an apothecary's shop and had got a pill. 
 
 My Freshman chum was from Illinois, though 
 there was nothing about him to suggest the broad 
 prairies of the West. On the contrary, he was 
 niggling, anxious, near-sighted, yet absent-minded 
 withal — so absent-minded, in fact, that once when he 
 started to throw a suit of clothes into his bureau 
 drawer and at the same instant to spit in the fire, he 
 spat in the drawer and threw the clothes in the fire. 
 He kept a journal, to improve what he was pleased 
 to call his "style." I used to read selections from it 
 to classmates who happened to drop in while he was 
 
 * From "Ways of Yale," by Henry A. Beers. Copyright, 1895, 
 Henry Holt & Co. 
 
 595 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 out, and it never failed to entertain the company. 
 His views of college life had been formed from a 
 reading of that valuable treatise, Todd's "Student's 
 Manual." He was deeply impressed by the necessity 
 of rising at 6 A. M. to prepare the morning lesson, and 
 had bought an alarm-clock to call him early. There 
 was always something irregular about the perform- 
 ances of this timepiece. On going to bed he would 
 set the alarm for six. At first it used to go off at mid- 
 night; but he rectified this with such success that it 
 declined to go off at all. He generally awoke of his 
 own accord a little before six, and waited for the 
 alarm to strike. Then, noticing that it was past the 
 hour, he would get up and set it off himself, and, hav- 
 ing thus discharged his duty to the faithful monitor, 
 return to bed and sleep till the seven o'clock prayer- 
 bell rang. He was so near-sighted that without his 
 glasses, which we used sometimes to secrete, he was 
 as helpless as the Phorcydes when their one eye had 
 been borrowed by a neighbor. The bridge of his 
 nose being thin, he was torn in his mind between 
 deciduous glasses, with limber springs, which he was 
 always shedding, and glasses with stiff springs that 
 pinched his nose as in a vise and gradually wore it 
 away till it hung by a thread. His classmates, with 
 that delicate consideration for one another's infirmi- 
 ties which we showed in the consulship of Plancus, 
 called him "Lippus," or "Moon-Smeller." But he 
 was of a self-complacent turn, and defended his posi- 
 
 596 
 
Ch 
 
 urns 
 
 tion by an article in the "Lit," entitled "On the Dis- 
 advantages arising from not being Near-Sighted," 
 which was greeted with much derision. 
 
 We had obtained, by special favor, an apartment 
 in Old Divinity, half of which building had already 
 been torn down to make room for the foundation of 
 Durfee. The other half was allowed to stand for a 
 while for the accommodation of its lodgers. The 
 north wall of the bedrooms in our section, however, 
 had been cut away, so that, from Elm Street, Divin- 
 ity showed a raw end, with amputated timber stick- 
 ing out in the air, ragged edges of brick walls and 
 lath-and-plaster partitions, and tiers of interest- 
 ing interiors exposed, like cuts in old editions of 
 "Le Diable Boiteux," representing the stories of 
 houses in Madrid laid open to the eyes of Asmodeus 
 and his pupil. The modest tenants of the college, of 
 course, brought their bedroom furniture into their 
 studies, and used their bisected dormitories only as 
 balconies, sitting out there in the summer evenings 
 and holding little receptions of friends, who came 
 to smoke a cigar a la belle etoile and survey the curi- 
 ous state of the premises. I persuaded my chum to 
 move his bed inside, to sleep and even to bathe in the 
 study, but he obstinately refused to bring in the rest 
 of his chamber-set. Accordingly, passers-by on Elm 
 Street were daily refreshed by the prospect of a row 
 of trousers, coats, night-shirts, etc., hung upon the 
 outer wall; and every morning, about seven, a mob 
 
 597 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 of mechanics and shop-girls collected to witness my 
 chum perform his toilet in blank unconsciousness that 
 he was become a hissing and a reproach. As he 
 gauged others' vision by his own, he always main- 
 tained, when I remonstrated with him, that no one 
 could see him so far away as Elm Street. At last a 
 note fro.m the Faculty obliged him to withdraw his 
 effects into "the estres of the grisly place," and to 
 leave nothing for the public gaze beyond a row of 
 hooks, a few chairs, and the outside of the study 
 door. 
 
 This chum was a cloth-shoe kind of man. There 
 was a faint odor of "Brown's Bronchial Troches" al- 
 ways about him. He kept an account of his expendi- 
 tures in a blankbook, containing such entries as 
 "April 19, spent nine cents for postage-stamps; ditto, 
 six cents horse-car fare to East Rock; ditto 20, gave 
 two cents to hand-organ man," etc., etc. He brushed 
 his preposterous clothes assiduously. In winter he 
 wore a red worsted tippet and a cap with a fur but- 
 ton on top. If the ground was wet, he heedfully 
 turned up his trousers about the ankle. If it threat- 
 ened snow, he carried an umbrella tied about the 
 waist with a shoe-string. When I watched the figure 
 of my chum thus equipped moving slowly along in 
 front of the colleges, there was something so exas- 
 perating about it that I could hardly keep from 
 throwing things at him. 
 
 A very different person was my roommate of 
 
 598 
 
Ch 
 
 urns 
 
 Sophomore year. His name was Rushton, and he 
 first endeared himself to me by borrowing my tat- 
 tered copy of Arnold's "Greek Prose Composition," 
 carrying it off to recitation, and bringing me back in 
 its stead a clean copy belonging to a man in his di- 
 vision, named Fitch. On the fly-leaf, right under 
 Fitch's sign manual, Rushton had written a graceful 
 little dedication in verse, beginning, 
 
 "This book was once the book of Fitch, 
 From out the mazy depths of which 
 ' ' He fished most sweet and ancient Greek, 
 
 And made it, dead, alive to speak." 
 
 Such useful qualities in a chum were not to be 
 overlooked, and I at once proposed and was accepted. 
 I may say here that personal property in text-books 
 was a right unrecognized consule Planco. There 
 was a beautiful community in the aids and appliances 
 of learning, a genuine republic of letters. It was rare 
 to find a man with a text-book in his possession which 
 had his own name on it. I have bought of the un- 
 blushing Hoadley — the keeper of the college book- 
 store — the same books several times over; books 
 which I recognized as formerly mine, but which had 
 strayed back in some way to their fountain-head. 
 Apropos of this, I find the following entry in the rec- 
 ords of the Red Letter Club, in the handwriting of 
 one of our neighbors: "Last Saturday afternoon, B. 
 and R. had another lucrative vendue of books which 
 
 599 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 careless parties have left in their room. I was my- 
 self made to pay fifty cents for a wretched old Ger- 
 man grammar which, I have every reason to believe, 
 belonged to Campbell." From the proceeds of these 
 autcion-sales was formed a sinking fund devoted to 
 the purchase of rabbits and ale. In justice to our- 
 selves, it should be said that we sometimes invited the 
 — alleged — former owners of the books to share the 
 feast with ys. This imperfect development of the in- 
 stitution of private ownership extended even to arti- 
 cles of clothing. There were about a dozen dress 
 suits in the class, and it was found on trial that they 
 would fit every one equally well. But my chum 
 often complained, while making his toilet of a morn- 
 ing, that I bought my collars too small for his neck. 
 When "the galled jade," as we called our laundress, 
 brought home our week's washing, there was always 
 a pleasing excitement in watching her unload her 
 basket. "Chum, look over the clean filth," Rushton 
 would call out from the lounge, "and see if there's 
 anything new. I hope she put in some of Harding's 
 handkerchiefs: I like them better than Blake's, and 
 Hubbard's are about played out." 
 
 We began housekeeping with five chairs. These 
 were soon reduced to two, and then to one. My 
 chum did not sit in so many chairs at once as Edward 
 Everett's roommate is said to have done. Still, to 
 persons of a sedentary habit, seats of some kind are 
 almost a necessity; and it became a question how we 
 
 600 
 
Ch 
 
 urns 
 
 were to replace ours. Presentation Day was our 
 great annual opportunity; for then numbers of chairs 
 were taken out into the entries and the yard, for the 
 ladies to sit in during the reading of class-histories; 
 and, after the assembly rose and followed the proces- 
 sion to the library to witness the planting of the ivy, 
 the frugal householder who was on the lookout for 
 chairs could get a very good assortment to start the 
 new year with. But Presentation was still far dis- 
 tant when our last chair gave out. In this strait we 
 hinted to our sweep that there were large deposits of 
 chairs stored about college — in the cellar of South, 
 e.g. — which at present were merely matter out of 
 place, and that he would deserve well of his country 
 who should put some of them where they would do 
 the most good. The hint was enough. One night we 
 were awakened by a low, chuckling sound, and by 
 the dim firelight in our outer room we discerned a 
 Senegambian procession, each member of which car- 
 ried a pair of chairs, which he stood softly upon their 
 feet and then withdrew. It was all like a dream ; but 
 next morning there the chairs were, in wood and 
 cane. It was perhaps in part the knowledge of this 
 guilty secret which kept us ever after in thraldom to 
 our aged sweep. He used to chuckle gently, as 
 he dusted the ill-gotten things, and say, with a 
 shake of the head: "This chair gettin' pretty 
 rickety. Good deal like d'ole man: won't las' 
 much longer." 
 
 6oi 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 But, indeed, my chum and myself, being both af- 
 flicted with moral cowardice, were shamefully bul- 
 lied by all our employes. The "galled jade" so 
 wrought upon our feelings by her widowed state and 
 by the two small orphans who sometimes came with 
 her of a Monday and lurked bashfully in the crack of 
 the door, that we paid our wash bills without a mur- 
 mur, and without the heart to mention the disappear- 
 ance of that long caravan of shirts and cuffs which 
 she had burned, lacerated, and abstracted at various 
 times. Our sweep, of whom we stood in the most 
 terror, was a smooth old swindler, with a molasses- 
 candy complexion and great elasticity of conscience. 
 Every now and then he would vanish for a week, 
 leaving us to make the fire and fetch the water. Un- 
 der the pressure of these chores, desperation brought 
 a kind of boldness. 
 
 "Rushton," I would say, "you have got to bully 
 White for this when he comes back." 
 
 "No, chum; you bully him. I'm afraid." 
 
 "So am I afraid." 
 
 "Well, let's flip up a cent for it." 
 
 "No, sir: it's your turn. I did it last time." 
 
 "The deuce you did! I heard what you said to 
 him. Do you call that bullying?" 
 
 "Well, then, we'll both do it." 
 
 So, when our coffee-colored tyrant appeared at 
 the end of tKe week, with an obsequious face, but 
 limping and groaning aloud, as if in pain, I would 
 
 602 
 
Ch 
 
 urns 
 
 commence, in a trembling voice : "Well, White, we 
 haven't seen you for quite a while." 
 
 ''No, sah," he would answer, with a reproach- 
 ful look; "d'ole man 'mos' lef you for good dis time. 
 Started to get out of bed las' Monday mornin', and 
 d'lumbago took me awful bad. Haint set foot to de 
 floor sence. Ole man had a mighty narrow shave of 
 it dis time. Wife she's been sick, too: got her ole 
 complaint — twistin' of de long bowel, she calls it. 
 'Mos' as bad as d'lumbago 'self." 
 
 In face of such accumulated miseries our stern 
 intent dissolved, and, as neither of us ever got courage 
 to dismiss him, things went on as before. We after- 
 ward found out that our sweep was an energetic ex- 
 horter at "nigger union," It used to be customary 
 for squads of students to visit that house of worship 
 on Sunday evenings — not, it must be confessed, in an 
 entirely devotional spirit. On one such occasion, our 
 sweep having been absent from his duties several 
 days, presumably tossing upon a bed of pain, we were 
 surprised to see him in the pulpit, sustained on either 
 side by a sturdy deacon, while he called sinners to re- 
 pentance with an expenditure of horsepower that 
 would have sufficed, if applied along the line of his 
 work, to black our boots for a week and to carry a 
 hogshead of water from the south pump to our bed- 
 room. Whether he recognized us in the congregation 
 we never knew. He certainly did not change color. 
 
 One of the fellest destroyers of chairs was a class- 
 
 603 y^i_ ^^_^^ 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 mate and frequent visitor, whom we called Thersites. 
 He was a small, light man, and it seemed incredible 
 that he should break so many chairs in a term. But 
 it was his emphasis that did it, rather than his weight. 
 He used the chairs as instruments for expressing that 
 loathing and contempt for most of the class of '69 
 which he could only imperfectly utter in words. "Ye 
 gods!" he would shout, at the mention of some class- 
 mate who, having recently taken a prize in Linonia 
 prize-debate, was spoken of as a sure man for a "Lit." 
 editorship next year; "Dusenbury a 'Lit.' editor! 
 One of Nature's feeble men! A microcephalous 
 idiot! An ass and the foal of an ass! Rotten pump- 
 kin is granite to Dusenbury!" And crack would go 
 a chair. 
 
 "Look out, Billy!" we would remonstrate. "Calm 
 yourself; calm yourself. There are worse men in 
 the world than poor Dusenbury." 
 
 "Hang your old chair! Oh, you don't suffer from 
 these asses as I do. I tell you, the thought of them is 
 actual physical pain to me." 
 
 And, abandoning the wreck of the chair, he 
 would grovel on the floor and groan aloud. Where 
 art thou, oh, Thersites, kindest-hearted of misan- 
 thropes? Whither in this asinine world hast thou 
 wandered? I would thou wert even now before me: 
 
 "That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass 
 Unpolicied." 
 
 For Thersites was no respecter of persons. 
 
 604 
 
Ch 
 
 urns 
 
 Our stove was a grate whose modest dimensions 
 gave no token of an appetite so abnormal that Rush- 
 ton declared it had a tape-worm. When well fed it 
 gave out too much heat — became, in fact, as my chum 
 complained, "a young hell on legs;" and when we 
 sat around it discussing theology on Sunday evenings, 
 the Lares and Penates seemed to dance visibly upon 
 the miniature iron hearth, like imps before the 
 threshold of their home of pain. When times were 
 flush, we glutted its maw with the best of Lehigh; 
 but during the third quarter of a term there comes a 
 slack time in college finances, when it is impossible to 
 borrow and hard to get tick. Then we were driven 
 to fill the vacuum in our coal-bin by witty expedi- 
 ents. First we consumed spare articles of furniture, 
 portions of the college fence, etc. At last we had re- 
 course to the partitions of our coal-closet. As our 
 neighbors practiced similar economies, postern gates 
 and intricate passages from room to room were 
 opened through the walls, which were often con- 
 venient when a sudden attack by the Faculty on one 
 entry made it prudent to escape Into another. The 
 chief objection to the planking of our coal-closets, 
 considered as fuel, was the length of the timbers. We 
 had no means of reducing these to the right size ex- 
 cept by putting the ends of the beams in the stove 
 and resting the other ends on a semicircle of chairs 
 in the middle of the room. As the boards burned 
 down, we shoved them further in, and the half-circle 
 
 605 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 of chairs, with a constantly diminishing radius, ap- 
 proached nearer and nearer to the stove, until the 
 planks reached a shortness that enabled them to go 
 into the grate; and then we occupied the chairs our- 
 selves and pantingly inhaled the smoke with which 
 this process had filled the room. 
 
 As to our bedstead, very exaggerated rumors were 
 current in the class, traceable to the secretary of the 
 Red Letter Club, who, having once had a glimpse 
 of our penetralia, brought back into the outer world 
 the following injurious report: 
 
 "The room itself is a sort of chaos of seedy valises, 
 broken chairs, candle-boxes, decayed boots, and 
 valueless raiment; while a very chaotic thing indeed 
 is the iron bedstead, with three legs, aerated bedding, 
 and flaming quilts." 
 
 Now, some support may have been given to this 
 slander by our having bestowed upon our bedstead 
 the pet name of Tripos. But this was not meant to be 
 accurately descriptive: the fourth leg was there, 
 though not usually In working order. Those who are 
 familiar with the anatomy of an iron bedstead know 
 that the legs are kept upright by a peg inserted in a 
 hole at the junction of the leg with the horizontal 
 frame of the structure. This peg was missing in the 
 case of our southeast leg. We had replaced it by a 
 nail, which slipped out and disappeared; then by a 
 lead-pencil, which broke. Finally, we gave it up 
 and allowed that corner of the couch to repose gently 
 
 606 
 
chums 
 
 upon the floor. This gave an angle to our slumbers 
 of about fifteen degrees — the same which is given 
 by the "Adirondack Patent Camp Lounge." We 
 grew in time to prefer this slight slope to the strictly 
 horizontal plane of ordinary beds, and made no fur- 
 ther efforts to restore the fourth leg to a vertical po- 
 sition. Originally my chum had possessed a wooden 
 four-poster of his own, but this had disappeared about 
 the middle of Sophomore year. Whether, like Mar- 
 gery Daw, he had sold it in a moment of recklessness, 
 or whether we had used it for fuel, I have forgotten. 
 I only know that in very cold weather, when our 
 coal-bin was low, the life of any wooden thing at No. 
 — North College was apt to be a short one. 
 
 Through Junior year I continued nominally to 
 room with Rushton. But in the second term a differ- 
 ence of opinion between the Faculty and myself on 
 the subject of my attendance at morning prayers 
 forced me to pitch my tent outside the College Yard. 
 Under a strict construction of the law I should have 
 gone away from New Haven altogether; but this 
 would have been inconvenient. I therefore satisfied 
 the spirit of my sentence by retiring to a country-seat 
 on the Canal Railroad, which was remote enough to 
 amount to a practical banishment, though technically 
 within the limits of the town. I owed this suburban 
 asylum to the hospitality of a friend in the Sheffield 
 Scientific School, who had lived a life of retirement 
 there for over a year. I stayed with him for a month 
 
 607 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 or more, and the episode was unique in my college 
 life. The home of my rustication was an old-fash- 
 ioned house, with high pitched roof and dormer win- 
 dows, standing in a grove of pines, among whose 
 murmurous needles the March wind made all day 
 and night a sound as of the sea. There was a de- 
 cayed garden, with box borders and althaea trees. 
 The front gate was spanned by a wooden arch, which 
 gave a triumphal efifect to the simple act of entering 
 the yard. Behind the house was a hill covered with 
 woods, and in front, at the distance of a few rods, ran 
 the railway. We were as secluded from the currents 
 of college life, or indeed from the life of the city 
 whose factory whistles ble>v close by, as if we had so- 
 journed on the highest hill-top of Litchfield County. 
 Never by any chance did a tutor or a student stray 
 our way. Mechanics with their tin pails went up and 
 down the railway-track at morning and evening. 
 The few neighbors who dwelt beyond us in the same 
 valley passed the house occasionally. But the farm- 
 ers driving in or out of town took the highroad on the 
 ridge behind us, or the long boulevard a quarter of a 
 mile beyond the railway. Hardly a dozen vehicles a 
 day disturbed the dust in front of our garden fence. 
 
 My host — and chum for the nonce — was a man of 
 intense application. He was taking a course in the 
 chemical laboratory, and he disappeared every morn- 
 ing after breakfast and returned to dinner in the 
 evening, lunching in town to save time. Thus I was 
 
 608 
 
chums 
 
 alone all day. The season was early spring, the 
 weather raw and blustering; so I stayed indoors and 
 read steadily. My chum's room was a pleasant one, 
 with a high ceiling and an open fireplace. The walls 
 were hung with trophies of a year's survey in Ari- 
 zona — a water canteen, a Mexican stirrup, a lasso 
 which reflected the firelight from its coils of hard, 
 shining leather, and cheerful photographs of debris 
 slopes, canons, alkaline deserts, and sage bushes. Af- 
 ter reading myself into shreds and beginning to yield 
 to the drowsiness produced by the singing of the logs 
 in the fire and the monotonous rattle of the window 
 sash in the wind, I would get into my overcoat about 
 five o'clock and set out for a constitutional and an ap- 
 petite against the dinner hour. It would not do to be 
 seen in New Haven, and so, for fear of peripatetic 
 tutors, I confined my walks mostly to the railroad 
 track, which ran out through Newhallville into the 
 fiat agricultural region beyond. The Canal Railroad 
 — "the raging canawl," as my chum called it — was 
 a leisurely and primitive road. The trains which oc- 
 casionally appeared upon it, proceeding northward 
 in a deliberate manner, seemed not to obey any time 
 schedule, but to start whenever there were people 
 enough at the station to make up a earful — country 
 neighbors, in the main, I should judge, returning 
 from a day's shopping in town. And the conductor, 
 having noted their familiar faces on the down trip in 
 the morning, would obligingly wait till he was sure 
 
 609 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 they were all on board for the home voyage before he 
 gave the signal to get under way. I often followed, 
 in fancy, the progress of one of these "Bummelziige" 
 as it disappeared in the horizon. I thought of all the 
 little bewhittled wooden station-houses by which it 
 would pause, each with Something-1;^7/^ painted on a 
 board over the door; of the lonely country roads 
 where the inevitable farmer, jogging homeward in 
 his wagon, would sit waiting at the crossing for the 
 cars to pass; of the backdoor yards — chickens roost- 
 ing on the telegraph wire — where it would slow up 
 to deliver a letter or bundle to a woman in a check 
 apron coming down to the fence from the kitchen 
 door; and how then it would leave the region of vil- 
 lages altogether and come to where the grass begins 
 to grow between the sleepers, and the train, going 
 slower and slower in the gathering dusk, would 
 finally come to a standstill In a wide plain, with no 
 house in sight. Once I even boarded a train and rode 
 for two or three stations. There was only one pas- 
 senger car, and it had, as I had expected, a domestic 
 air — more like a private parlor, or say the conference 
 room of a country meeting house, than like a rail car. 
 The passengers all appeared to know one another. 
 Two or three of them who stood on the platform ad- 
 dressed the solitary brakeman as "Charlie." The 
 conductor, after going through the form of taking up 
 my ticket, sat down and conversed with different ac- 
 quaintances. He had the reposeful manner of one 
 
 6io 
 
chums 
 
 who knew that there was no chance of a collision on 
 that road, that the track was clear from terminus to 
 terminus. 
 
 A good tramp up the track and down again, with 
 a glass of new ale and a butter-cracker at the grocery 
 in Newhallville (a resort of merit, where was much 
 real life going on), shook off the afternoon's drowsi- 
 ness, and put me in trim for dinner, when my chum 
 arrived with books from the library, news from 
 Academus, the daily papers, and sometimes letters 
 from confiding parents, who figured me still dwell- 
 ing at No. — North Middle College, on the "second 
 stage of discipline," and knew not, alas! that I had al- 
 ready entered the purgatory of that third and final 
 stage. My chum's budget came like "hints and 
 tokens of the world to spirits folded in the womb." 
 For in truth the loneliness of my existence began to 
 wear upon me. It was that time of year when the 
 lengthening days bring no vernal thoughts, but the 
 pale, cold light lingers cheerlessly over the naked 
 landscape. The spring is full of hope, but from the 
 middle of March to the middle of April it is hope de- 
 ferred, and the melancholy twilights are full of dis- 
 quiet and regret. A fatiguing wind blows continu- 
 ally; cold, but with no tonic in its coldness such as the 
 winds of autumn have. From the ditches along the 
 railway embankment, the bed of the old Hamden 
 and Hampshire Canal, and from the ponds and 
 swamps of the level land, rose the croak of frogs, 
 
 6ii 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 subdued to a monotonous ring as of distant sleigh- 
 bells, and giving fit expression to the feeling of the 
 season and the hour. 
 
 This interregnum chum of mine was a man of 
 Spartan habits. To keep himself in trim for work, 
 every morning before breakfast he ate a soda cracker 
 (by way of foundation), ran a mile, and, returning 
 took a cold bath in his hat-tub. We slept in a wintry 
 room under the roof, and often he would wake me 
 by his yells as the icy water poured down his back. 
 The instrument of his torture was a sponge, which he 
 had brought with him from his boyhood's home. It 
 was originally, I think, a carriage sponge. At all 
 events, like Captain Costigan's hair-brush, it was "an 
 ancient and wondrous piece," having the softness and 
 absorbent power of pumice stone. The water poured 
 through its perforations without soaking into its cel- 
 lular tissue in the least, while its surface rasped the 
 skin like a strigil. Long practice and an intimate 
 knowledge of the dip of the labyrinths and galleries 
 that honeycombed this monumental rock-work en- 
 abled its owner to carry up about half a pint of water 
 in it. But a red artillerist in the class, who once par- 
 took of our hospitalities over-night, and was invited 
 to use the sponge in the morning, spoke of it bitterly 
 as a "d — d breech-loading nutmeg grater." My chum 
 tried to persuade me to eat a cracker and run, but I 
 preferred my exercise in a more conservative shape. 
 As to the bath, I agreed with him in principle, but 
 
 612 
 
Ch 
 
 urns 
 
 my practice was more flexible than his own, varying 
 somewhat with the temperature. He said that a man 
 who didn't have at least one tub a day was a cad. But 
 I asked him whether he supposed that Sir Philip Sid- 
 ney committed total immersion daily. In Germany, 
 I afterward noticed, a bath is not undertaken in this 
 leichtsinnig way of ours, but only with medical ad- 
 vice and after long and prayerful consideration. 
 
 Perhaps the most remarkable of all my chums 
 was he of Senior year. Barlow had a vivid though 
 prosaic imagination, which delighted in grotesque 
 and sometimes loathsome images. I once heard him 
 gravely declare that, having been in Switzerland 
 while a boy, he had seen a cretin wheeling his goitre 
 before him on a wheelbarrow. It was Barlow who 
 fixed upon one of the tutors the name of Glass-legs. 
 He asserted that the tutor in question was possessed 
 of a delusion that his legs were made of glass, and 
 that, at seasons when his monomania became acute, he 
 clamored aloud to be laid in sawdust. He said that 
 he once met him on Chapel Street carrying a large 
 covered basket on his arm, and that, stopping to speak 
 with him for a moment, he accidentally jostled the 
 basket, whereupon his interlocutor, glancing nerv- 
 ously at his precious burden, said in an impressive 
 whisper: "Be careful, please; this basket contains my 
 legs, and they are very brittle. A slight jar might 
 produce fracture." 
 
 Barlow also asserted that he was present once at 
 
 613 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 morning chapel when Tutor Cosine, whose duty it 
 was to conduct the exercises, began his prayer as fol- 
 lows : "O Thou who dost cause the planets to revolve 
 in their elliptical orbits — the force of attraction vary- 
 ing inversely as the square of the distance." His im- 
 agination was so much in excess of his learning that 
 it often led him into difficulties at examinations and 
 otherwise. Thus, at Sophomore annual, when the 
 Faculty made their usual unsuccessful effort to drop 
 him, he had got a passage from the "Agamemnon," 
 descriptive of that hero's assassination by Clytem- 
 nestra, in which occurred the line: 
 
 ^dXXet [x epefivT] (1'ay.ddt (poivia<i bpoaou. 
 
 ("He strikes me with a black drop of bloody 
 dew.") 
 
 Barlow knew that ^dXUiv meant "to stirke," but 
 the rest of the line was Greek to him. At last a rem- 
 iniscence of the Cyclops and the Odyssey of Fresh- 
 man year came athwart his mind, and he wrote tri- 
 umphantly: "He strikes me with a smooth stick of 
 green peeled olive-wood." 
 
 He was also somewhat defective in logic. He 
 had exhausted his ingenuity in framing excuses for 
 absence from prayers. Thrice had the nose-bleed 
 overtaken him just as he was entering the sacred por- 
 tals. Twice he had fallen prostrate in a puddle 
 when the bell was on its last strokes. Once a bee had 
 stung him on the eyelid at the same critical moment. 
 
 614 
 
Ch 
 
 ums 
 
 Accordingly, having made a resolution to sleep over 
 no more, he wrote on a slip of paper: "Dunham, 
 wake me at 6:45," and put it in a conspicuous place 
 where the sweep would see it in the morning. The 
 faithful Dunham obeyed instructions to the letter, 
 and I was awakened myself at the hour mentioned 
 by bad language from my chum's bedroom. 
 
 "What's loose?" I inquired. 
 
 "That blasted nigger woke me up, and it's only a 
 quarter of seven." 
 
 "Well, you left a notice for him to wake you, 
 didn't you?" 
 
 "Yes; but I thought he couldn't read." 
 
 Barlow was a lazy man — so much so that, having 
 occasion for frequent profanity when studying his 
 mathematical lessons, he had written on the wall near 
 the head of the lounge, where he usually lay, a double 
 column of imprecations. A single glance at this, he 
 said, was equivalent to half a dozen swears, on the 
 principle of the Chinese praying machine, and saved 
 him the labor of iteration. If he had put half the 
 time into study that he put into contriving "skinning" 
 apparatus for examinations, he might have taken the 
 Valedictory. This apparatus was often of great in- 
 tricacy, and depended on a delicate adjustment of 
 chances. One of his plans, e.g., made it necessary for 
 the operator to secure a seat near the window of the 
 examination-room. From this, which must be provi- 
 dentially open, he was to lower his question-paper to 
 
 615 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 the ground by a string. There it was to be received 
 by two classmates strong in mathematics, who were 
 to work out the problems and write the solutions on 
 another piece of paper. A fourth conspirator was 
 then to knock at the door of the examination-room 
 and distract the examiner's attention by handing him 
 a long telegram, despatched for the nonce by a fifth 
 accomplice dwelling in suspension at Stamford. Un- 
 der cover of this diversion, and at a signal from be- 
 low, the operator was to hoist away on his string and 
 bring in the paper of solutions. My chum spent 
 hours in polishing this scheme and perfecting all its 
 details. It attained a certain ideal symmetry and 
 even a poetic beauty under his hands. It set in mo- 
 tion such numbers of men, and required such si- 
 multaneous convergence upon strategic points, that it 
 affected the imagination like the evolutions of armies. 
 It was a pity that the examiner innocently defeated 
 the scheme by assigning seats in alphabetical order, 
 which brought my chum far from the window of his 
 hope. The two confederates mighty in mathematics 
 waited long under the Lyceum wall, and wondered 
 why tarried the wheels of his chariot. In vain the ex- 
 ile of Stamford sent a long and very expensive tele- 
 gram, praying for a shortening of his suspension. 
 The message remained in the pocket of Fourth Mur- 
 derer, who found his occupation gone. By such sim- 
 ple means do the gods confound the vain imagina- 
 tions of men. 
 
 6i6 
 
chums 
 
 Barlow was also of a cheerful and sanguine pov- 
 erty. He would waste his substance by heating pen- 
 nies on the stove and tossing them out of the window 
 among a crowd of "muckers," rejoicing when they 
 greedily picked up the hot coins and then dropped 
 them with cries of grief and rage. Once he broke 
 up an orphan procession returning from Sunday- 
 school by flinging a shower of coppers into the mud- 
 diest part of Chapel Street, by South College. And 
 one day, on the fence, he bought out, for the sum of 
 twenty-five cents to him in hand paid, the entire 
 stock in trade of a lemonade-pedler, on condition 
 entered into by Johnny Roach, the newsboy of Mo- 
 rocco Street, that he would drink the whole. There 
 was about a gallon, and such a prospect of unlimited 
 sensual enjoyment had probably never entered into 
 Johnny's wildest dream. He drank the first half of 
 his contract with unflagging gusto. His sense of 
 duty carried him manfully through the third quart; 
 but the only thing that sustained him in the last 
 quadrant of the job was the thought that if he left a 
 single drop undrunk he would hereafter regret his 
 wasted opportunity. Presently he writhed upon the 
 sward in awful agonies, and extorted from my terri- 
 fied chum another twenty-five cents wherewith to 
 buy brandy for an antidote. 
 
 It was during Senior year that my stand ran 
 down from a Philosophical to a First Dispute. "Com- 
 pany — villanous company — hath been the spoil of 
 
 617 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 me." My previous room-mates had few followers, 
 and I could study in peace. But Barlow was of a 
 gregarious turn, and his friends swarmed upon us 
 like myrmidons. They respected neither the age and 
 infirmity of our furniture, nor the sacred ties of 
 blood. One afternoon I heard sounds of ribaldry 
 as I approached my room, and inside I found a crowd 
 busy in target-practice. With my new pair of com- 
 passes they were spearing, at ten paces, a card nailed 
 to the coal-closet door, which turned out on examina- 
 tion to be the photograph of the Rev. Erastus Buel, 
 a remote collateral relative, which they had taken 
 from my album. 
 
 My chum was fain to be a sporting-man. He 
 bought a small Scotch terrier, which he used to drag 
 about the yard on the end of a string, where it looked 
 like a fur muff. The keeping of dogs was contrary 
 to regulations ; but the tutor in our entry, who roomed 
 directly under us, good-naturedly winked at the of- 
 fence. But one day, disturbed by a boxing-match 
 overhead between Barlow and a visitor, he called to 
 remonstrate, and mistaking Shagbark for the door- 
 mat, undertook to wipe his feet on him, and was 
 chewed as to the calf-part. Shag, thus rudely 
 brought to the notice of authority, could no longer 
 be ignored, and Barlow had to sell him to a local 
 fancier. 
 
 In the matter of visitors, it is apt to be in college 
 very much as in a large city: one has not necessarily 
 
 6i8 
 
chums 
 
 much acquaintance with the men in one's own entry, 
 unless, indeed, the entry has been "packed." The 
 only one of our immediate neighbors in Senior year 
 with whom we constantly forgathered was Nimrod 
 in the adjoining entry, with whose premises we es- 
 tablished a back-door communication by breaking 
 down the partition of the coal-closet. Before this 
 was done, rumors of Nimrod had been wafted 
 through the wall, exciting guesses as to his probable 
 character. One day, going into my coal-closet, I 
 heard a groan as of some one in pain, on the other 
 side of the partition, and, listening intently, distin- 
 guished these words repeated over and over again : 
 "I'm a plain, blunt man; I'm a plain, blunt 
 man." 
 
 Fearing for our neighbor's sanity, I made in- 
 quiries about him, and learned that he practiced dec- 
 lamation in his room, and that, emulating De- 
 mosthenes, he wore pebbles in his mouth at recita- 
 tion. When we finally penetrated the wall that sun- 
 dered us and entered into personal intimacy with 
 Nimrod, we found him a person of traits. He was 
 a patriotic class and society man, and used his ora- 
 torical talent with effect in class meetings. He was 
 reported to have spoken eloquently when initiated 
 into Psi Upsilon, and to have exclaimed, tapping 
 himself upon the breast, "Mr. President, I know not 
 how others may feel on this occasion, but there's a 
 little lump of flesh right here that is one mass of 
 
 619 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 love for Psi Upsilon." He had devised and caused 
 to be engraved a class coat-of-arms bearing the leg- 
 end, "One link shall bind us ever: we were class- 
 mates at old Yale." He vainly tried to get my cyni- 
 cal chum to subscribe for a copy of this, reproaching 
 him with a lack of class spirit. "Fifty cents for a 
 class-poster?" Barlow would answer. "Four excel- 
 lent cigars for a class-stamp? Ten glasses of beer 
 for a dashed old pasteboard with a lying motto on 
 it? Go to the bond-holder, thou sluggard: I can't 
 afiford such frivolities." 
 
 Nimrod was likewise a mighty hunter of memo- 
 rabilia, and, in company with our eminent philatel- 
 ist, who had a similar weakness, scoured the univer- 
 sity in search of relics. He had an unrivalled 
 collection in his room, and once imperilled his life to 
 add to it the hour-hand of the clock on Lyceum 
 Tower. Owing to the supineness of the Time Ser- 
 vice Department, this indicator had been walking 
 over the course in solitary state for nearly a month, 
 its livelier sister having been borne off by a 
 bold Freshman. Before Nimrod captured the 
 surviving pointer it was possible to form an ap- 
 proximate notion of the time of day. After that 
 there remained nothing but a nubbin, which con- 
 tinued its inane revolutions at the centre of the dial 
 for a month or two more. But Nimrod's favorite 
 bit of memorabil, and one of which he always spoke 
 with a quiet rapture, was a Junior Exhibition Pro- 
 
 620 
 
chums 
 
 gramme of the Class of 1810. It had an engraving 
 of a corpulent winged female haling a similar alle- 
 gorical figure toward a pavilion perched on a roll of 
 solid cloud. Underneath was the inscription, "Genius 
 conducted by Learning to the Temple of Fame." 
 
 The mention of this work of art reminds me to 
 speak of our wall decorations. These were entirely 
 the contributions of my several chums, and were all 
 characteristic. In Senior year they consisted of 
 Barlow's foils and boxing-gloves, photos of favorite 
 actresses and of the crew and the nine, colored litho- 
 graphs of celebrated American trotters, etc. In 
 Freshman year they were mostly worsted wall-bask- 
 ets and slipper-cases, embroidered pen-wipers, watch- 
 pockets in bead-work, and other creations of the 
 needle furnished by female adherents of my chum 
 who dwelt in the remote wild West. In Sophomore 
 year only had we been really aesthetic, Rushton hav- 
 ing produced from his trunk and hung upon the wall 
 a number of pictures, mostly without frames — a cir- 
 cumstance which, he said, was high-toned and gave 
 them an air of the artist's studio. One of these was 
 a photographic copy of Raphael's "Transfigura- 
 tion." Another was a small black oil, invisible save 
 in a strong light, when it yielded a dim human form 
 doing something with a wine-glass. This, Rushton 
 said, was "The Wine-Taster," a genuine Smith. And 
 when I complained that It was Impossible to see it, 
 he explained that that was design. "Don't you no- 
 
 621 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 tice the dank cellar-light?" he asked; "how wonder- 
 fully the subterranean effect is rendered?" 
 
 When we came to break up housekeeping at the 
 end of Senior year, we found the process a simple 
 one. Such of our effects as were salable we sold to 
 the Irishwomen who go about the colleges picking 
 up bargains a week or two before Commencement — 
 when the elms are so bestuck with party-colored fur- 
 niture advertisements that they seem to have on 
 ragged and patched stockings to the knee. What 
 was unsalable we abandoned to the sweeps. I re- 
 member my last night in the dismantled room, where 
 the slanting bedstead and debilitated chairs stood 
 about confusedly on the bare floor. It was the even- 
 ing of Presentation Day. The class histories had 
 been read, the ivy planted, the parting ode sung. 
 The class had marched around with the band, cheer- 
 ing each of the old buildings in turn, and had then 
 broken ranks forever. I had taken supper with my 
 chum, and bidden him good-by at the station, being 
 about to leave myself on the following morning. 
 The entry was quite deserted when I climbed the 
 staircase to our room. I had no lamp, so I lit a 
 cigar, and, sitting down in the dark, by the open win- 
 dow, listened to the din of the summer insects and the 
 rustle of the breeze in the elms. The crowd of the 
 afternoon had dispersed, and the yard was quite still. 
 Most of the underclassmen had gone away some days 
 before, and only a few lights glimmered along the 
 
 622 
 
Ch 
 
 urns 
 
 college row. At the formal leave-taking in Alumni 
 Hall, where many of the fellows had been "all broke 
 up," I had felt no emotion; and my chum and myself 
 had agreed, in talking it over at supper, that the cere- 
 mony was not in good taste. One is always apt to 
 resent a set occasion for grief and to refuse to honor 
 any such draft on the feelings, just as one takes a 
 perverse pleasure in declining to be impressed to or- 
 der by a famous landscape or picture or cathedral. 
 The soul must take its own time. But now, as I sat 
 alone in the deserted room and realized that a pleas- 
 ant chapter of life was closed, that youth was over 
 and friends were gone, and that I must put forth on 
 the morrow from the green shelter of Alma Mater, 
 I discovered that I had struck deeper roots in the 
 life of the last four years than I had even suspected. 
 It suited our mood to talk lightly of many things 
 in those ancient times. In our view of one another 
 we affected a certain Humorous exaggeration, which 
 I have here tried to reproduce. Young men of our 
 race have a wholesome shame of making a fuss about 
 their deeper feelings. "We never," says Thoreau, 
 "exchange more than three words with a friend in 
 our lives on that level to which our thoughts and 
 feelings almost habitually rise. One goes forth pre- 
 pared to say, 'Sweet friends,' and the salutation is, 
 'Damn your eyes!'" It should not, therefore, be 
 thought that the prevailing attitude among us was 
 one of levity. In college life and friendships, under 
 
 623 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 a mask of reserve there is much of true sentiment, 
 and even of romance. The freshness of hope and 
 the stir of newly awakened thought shed a glamour 
 over what would otherwise be a dull routine. 
 
 " 'Tis the May light 
 That crimsons all the quiet college gloom." 
 
 In later life our friendships become worldlier. 
 We distrust our impulses, and accept the conven- 
 tional estimates of men; respecting success, cultivat- 
 ing those who may advantage us, forming business 
 connections. We learn, too, a larger charity, and 
 discover good in people whom we once thought in- 
 tolerable. We discipline our instincts, teaching 
 them to like here and dislike there. But alas for the 
 unconsidering, unhesitating scorn or enthusiasm of 
 our college days, when every one was either '^a per- 
 fectly bully fellow" or else "a beastly pill!" 
 
 624 
 
A RUSSIAN TUTOR 
 
 /^N the 1 2th of August, i8 — , the third day after 
 ^^ my birthday, when I had attained the age of 
 ten, and had received such wonderful presents, Karl 
 Ivanitch woke me at seven o'clock in the morning 
 by striking at a fly directly above my head, with a 
 flapper made of sugar-paper and fastened to a stick. 
 He did it so awkwardly that he entangled the image 
 of my angel, which hung upon the oaken headboard 
 of the bed; and the dead fly fell straight upon my 
 head. I thrust my nose out from under the coverlet, 
 stopped the image, which was still rocking, with my 
 hand, flung the dead fly on the floor, and regarded 
 Karl Ivanitch with angry although sleepy eyes. But 
 attired in his motley wadded dressing-gown, girded 
 with a belt of the same material, a red knitted skull- 
 cap with a tassel, and soft goatskin shoes, he pursued 
 his course along the walls, taking aim and flapping 
 away. 
 
 "Suppose I am little," I thought, "why should 
 he worry me? Why doesn't he kill the flies around 
 Volodya's bed? There are quantities of them there. 
 No; Volodya is older than I; I am the youngest of 
 all, and that is why he torments me. He thinks of 
 nothing else in life," I whispered, "except how he 
 may do unpleasant things to me. He knows well 
 
 625 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 enough that he has waked me up and frightened me ; 
 but he pretends not to see it — the hateful man! And 
 his dressing-gown, and his cap, and his tassel — how 
 disgusting!" 
 
 As I was thus mentally expressing my vexation 
 with Karl Ivanitch, he approached his own bed, 
 glanced at the watch which hung above it in a slip- 
 per embroidered with glass beads, hung his flapper 
 on a nail, and turned toward us, evidently in the most 
 agreeable frame of mind. 
 
 "Get up, children, get up. It's time! Your 
 mother is already in the hall!" he cried in his kindly 
 German voice; then he came over to me, sat down at 
 my feet, and pulled his snuff-box from his pocket. 
 I pretended to be asleep. First Karl Ivanitch took a 
 pinch of snuff, wiped his nose, cracked his fingers, 
 and then turned his attention to me. He began to 
 tickle my heels, laughing the while. "Come, come, 
 lazybones," he said. 
 
 Much as I dreaded tickling, I neither sprang out 
 of bed nor made any reply, but buried my head 
 deeper under the pillow, kicked with all my might, 
 and used every effort to keep from laughing. 
 
 "How good he is, and how he loves us, and yet I 
 could think so badly of him!" 
 
 I was vexed at myself and at Karl Ivanitch; I 
 wanted to laugh and to cry; my nerves were upset. 
 
 "Oh, let me alone, Karl Ivanitch!" I cried, with 
 tears in my eyes, thrusting my head out from beneath 
 
 626 
 
A Russian Tutor 
 
 the pillows. Karl Ivanitch was surprised; he left 
 my soles in peace, and began anxiously to inquire 
 what was the matter with me: had I had a bad 
 dream? His kind German face, the sympathy with 
 which he strove to divine the cause of my tears, 
 caused them to flow more abundantly, I was 
 ashamed; and I could not understand how, a mo- 
 ment before, I had been unable to love Karl Ivan- 
 itch, and had thought his dressing-gown, cap, and 
 tassel disgusting; now, on the contrary, they all 
 seemed to me extremely pleasing, and even the tassel 
 appeared a plain proof of his goodness. I told him 
 that I was crying because I had had a bad dream 
 — I thought mamma was dead, and they were carry- 
 ing her away to bury her. I invented all this, for I 
 really did not know what I had been dreaming that 
 night; but when Karl Ivanitch, touched by my tale, 
 began to comfort and soothe me, it seemed to me that 
 I actually had seen that dreadful vision, and my 
 tears flowed from another cause. 
 
 When Karl Ivanitch left me, and, sitting up in 
 bed, I began to draw my stockings upon my little 
 legs, my tears ceased in some measure; but gloomy 
 thoughts of the fictitious dream did not leave me. 
 Dyadka Nikolai came in — a small, neat little man, 
 who was always serious, precise, and respectful, and 
 a great friend of Karl Ivanitch. He brought our 
 clothes and shoes; Volodya had boots, but I still had 
 those intolerable slippers with ribbons. I was 
 
 627 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 ashamed to cry before him; besides, the morning sun 
 was shining cheerfully in at the window, and Volo- 
 dya was imitating Marya Ivanovna (my sister's gov- 
 erness), and laughing so loudly and merrily as he 
 stood over the wash-basin, that even grave Nikolai, 
 with towel on shoulder, the soap in one hand and the 
 hand-basin in the other, smiled and said: 
 
 "Enough, Vladimir Petrovitch, please wash your- 
 self." I became quite cheerful. 
 
 "Are you nearly ready?" called Karl Ivanitch's 
 voice from the schoolroom. 
 
 His voice was stern, and had no longer that kindly 
 accent which had moved me to tears. In the school- 
 room Karl Ivanitch was another man: he was the 
 tutor. I dressed quickly, washed, and, with brush 
 in hand, still smoothing my wet hair, I appeared at 
 his call. 
 
 Karl Ivanitch, with spectacles on nose, and a book 
 in his hand, was sitting in his usual place, between 
 the door and the window. To the left of the door 
 were two shelves of books: one was ours — the chil- 
 dren's; the other was Karl Ivanitch's particular prop- 
 erty. On ours were all sorts of books — school-books 
 and others; some stood upright, others were lying 
 down. Only two big volumes of "Histoire des Voy- 
 ages," in red bindings, leaned in a stately way against 
 the wall; then came long, thick, big and little books 
 — covers without books, and books without covers. 
 All were piled up and pushed in when we were or- 
 
 628 
 
A Russian Tutor 
 
 dered to put the library, as Karl Ivanitch loudly 
 called this shelf, in order before our play hour. If 
 the collection of books on his private shelf was not as 
 large as ours, it was even more miscellaneous. I re- 
 member three of them — a German pamphlet on the 
 manuring of cabbage gardens, without a cover; one 
 volume of the history of the "Seven Years' War," in 
 parchment, burned on one corner; and a complete 
 course of hydrostatics. Karl Ivanitch passed the 
 greater part of his time in reading, and even injured 
 his eyesight thereby; but he never read anything ex- 
 cept these books and "The Northern Bee." 
 
 Among the articles which lay on Karl Ivanitch's 
 shelf was one which recalls him to me more than 
 all the rest. It was a circle of cardboard fixed on a 
 wooden foot, upon which it revolved by means of 
 pegs. Upon this circle was pasted a picture repre- 
 senting caricatures of some lady and a wig-maker. 
 Karl Ivanitch pasted very well, and had himself in- 
 vented and manufactured this circle in order to pro- 
 tect his weak eyes from the bright light. 
 
 I seem now to see before me his long figure, in its 
 wadded dressing-gown, and the red cap beneath 
 which his thin gray hair is visible. He sits beside 
 a little table, upon which stands the circle with the 
 wig-maker, casting its shadow upon his face ; in one 
 hand he holds a book, the other rests on the arm of 
 the chair; beside him lies his watch, with the hunts- 
 man painted on the face, his checked handkerchief, 
 
 629 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 his round black snuff-box, his green spectacle case, 
 and the snuffers on the tray. All these lie with so 
 much dignity and precision, each in its proper place, 
 that one might conclude from this orderliness alone 
 that Karl Ivanitch has a pure conscience and a rest- 
 ful spirit. 
 
 If you stole upstairs on tiptoe to the school-room, 
 after running about downstairs in the hall as much as 
 you pleased, behold — Karl Ivanitch was sitting alone 
 in his armchair, reading some one of his beloved 
 books, with a proud, calm expression of countenance. 
 Sometimes I found him at such times when he was 
 not reading: his spectacles had dropped down on his 
 big aquiline nose; his blue, half-shut eyes had a cer- 
 tain peculiar expression; and his lips smiled sadly. 
 All was quiet in the room ; his even breathing, and 
 the ticking of the hunter-adorned watch, alone were 
 audible. 
 
 He did not perceive me; and I used to stand in 
 the door, and think: "Poor, poor old man! There 
 are many of us; we play, we are merry; but he — he 
 is all alone, and no one treats him kindly. He tells 
 the truth when he says he is an orphan. And the 
 history of his life is terrible! I remember that he 
 related it to Nikolai; it is dreadful to be in his situa- 
 tion!" And it made one so sorry, that one wanted 
 to go to him, take his hand, and say, "Dear Karl 
 Ivanitch!" He liked to have me say that; he always 
 petted me, and it was plain that he was touched. 
 
 630 
 
A Russian Tutor 
 
 On the other wall hung maps, nearly all of them 
 torn, but skilfully repaired by the hand of Karl Ivan- 
 itch. On the third wall, in the middle of which was 
 the door leading downstairs, hung two rulers: one 
 was all hacked up — that was ours; the other — the 
 new one — was his own private ruler, and employed 
 more for encouraging us than for ruling proper. On 
 the other side of the door was a blackboard, upon 
 which our grand misdeeds were designated by cir- 
 cles, and our small ones by crosses. To the left of the 
 board was the corner where we were put on our knees. 
 
 How well I remember that corner! I remember 
 the grated stove-door, and the slide in it, and the 
 noise this made when it was turned. You would 
 kneel and kneel in that corner until your knees and 
 back ached, and you would think, "Karl Ivanitch 
 has forgotten me; he must be sitting quietly in his 
 soft armchair, and reading his hydrostatics: and 
 how is it with me?" And then you would begin to 
 hint of your existence, to softly open and shut the 
 heat-damper, or pick the plaster from the wall ; but if 
 too big a piece suddenly fell noisily to the floor, the 
 fright alone was worse than the whole punishment. 
 You would peep around at Karl Ivanitch ; and there 
 he sat, book in hand, as though he had not noticed 
 anything. 
 
 In the middle of the room stood a table, covered 
 with a ragged black oil-cloth, beneath which the 
 edge, hacked in places with penknives, was visible 
 
 631 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 in many places. Around the table stood several un- 
 painted stools, polished with long use. The last wall 
 was occupied by three little windows. This was the 
 view which was had from them: Directly in front 
 of the windows ran the road, every hollow, pebble, 
 and rut of which had long been familiar and dear 
 to me; beyond the road was a close-trimmed linden 
 alley, behind which the wattled fence was visible 
 here and there. A field could be seen through the 
 alley; on one side of this was a threshing-floor, on 
 the other a forest; the guard's little cottage was visi- 
 ble far away in the forest. To the right, a part of the 
 terrace could be seen, upon which the grown-up peo- 
 ple generally sat before dinner. If you looked in 
 that direction while Karl Ivanitch was correcting 
 your page of dictation, you could see mamma's black 
 hair, and some one's back, and hear faint sounds of 
 conversation and laughter; and you would grow 
 vexed that you could not be there, and think, "When 
 I grow up, shall I stop learning lessons, and sit, not 
 over conversations forever, but always with those I 
 love?" Vexation changes to sorrow; and God knows 
 why and what you dream, until you hear Karl Ivan- 
 itch raging over your mistakes. 
 
 Karl Ivanitch took off his dressing-gown, put on 
 his blue swallow-tailed coat with humps and folds 
 upon the shoulders, arranged his necktie before the 
 glass, and led us downstairs to say good morning to 
 mamma. 
 
 632 
 
A RUSSIAN SCHOOL 
 
 /'^N the Friday after Easter, papa, my sister Mimi, 
 ^^ and Katenka went to the country; so that in 
 all grandmamma's great house there remained only 
 Volodya, myself, and St. Jerome. The frame of 
 mind in which I had found myself on the day of con- 
 fession, and when I went to the monastery, had com- 
 pletely disappeared, and had left behind only a trou- 
 bled though agreeable memory, which was more 
 and more dulled by the new impressions of a free 
 life. 
 
 The blank-book with the heading "Rules of Life" 
 had also been hidden under roughly written note- 
 books of my studies. Although the idea of the pos- 
 sibility of establishing rules for all the contingencies 
 of life, and of guiding myself always by them, pleased 
 me, and seemed very simple and at the same time 
 very grand, and I intended all the same to apply it 
 to life, I seemed again to have forgotten that it was 
 necessary to do this at once, and I kept putting it 
 off to some indefinite time. But one fact delighted 
 me, and that was that every thought which occurred 
 to me now ranged itself immediately under one or 
 other of the classifications of my rules and duties — 
 either under the head of duty to my neighbor, to my- 
 self, or to God. "Now, I will set it down there," I 
 
 ^33 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 said to myself, "and many, many other thoughts 
 which will occur to me then on this subject." I 
 often ask myself now: When was I better or more 
 correct — then, when I believed in the omnipotency 
 of the human intellect, or now that I have lost faith 
 in the power of development, and doubt the power 
 and significance of the human mind? And I can- 
 not give myself any positive answer. 
 
 The consciousness of freedom, and that spring 
 feeling of expecting something, which I have already 
 mentioned, agitated me to such a degree that I posi- 
 tively could not control myself, and I was very badly 
 prepared for my examination. Suppose you are busy 
 in the schoolroom in the morning, and know that it 
 is necessary to work, because to-morrow there is to 
 be an examination on a subject, two whole questions 
 on which you have not read up at all, when, all of 
 a sudden, a spring perfume wafts in at the window: 
 it seems as though it were indispensably necessary to 
 recall something; your hands drop of themselves, 
 your feet begin to move of their own will, and to 
 pace back and forth, and some spring seems to be 
 pressed in your head which sets the whole machine 
 in motion ; and it is so light and natural in your mind, 
 and divers merry, motley reveries begin to run 
 through it, and you can only succeed in catching their 
 gleam. Thus an hour, two hours, pass unnoticed. 
 Or, you are sitting over your book, and concentrat- 
 ing your attention, after a fashion, on what you are 
 
 634 
 
A Russian School 
 
 reading; and suddenly you hear the sound of a wo- 
 man's footsteps and dress in the corridor, and every- 
 thing has sprung out of your head, and there is no 
 possibility of sitting still in one place, although you 
 know very well that nobody can be passing through 
 that corridor except Gascha, grandmother's old maid- 
 servant. "Well, but if it should be she all at once?" 
 comes into your mind; "and what if it should be be- 
 ginning now, and I let the opportunity slip?" And 
 you spring out into the corridor, and see that it is act- 
 ually Gascha; but you do not recover control of your 
 head for a long time. The spring has been pressed, 
 and again a frightful disorder has ensued. Or, you 
 are sitting alone in the evening, with a tallow candle, 
 in your room; and all at once you tear yourself from 
 your book for a moment in order to snuff the candle 
 or to place a chair, and you see that it is dark every- 
 where, at the doors and in the corners, and you hear 
 how quiet it is all over the house; and again it is im- 
 possible not to stop and listen to that silence, and not 
 to stare at that obscurity of the door which is open 
 into a dark chamber, and not to remain for a long, 
 long time immovable in the same attitude, or not to 
 go downstairs, or pass through all the empty rooms. 
 Often, too, I have sat unperceived, for a long time, 
 in the hall, listening to the sound of the "Nightin- 
 gale," which Gascha was playing with two fingers on 
 the piano, as she sat alone with one tallow candle in 
 the great apartment. And when there was moon- 
 
 Vol 15—21 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 light I could not resist rising from my bed, and lying 
 on the window toward the yard, and gazing at the 
 illuminated roof of the Schaposchnikoff house, and 
 the graceful bell-tower of our parish church, and at 
 the night shadows of the hedge and bushes as they lay 
 upon the garden paths; and I could not help sitting 
 there so long, that I was only able to rouse myself 
 with difficulty at ten o'clock in the morning. 
 
 So that, had it not been for the masters who con- 
 tinued to come to me, St. Jerome, who now and then 
 unwillingly tickled my vanity, and most of all the de- 
 sire to show myself a capable young fellow in the 
 eyes of my friend Nekhliudoff, that is, by passing an 
 excellent examination, which, in his opinion, was a 
 matter of great importance — if it had not been for 
 this, the spring and liberty would have had the effect 
 of making me forget everything I had known before, 
 and I should not have been able to pass the examina- 
 tion on any terms. 
 
 On the sixteenth of April T went to the great hall 
 of the university for the first time, under the protec- 
 tion of St. Jerome. We drove there in our rather 
 dandified phaeton. I was in a dress-coat for the first 
 time in my life ; and all my clothing, even my linen 
 and stockings, was perfectly new, and of the very 
 best. When the Swiss, took off my overcoat, and I 
 stood before him in all the beauty of my costume, I 
 was rather ashamed of being so dazzling; but I no 
 sooner stepped into the bright hall, with its polished 
 
 6^6 
 
A Russian School 
 
 floor, which was filled with people, and beheld hun- 
 dreds of young men in gymnasium uniforms and 
 dress-coats, several of whom glanced at me with in- 
 difference, and the dignified professors at the further 
 end, walking freely about among the tables, and sit- 
 ting in large armchairs, than I was instantly disen- 
 chanted in my hope of turning the general attention 
 upon myself; and the expression of my countenance, 
 which at home and even in the anteroom had indi- 
 cated that I possessed that noble and distinguished 
 appearance against my will, changed into an ex- 
 pression of the most excessive timidity, and to some 
 extent of depression. I even fell into the other ex- 
 treme, and rejoiced greatly when I beheld at the 
 nearest desk an excessively ugly, dirtily dressed gen- 
 tleman, not yet old but almost entirely gray, who sat 
 on the last bench, at a distance from all the rest. I 
 immediately seated myself beside him, and began to 
 observe the candidates for examination, and to draw 
 my conclusions about them. Many and varied were 
 the figures and faces there; but all, according to my 
 opinion at the time, were easily divisible into three 
 classes. 
 
 There were those who, like myself, presented 
 themselves for examination, accompanied by their 
 tutors or parents; and among their number was the 
 youngest Ivin with Frost, already so well known to 
 me, and Ilinka Grap with his aged father. All such 
 had downy chins, prominent linen, and sat quietly 
 
 637 - 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 without opening the books and blank-books which 
 they had brought with them, and regarded the pro- 
 fessors and examination tables with evident timid- 
 ity. The second class of candidates were the young 
 men in the gymnasium uniforms, many of whom had 
 already shaved. Most of these knew each other, 
 talked loudly, mentioned the professors by their 
 names and patronymics, were already preparing ques- 
 tions, passing their note-books to each other, walk- 
 ing over the stools in the anteroom, and bringing in 
 patties and slices of bread and butter, which they im- 
 mediately devoured, merely bending their heads to 
 a level with the desks. And lastly, there was a third 
 class of candidates, very few in number, however, 
 who were quite old, were attired in dress-coats, 
 though the majority wore surtouts, and were without 
 any visible linen. The one who consoled me by be- 
 ing certainly dressed worse than I was belonged to 
 this last class. He leaned his head on both hands, 
 and between his fingers escaped disheveled locks of 
 half-gray hair; he was reading a book, and merely 
 glanced at me for a moment with his brilliant eyes 
 in anything but a good-natured way, scowled darkly, 
 and thrust out a shiny elbow in my direction, so that 
 I might not move any nearer to him. The gymna- 
 sium men, on the other hand, were too familiar, and 
 I was a little afraid of them. One said, as he thrust 
 a book into my hand, "Give this to that man yonder" ; 
 another said, as he passed me, "Let me pass, my good 
 
 638 
 
A Russian School 
 
 fellow;" a third, as he climbed over the desk, leaned 
 on my shoulder as though it had been the bench. All 
 this was coarse and disagreeable to me. I consid- 
 ered myself much better than these fellows from the 
 gymnasium, and thought they had no business to per- 
 mit themselves such liberties with me. At last they 
 began to call the family names; the gymnasium fel- 
 lows stepped out boldly, answered well for the most 
 part, and returned cheerfully. Our set were much 
 more timid, and answered worse, it appeared. Some 
 of the elder men answered excellently, others very 
 badly indeed. When Semenoff was called, my neigh- 
 bor with the hair and glittering eyes stepped over 
 my feet with a rude push, and went up to the table. 
 On returning to his place, he took up his note-books, 
 and quietly went away without finding out how he 
 had been rated. I had already shuddered several 
 times at the sound of the voice which called the fam- 
 ily names, but my turn had not yet come, according 
 to the alphabetical list, although some whose names 
 began with I had already been called up. "Ikonin 
 and Teneff," shouted some one in the professors' cor- 
 ner all of a sudden. A shiver ran through my back 
 and my hair. 
 
 "Who is called? Who is Barteneff ?" they began 
 to say around me. 
 
 "Go, Ikonin, you are called; but who is Bartenefif, 
 Mordeneff? I do not know, confess," said a tall, 
 ruddy gymnasist as he stood before me. 
 
 639 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "It is you," said St. Jerome. 
 
 "My name is Irteneff," said I to the red-faced 
 gymnasist. "Did they call for Irteneff?" 
 
 "Yes; why don't you go? What a fop!" he added, 
 not loudly, but so that I heard his words as I left the 
 bench. In front of me walked Ikonin, a tall young 
 man of five and twenty, who belonged to the third 
 class of old candidates. He wore a tight olive coat, 
 a blue satin neckerchief, upon which behind hung 
 his long, light hair, dressed a la muzhik. I had al- 
 ready remarked his personal appearance on the seats. 
 He was rather good-looking and talkative. 
 
 What especially struck me in him was the queer 
 reddish hair which he had allowed to grow on his 
 throat; and, still more, a strange custom which he 
 had of incessantly unbuttoning his waistcoat, and 
 scratching his breast under his shirt. 
 
 Three professors were seated at the table which 
 Ikonin and I were approaching; not one of them re- 
 turned our salute. The young professor was shuf- 
 fling tickets like a pack of cards; the second pro- 
 fessor, with a star on his coat, was staring at the 
 gymnasist who was saying something very rapidly 
 about Charlemagne, adding "at last" to every word; 
 and the third, an old man, looked at us through his 
 spectacles, and pointed to the tickets. I felt that his 
 gaze was directed upon Ikonin and me jointly, and 
 that something in our appearance displeased him 
 (possibly Ikonin's red beard), because as he looked 
 
 640 
 
A Russian School 
 
 at us again in the same way he made an impatient 
 sign with his head to us that we should take our tick- 
 ets as quickly as possible. I felt vexed and insulted, 
 in the first place, because no one had returned our 
 bow, and, in the second, because they were evidently 
 including me and Ikonin in one classification, that of 
 candidates for examination, and were already preju- 
 diced against me because of Ikonin's red hair, I 
 took my ticket without timidity, and prepared to an- 
 swer, but the professor directed his gaze at Ikonin. 
 I read my ticket through; I knew it, and, while 
 calmly awaiting my turn, I observed what was going 
 on before me. Ikonin was not in the least embar- 
 rassed, and was even too bold, for he moved side- 
 wise to take his ticket, shook back his hair, and read 
 what was printed on it in a dashing way. He was 
 on the point of opening his mouth to reply, I thought, 
 when the professor with the star, having dismissed 
 the gymnasist with praise, glanced at him. Ikonin 
 seemed to recollect something, and paused. The 
 general silence lasted for a couple of minutes. 
 
 "Well," said the professor in spectacles. 
 
 Ikonin opened his mouth, and again remained 
 silent. 
 
 "Come, you are not the only one; will you an- 
 swer or not?" said the young professor, but Ikonin 
 did not even look at him. He stared intently at the 
 ticket, and did not utter a single word. The pro- 
 fessor in spectacles looked at him through his glasses, 
 
 641 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 and over his glasses, and without his glasses, because 
 by this time he had managed to remove them, wipe 
 them carefully, and put them on again. Ikonin 
 never uttered a word. Suddenly a smile dawned 
 upon his face, he shook back his hair, again turned 
 full broadside to the table, looked at all the professors 
 in turn, then at me, turned and flourishing his hands 
 walked jauntily back to his bench. The professors 
 exchanged glances. 
 
 "A fine bird!" said the young professor; "he 
 studies at his own expense." 
 
 I stepped nearer to the table, but the professors 
 continued to talk almost in a whisper among them- 
 selves, as though none of them even suspected my 
 existence. Then I was firmly convinced that all 
 three professors were very much occupied with the 
 question as to whether I would stand the examina- 
 tion, and whether I would come out of it well, but 
 that they were only pretending, for the sake of their 
 dignity, that it was a matter of utter indifference to 
 them, and that they did not perceive me. 
 
 When the professor in spectacles turned indiffer- 
 ently to me, inviting me to answer the questions, I 
 looked him full in the eye, and was rather ashamed 
 for him that he should so dissemble before me, and 
 I hesitated somewhat in beginning my answer; but 
 afterward it became easier and easier, and, as the 
 question was from Russian history, which I knew 
 very well, I finished in brilliant style, and even gained 
 
 642 
 
A Russian School 
 
 confidence to such an extent that, desiring to make 
 the professors feel that I was not Ikonin, and that it 
 was impossible to confound me with him, I proposed 
 to take another ticket; but the professor shook his 
 head and said, "Very good, sir," and noted down 
 something in his journal. When I returned to the 
 benches, I immediately learned from the gymnasists, 
 who had found out everything, God knows how, that 
 I had received five. 
 
 In the succeeding examinations I had many new 
 acquaintances besides Grap — whom I deemed un- 
 worthy of my acquaintance — and Ivin, who shunned 
 me for some reason. Several already exchanged 
 greetings with me. Ikonin was even rejoiced when 
 he saw me, and confided to me that he should be 
 re-examined in history, that the history professor had 
 had a spite against him since the last examination, at 
 which, also, he asserted the latter had thrown him 
 into confusion. SemenofI, who was going to enter 
 the same course as I, mathematics, was shy of every 
 one until the very end of the examinations, sat silent 
 and alone, leaning on his elbows, with his hands 
 thrust into his gray hair, and passed his examina- 
 tions in excellent style. He was second; a student 
 from the first gymnasium was first. The latter was 
 a tall, thin, extremely pale, dark-complexioned man, 
 with a cheek bound up in a black neck-cloth, and a 
 forehead covered with pimples. His hands were 
 thin and red, with remarkably long fingers, and nails 
 
 643 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 so bitten that the ends of his fingers seemed to be 
 wound with thread. All this seemed very beautiful 
 to me, and just as it should be in the case of the lead- 
 ing gymnasist. He spoke to everybody exactly like 
 anybody else, and I even made his acquaintance ; but 
 it seemed to me that there was something unusually 
 magnetic in his walk, the movements of his lips, and 
 his black eyes. 
 
 In the mathematical examination I was called up 
 earlier than usual. I knew the subject pretty well; 
 but there were two questions in algebra which I had 
 contrived in some way to hide from my teacher, and 
 which I knew absolutely nothing about. They were, 
 as I now recall them, the theory of combinations, and 
 Newton's binomial theorem. I seated myself at the 
 desk in the rear, and looked over the two unfamiliar 
 questions ; but the fact that I was not accustomed to 
 work in a noisy room, and the lack of time, which I 
 foresaw, prevented my undestanding what I read. 
 
 "Here he is; come here, Nekhliudoflf," said Volo- 
 dya's familiar voice behind me. 
 
 I turned, and saw my brother and Dmitry, who 
 were making their way toward me between the 
 benches, with coats unbuttoned and hands flourish- 
 ing. It was immediately apparent that they were 
 students in their second year, who were as much at 
 home in the university as in their own houses. The 
 sight of their unbuttoned coats alone expressed dis- 
 dain for us who were entering, and inspired us with 
 
 644 
 
A Russian School 
 
 envy and respect. It flattered me very much to 
 think that all about me could see that I was ac- 
 quainted with two students in their second year, and 
 I rose hastily to meet them. 
 
 Volodya could not even refrain from expressing 
 his superiority. 
 
 "Oh, you poor wretch!" said he; "how goes it? 
 Have you been examined yet?" 
 
 ''No." 
 
 "What are you reading? Aren't you prepared?" 
 
 ''^Yes ; but not quite on two questions. I don't un- 
 derstand them." 
 
 "What! this one here?" said Volodya, and began 
 to explain to me Newton's binomial theorem, but so 
 rapidly and in such a confused manner that, reading 
 disbelief in his knowledge in my eyes, he glanced at 
 Dmitry, and probably reading the same in his, he 
 turned red, but went on, nevertheless, to say some- 
 thing which I did not understand. 
 
 "No, Volodya, stop; let me go through it with 
 him, if we have time," said Dmitry, glancing at the 
 professor's corner; and he seated himself beside me. 
 
 I immediately perceived that my friend was in 
 that gentle, complacent mood which always came 
 upon him when he was satisfied with himself, and 
 which I specially liked in him. As he understood 
 mathematics well, and spoke clearly, he went over the 
 subject so splendidly with me that I remember it to 
 this day. But scarcely had he finished, when St. 
 
 645 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 Jerome said in a loud whisper, "it's your turn, Niko- 
 las," and I followed Ikonin from behind the desk, 
 without having succeeded in looking over the other 
 unfamiliar question. I approached the table where 
 the two professors sat, and a gymnasist was standing 
 before the blackboard. The gymnasist had cleverly 
 deduced some formula, breaking his chalk with a 
 tap on the board, and still went on writing, although 
 the professor had already said, "Enough!" and or- 
 dered us to take our tickets. "Now, what if I get 
 that theory of the combination of numbers?" thought 
 I, picking out my ticket with trembling fingers from 
 the soft pile of cut paper. Ikonin took the topmost 
 ticket, without making any choice, with the same 
 bold gesture and sidewise lunge of his whole body 
 as in the preceding examination. 
 
 "I always have such devilish luck!" he muttered. 
 
 I looked at mine. 
 
 Oh, horror! It was the theory of combinations. 
 
 "What have you got?" asked Ikonin. 
 
 I showed him. 
 
 "I know that," said he. 
 
 "Will you change?" 
 
 "No, it's no matter; I feel that I'm not in condi- 
 tion," Ikonin barely contrived to whisper, when the 
 professor summoned us to the board. 
 
 "Well, all's lost!" I thought. "Instead of the 
 brilliant examination which I dreamed of passing, 
 I shall cover myself with eternal disgrace, even worse 
 
 646 
 
A Russian School 
 
 than Ikonin." But all at once Ikonin turned to me, 
 right before the professor's eyes, snatched the card 
 from my hand, and gave me his. I glanced at his 
 card. It was Newton's binomial theorem. 
 
 The professor was not an old man; and he had a 
 pleasant, sensible expression, to which the extremely 
 prominent lower part of his forehead particularly 
 contributed. 
 
 "What is this, gentlemen? you have exchanged 
 cards?" 
 
 "No, he only gave me his to look at, professor," 
 said Ikonin, inventing — and again the word professor 
 was the last one he uttered in that place; and again, 
 as he retired past me, he glanced at the professors, at 
 me, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders, with an ex- 
 pression as much as to say, "No matter, brother!" 
 (I afterward learned that this was the third year that 
 Ikonin had presented himself for the entrance ex- 
 amination.) 
 
 I answered the question which I had just gone 
 over, excellently — even better, as the professor told 
 me, than would have been required — and received 
 five. 
 
 All went on finely until the Latin examination. 
 The gymnasist with his cheek bound up was first, 
 SemenofI second, I was the third. I even began to 
 feel proud, and seriously to think that, in spite of my 
 youth, I was not to be taken in jest. 
 
 From the very first examination, everybody had 
 
 647 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 been talking with terror of the Latin professor, who 
 was represented as a kind of wild beast who took de- 
 light in the destruction of young men, especially of 
 such as lived at their own homes, and as speaking 
 only in the Latin or Greek tongue. St. Jerome, who 
 was my instructor in the Latin language, encouraged 
 me; and it really seemed to me that, since I could 
 translate from Cicero and several odes of Horace 
 without a lexicon, and since I knew Zumpt very well 
 indeed, I was no worse prepared than the rest. But 
 it turned out otherwise. All the morning there was 
 nothing to be heard but tales of the failures of those 
 who preceded me; this man had been marked zero; 
 another, one; and still another had been scolded ter- 
 ribly, and had been on the point of getting turned 
 out, and so forth, and so forth. Semenofif and the 
 first gymnasist alone went up and returned with as 
 much composure as usual, having each received five. 
 I already had a presentiment of disaster, when I was 
 called up with Ikonin to the little table, facing which 
 the terrible professor sat quite alone. The terrible 
 professor was a small, thin, yellow man, with long 
 oily hair and a very thoughtful countenance. 
 
 He gave Ikonin a volume of Cicero's Orations, 
 and made him translate. 
 
 To my great amazement, Ikonin not only read, 
 but even translated several lines, with the aid of the 
 professor, who prompted him. Conscious of my su- 
 periority over such a feeble rival, I could not refrain 
 
 648 
 
A Russian School 
 
 from smiling, and from doing so in a rather scornful 
 way, too, when the question of analysis came up, and 
 Ikonin, as before, sank into stubborn silence. I meant 
 to conciliate the professor by that intelligent, slightly 
 ironical smile; but it turned out the other way. 
 
 "You evidently know better, since you smile," 
 said the professor to me in bad Russian. "Let me 
 see. Come, do you say it." 
 
 I learned afterward that the Latin professor was 
 Ikonin's protector, and that Ikonin even lived with 
 him. I immediately replied to the question in syn- 
 tax which had been propounded to Ikonin; but the 
 professor put on a sad expression, and turned away 
 from me. 
 
 "Very good, sir; your turn will come; we shall 
 see how much you know," said he, not looking at me, 
 and began to explain to Ikonin what he had ques- 
 tioned him on. 
 
 "Go," said he; and I saw him set down four for 
 Ikonin in the register. "Well," thought I, "he is 
 not nearly as stern as they said." After Ikonin's de- 
 parture — for at least five minutes, which seemed to 
 me five hours — he arranged his books and cards, blew 
 his nose, adjusted his armchair, threw himself back 
 in it, and looked round the room, and on all sides 
 except in my direction. But all this dissimulation 
 seemed to him insufficient. He opened a book, and 
 pretended to read it, as though I were not there. I 
 stepped up nearer, and coughed. 
 
 649 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 "Ah, yes! Are you still there? Well, translate 
 something," said he, handing me a book. "But no; 
 better take this one." He turned over the leaves of a 
 copy of Horace, and opened it at a passage which it 
 seemed to me nobody ever could translate. 
 
 "I have not prepared this," said I. 
 
 "And you want to recite what you have learned 
 by heart? Very good! No; translate this." 
 
 I managed to get the sense of it after a fashion; 
 but the professor only shook his head at each of my 
 inquiring glances, and merely answered "No," with 
 a sigh. At last he closed his book with such nervous 
 quickness that he pinched his own finger between the 
 leaves. He jerked it out angrily, gave me a card in 
 grammar, and, flinging himself back in his chair, he 
 continued to preserve the most malicious silence. I 
 was on the point of answering; but the expression of 
 his countenance fettered my tongue, and everything 
 which I said appeared to me to be wrong. 
 
 "That's not it! that's not it! that's not it at all!" 
 he suddenly broke out with his horrible pronuncia- 
 tion, as he briskly changed his attitude, leaned his 
 elbows on the table, and played with the gold ring 
 which clung weakly to a thin finger of his left 
 hand. "It's impossible, gentlemen, to prepare for 
 the higher educational institutions in this manner. 
 All you want is to wear the uniform, with its blue 
 collar, and brag of being first, and think that you 
 can be students. No, gentlemen; you must be thor- 
 
 650 
 
A Russian School 
 
 oughly grounded in your subject;" and so forth, and 
 so forth. 
 
 During the whole of this speech, which was ut- 
 tered in distorted language, I gazed with dull atten- 
 tion at his eyes, which were fixed on the floor. At 
 first, the disenchantment of not being third tortured 
 me ; then the fear of not getting through my examina- 
 tion at all ; and, finally, a sense of injustice was added, 
 of wounded vanity and unmerited humiliation. Be- 
 sides this, contempt for the professor because he was 
 not, in my opinion, a man comme il faut — which I 
 discerned by looking at his short, strong, round nails 
 — influenced me still more, and rendered all these 
 feelings venomous. He glanced at me; and, perceiv- 
 ing my quivering lips and my eyes filled with tears, 
 he must have construed my emotion into a prayer to 
 increase my mark, and he said, as though compas- 
 sionating me (and before another professor, too, who 
 came up at that moment) : 
 
 "Very good, sir. I will give you a very fine 
 mark" (that meant two), "although you do not de- 
 serve it, out of respect to your youth, and in the hope 
 that you will not be so light-minded in the univer- 
 sity." 
 
 This last phrase, uttered in the presence of the 
 strange professor, who looked at me as if to say, 
 "There, you see, young man!" completed my con- 
 fusion. For one moment a mist veiled my eyes; the 
 terrible professor, with his table, seemed to me to be 
 
 Vol. 15—22 
 
School Days and College Life 
 
 sitting somevv'here in the far distance, and the wild 
 thought came into my mind, with a terrible one- 
 sided distinctness: "And what if — what will come of 
 this?" But I did not do it, for some reason; on the 
 contrary, I saluted both professors mechanically, 
 with special courtesy, and left the table, smiling 
 slightly, with the same smile, apparently, that Ikonin 
 had exhibited. 
 
 This injustice affected me so powerfully at the 
 time, that, had I been master of my own actions, I 
 should not have gone to any more examinations. I 
 lost all my vanity (it was impossible to think any 
 longer of being number three) , and I let the remain- 
 ing examinations pass without any exertion, and even 
 without emotion. My average, however, was some- 
 what over four, but this did not interest me in the 
 least; I made up my mind, and proved it to myself 
 very clearly, that it was bad form to try to be first, 
 and that one ought to be neither too good nor too bad, 
 like Volodya. I meant to keep to this in the univer- 
 sity, although I, for the first time, differed from my 
 friend on this point. 
 
 I was already thinking of my uniform, my three- 
 cornered hat, my own drozhky, my own room, and, 
 most of all, of my freedom. 
 
 THE END 
 
 652 
 
JUL 29 1903