SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS, BY A SUFFERER.
(coNTiNcED.)
MY third school was one of a better order ; indeed I suppose it to be mu of the best private schools in the country: but the praise is merely comparative, for its organization and working were faulty. The charges were moderate, and we were better fed at dinner than at C—. The puddings were gratefully received into our stomachs, instead of stowed away in our pockets ; and the meat was always wholesome and good. As for breakfast, the common breakfast at most schools is worse than the kitchen fare of gentlemen's establishments,—water tinged with milk, and called sky-blue, a name at once expressive of its tint and the ethereal character of the nourishment ; and immense hunches of bread, over which butter had passed without making any stay. Metaphysi- cally speaking, it was bread with the sentiment of butter, and a near approach to the perfection of Irish " potato and point." As many persons may not know what Irish " potato and point" is, we will ex- plain it; especially recommending the history to the attention of school- masters, who may profit by the suggestion to the degree of producing a " bread and point."
In days of yore and luxury, a herring used to be hung by a string Over the bowl of potatoes on a peasant's dinner-table, and each of the company, by scraping his potato against the dried fish, obtained a relish of the savour, and a taste of the salt. In bad times the herring was retrenched, but the custom of pointing at the place of it continued;
and hence the phrase " potatoes and point," for potatoes without any condimental accompaniments. Some etymologists, we are aware, imagine that the point here, like the point in most epigrams, implies nothing ; but they are mistaken, and we have afforded the just ex- planation. Let schoolmasters desire their servants to pass the knife without any pretence of butter over the bread, and they will achieve as perfect an economy as that we have instanced. The approximation to it in my time was very close, and the step to completion will scarcely be perceptible.
Unfortunately for me, I had an antipathy to milk ; and the " sky- blue," which had the one merit, in a morning potation, of warmth, was a mixture I could not drink. Small beer—small beer such as 'small beer is at schools—was the horrid substitute' and in winter I have broken the ice in my mug. I often thought that my parents would b
have pitied a beggar the breakfast their trust in school management left to me. For days together, rather than sip the disgusting beverage, I have passed half the day with dry and thirsting lips. The cause was not daintiness, but an insuperable antipathy to one thing, and the im- proper substitution of another.
With the exception of the bread and (sentiment of.) butter, and the alternative of sky-blue or small beer, we fared well at this school. Its economy was generally well ordered.
When I entered, it was after such experience of bullying. that I ap- plied all my wits to avoiding a repetition of my miseries. To this end, I resolved never to spare fight where I could show it ; and as the boys were for the most part of about my own age, my plan was not difficult of execution. I began by being extremely free of my blows ; and the liberality of ivy expenditure in this current article soon caused me to be respected. One rather curious artifice I hit upon, to exalt the opinion of my prowess. In playful encounters, which are common among boys, I always hit my hardest, and left the inference to be drawn, which was drawn, that if I hit so heavily in sport, what must be my thumps of earnest. Such cunning is the natural fruit of tyranny. Vice breeds vice. I had been the sufferer in one school, and in turn became the tormenter in another, but in nothing like the degree of oppression to which I had myself been subjected ; for bullying was not the fashion of my new school, and the lessons I had learnt were modi- fied by the style of the place, which discouraged their exercise.
I remember, however, having once coveted a schoolfellow's plaything, and by force of arms wrested it from his possession. While he was screaming his reclamations, our master passed. Had I seen a ghost 1 should not have been half so much appalled. He sternly asked me "What are you doing there to * * *, Sir ?" My impudent answer was, " I am only borrowing his top, Sir." " Then," appositely. re- plied he, " I shall borrow your liberty for the rest of the day • go into the school, and wait till I talk to you." There was birch in the words ; and my ruminations were of the most unsatisfactory kind, till they were pleasingly disturbed by a servant, who came to announce that my parents had called to take me home for a few clays. 1 found my master sitting with them, and he made me over to their charge with a smiling countenance and a good character. My forced loan was for- gotten ; or, to speak more exactly, the master is always kind to the boy going home, as he is fully aware of the force of his reports, and sugars his parting regards accordingly.
A schoolmistress bears the consequence in a school which a queen does in the state—nay more, she may be rated as of the force of a mis- tress. Our lady of — was a gaunt person, of few, slow words, and a sour, forbidding countenance. Like our old commercial policy, she was one prohibition. She had a particular quarrel with me. One of her offices was to superintend our feet-washing ; and whenever my turn for ablution came, she never failed to remark with a tone of petu- lant displeasure, " Bless me ! —,what a large foot you have got!" On the shoemaker's visits, and the examination of our soles and upper leathers, the same criticism was sure to occur, in precisely the same words, temper, and intonation : " Bless me ! —, what a large foot you have got !" I do not remember, indeed, that she ever addressed any other remark to me. She had one pet, who was of course the worst-conditioned boy in the school. He was a sulky 'churl, of very efficient fists, and a malevolent disposition, which was only to be pro- pitiated with offerings of plum-cake.
I have said that bullying was not the fashion of the school ; but we had our butt, and the pernicious effect of such a practice may be ti-aced in his history. He was a boy of great expectations, small courage, and a vast stomach. We used to give him fruit and cakes, on the con- dition, with which he complied, of first eating a certain quantity of candle-ends or soap. Sometimes he was hunted with yells of insult, and then the poor creature would convert his persecution into sport by volunteering the popular exhibition of devouring some nastiness.
The army was his profession, and he went into the I have heard from one of his brother officers, that his treatment in that corps was merely a continuation of what. he had been familiarized with at school. The wild young men of his own age took every sort of liberty with him ; and his submission to the outrages, which was matter of long habit with him, was made the reason for desiring his withdrawal from the regiment. He is now, if he still lives, a man abundantly rich in wealth, and barren of all that goes to respect or happiness. This sketch of him I have written without any apprehension of oil'ence, fur if by any chance it should meet his eye, it will not reach the sense ; and the narrative may serve the useful purpose of suggesting reilectiens en the danger of permitting butts to be made in early life, and utterly ob- literating in the young mind the sentiment of self-respect. Such practices are, I fear, too common. Indeed, at all my schools, there was a boy with a capacity for eating soap and candles, who served for fool, and I never mentioned the circumstance to another man without hearing of parallel instances within his expedience. It may be said, that the caution of a master cannot prevail against the vices of the play-ground; and in proof of the position, an usher was appointed to patrol our play-ground as watch on our actions, but we nevertheless found ample opportunities for mischief. He had his book, his thoughts, or his present. By the way, ushers must consume an enormous quan- tity of plum-cake. Every boy who knows what he is about fees the school-servants, and crams the ushers. Half-a-crown is requisite for the man in livery, but the poor dominie's favour may be had at the cheaper rate of three-pennyworth of confectionary. The whole usher administration is a shocking abomination. Our master was a person of good manners, and a greater knowledge of the world than commonly falls to the share of pedagogues; but he was suspected of not possessing any scholarship beyond the bare oc- casions of the schoOl. His fault was an addiction to favouritism, which encouraged sycophancies, and involved injustice. Boys who worked in his garden, and asked leave to tend his horse, were treated in all matters with especial indulgence; and parents should know that the desired labour of their darlings in the school is often commuted for the most servile drudgeries in the household. A lad, in considera- tion of doing the work of a helper at sixpence a-day, obtains liberty of negligence for the school exercises for which his relatives are liberally paying.
I kicked against the sycophancies, and was no favourite with the master. I never asked leave to water, or hoe; or weed, or dig, or even to walk with him ; and was looked on with a cold eye, and addressed with a stern voice.
The system of school-exercise was good, supposing that boys were disposed to work, but bad for idlers. The classes learnt at each task as much as they chose, but were required to know that quantity well. This was a wise plan ; -but only three or four in a class of ten, fifteen, or twenty, were called upon to construe and parse ; consequently it became a lottery, and many took their chance of coming up unpre- pared, and escaping the examination. If a boy blundered, the next in place was called upon to correct him; and if he did so, the blunderer and.his corrector changed places ; if the next was incapable, his neigh- bour was tried, and if not found wanting, exalted by the same law over the defaulters. We soon observed that the lads near the head of the class were chiefly troubled with its tasks, and indolence as well as incapacity sheltered itself in the ignoble but peaceful shade of the bottom. My class were reading Cmsar, an author in which I was particularly at home ; and accordingly I construed the lessons and crammed all my. comrades. One evil day, our master surprised me with a stern question in the task which I had made plain to my com- rades; I was alarmed by his address, and in my confusion gave a wrong answer; he bitterly reproached me for my idleness, told me that I was a cipher in my class, and insulted me before the whole school. I every instant expected my class-mates, who were conscious of the falseness of these imputations, and of their obligations to me for assistance, to exclaim aloud that— had done his part, and more than his part in the common labour. But they looked at their books, and remained silent,—not because they were indisposed to do me justice, but because it is an awful and perilous thing to attempt a cor- rection of the master's impressions. I was at once too timid and too proud to undertake my own defence, thus ungeaerously, as I then thought, deserted ; and all ambition for credit in that school then died within me. For the rest of my time, my whole care was to do as little as was compatible with the elusion of punishment, and admirably did I succeed. It was my. boast. among my associates, that I had never written a Greek exercise, though we were twice a week required to show one up. Apropos of Greek,—when first learning to read it with my class, I had come up to the master entirely unprepared ; he called on me, for a miracle ; and being incapable of reading the text, and possibly encouraged by the prevailing opinion of our master's weakness in Greek, I uttered a jabber of ois, ais, kaks, and Icons, in the hope of imposing on him. The impudence was extreme, but tem- perately punished with some strokes of a ruler on the hand,—a com- mon barbarism, a degree superior to the bastinado.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
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