Part 6

At last I gave way to his importunity. On Thursday night, he started from the tree of knowledge by a branch coach; and at nine on Friday morning, I found myself sitting at his desk in the novel character of pedagogue. I am sorry to say, not one of the boys played truant, or was confined at home with a violent illness.--There they were, nine little mischievous wretches, goggling, tittering, pointing, winking, grimacing, and mocking at authority, in a way enough to invoke two Elisha bears out of Southgate Wood. To put a stop to this indecorum, I put on my spectacles, stuck my cane upright in the desk, with the fool’s-cap atop--but they inspired little terror; worn out at last, I seized the cane, and rushing from my dais, well flogged--I believe it is called flogging--the boy, a Creole, nearest me; who, though far from the biggest, was much more daring and impertinent than the rest. So far my random selection was judicious; but it appeared afterwards, that I had chastised an only son, whose mother had expressly stipulated for him an exemption from all punishment. I suspect, with the moral prudence of fond mothers, she had informed the little imp of the circumstance, for this Indian-Pickle fought and kicked his preceptor as unceremoniously as he would have scuffled with Black Diana or Agamemnon. My first move, however, had a salutary effect; the urchins settled, or made believe to settle, to their tasks; but I soon perceived that the genuine industry and application belonged to one, a clever-looking boy, who, with pen and paper before him, was sitting at the further end of a long desk, as great a contrast to the others, as the Good, to the Bad Apprentice in Hogarth. I could see his tongue even at work at one corner of his mouth,--a very common sign of boyish assiduity,--and his eyes never left his task but occasionally to glance towards his master, as if in anticipation of the approving smile, to which he looked forward as the prize of industry. I had already selected him inwardly for a favourite, and resolved to devote my best abilities to his instruction, when I saw him hand the paper, with a sly glance to his neighbour, from whom it passed rapidly down the desk, accompanied by a running titter, and sidelong looks, that convinced me the supposed copy was, indeed, a copy not of “Obey your superiors,” or “Age commands respect,” but of the head of the college, and, as a glimpse showed, a head with very ludicrous features. Being somewhat fatigued with my last execution, I suffered the cane of justice to sleep, and inflicted the fool’s-cap--literally the fool’s--for no clown in pantomime, the great Grimaldi not excepted, could have made a more laughter-stirring use of the costume. The little enormities, who only tittered before, now shouted outright, and nothing but the enchanted wand of bamboo could flap them into solemnity. Order was restored, for they saw I was, like Earl Grey, resolved to “stand by my order;” and while I was deliberating, in some perplexity, how to begin business, the two biggest boys came forward voluntarily, and standing as much as they could in a circle, presented themselves, and began to read as the first Greek class. Mr. Irving may boast of his prophets as much as he will; but in proportion to the numbers of our congregations, I had far more reason to be proud of my gabblers in an unknown tongue. I, of course, discovered no lapsus lingui in the performance, and after a due course of gibberish, the first class dismissed itself, with a brace of bows and an evident degree of self-satisfaction at being so perfect in the present after being so imperfect in the past. I own this first act of our solemn farce made me rather nervous against the next, which proved to be the Latin class, and I have no doubt to an adept would have seemed as much a Latin comedy as those performed at the Westminster school. We got through the second course quite correct, as before, and I found, with some satisfaction, that the third was a dish of English Syntax, where I _was_ able to detect flaws, and the heaps of errors that I had to arrest made me thoroughly sensible of the bliss of ignorance in the Greek and Latin. A general lesson in English reading ensued, through which we glided smoothly enough, till we came to a sandbank in the shape of a Latin quotation, which I was requested to English. It was something like this:--“Nemo mortalius omnibus hora sapit,” which I rendered, “No mortal knows at what hour the omnibus starts”--and with this translation the whole school was perfectly satisfied. Nine more bows.

My horror now approached: I saw the little wretches lug out their slates, and begin to cuff out the old sums, a sight that made me wish all the slates at the roof of the house. I knew very well that when the army of nine attacked my Bonnycastle, it would not long hold out. Unluckily, from inexperience, I gave them all the same question to work, and the consequence was, each brought up a different result--nor would my practical knowledge of Practice allow me to judge of their merits. I had no resource but, Lavater-like, to go by Physiognomy, and accordingly selected the solution of the most mathematical-looking boy. But Lavater betrayed me. Master White, a chowder-headed lout of a lad, as dull as a pig of lead, and as mulishly obstinate as Muley Abdallah, persisted that his answer was correct, and at last appealed to the superior authority of a Tutor’s Key, that he had kept by stealth in his desk. From this instant my importance declined, and the urchins evidently began to question, with some justice, what right I had to rule nine, who was not competent to the Rule of Three. By way of a diversion, I invited my pupils to a walk; but I wish G---- had been more circumstantial in his instructions before he left. Two of the boys pleaded sick headaches to remain behind; and I led the rest, through my arithmetical failure, under very slender government, by the most unfortunate route I could have chosen,--in fact, past the very windows of their parents, who complained afterwards, that they walked more like bears than boys, and that if Mr. G---- had drawn lots for one at a raffle, he could not have been more unfortunate in his new usher.

To avoid observation, which I did not court, I led them aside into a meadow, and pulling out a volume of Paradise Lost, left the boys to amuse themselves as they pleased. They pleased, accordingly, to get up a little boxing match, à la Crib and Molineux--between Master White and the little Creole, of which I was informed only by a final shout and a stream of blood that trickled, or treacled, from the flat nose of the child of colour. Luckily, as I thought, he was near home, whither I sent him for washing and consolation, and in return for which, in the course of a quarter of an hour, while still in the field, a black footman, in powder blue turned up with yellow, brought me the following note:--

“Mrs. Col. Christopher informs Mr. G----’s Usher, that as the vulgar practice of pugilism is allowed at Spring Grove Academy, Master Adolphus Ferdinand Christopher will in future be educated at home; particularly as she understands Master C. was punished in the morning, in a way that only becomes blacks and slaves.--To the new Usher at Mr. G----’s.”

Irritated at this event and its commentary, I resolved to punish Master White, but Master White was nowhere to be found, having expelled himself and run away home, where he complained to his parents of the new usher’s deficiencies, and told the whole story of the sum in Practice, begging earnestly to be removed from a school where, as he said, it was impossible for him to improve himself. The prayer of the petition was heard, and on the morrow, Mr. White’s son was minus at Spring Grove Academy. Calling in the remainder, I ordered a march homewards, where I arrived just in time to hear the sham headaches of the two invalids go off with an alarming explosion--for they had thus concerted an opportunity for playing with gunpowder and prohibited arms. Here was another discharge from the school, for no parents think that their children look the better without eyebrows, and accordingly, when they went home for the night, the fathers and mothers resolved to send them to some other school, where no powder was allowed, except upon the head of the master. I was too much hurt to resume schooling after the boys’ bad behaviour, and so gave them a half-holiday; and never, oh never did I so estimate the blessing of sleep, as on that night when I closed my eyelids on all my pupils! But, alas! sleep brought its sorrows:--I saw boys fighting, flourishing slates, and brandishing squibs and crackers in my visions; and through all,--such is the transparency of dreams,--I beheld the stern shadow of G---- looking unutterable reproaches.

The next morning, with many painful recollections, brought one of pleasure; I remembered that it was the King’s Birthday, and in a fit of very sincere loyalty, gave the whole school, alas! reduced by one half, a whole holiday. Thus I got over the end of the week, and Sunday, literally a day of rest, was spent by the urchins at their own homes. It may seem sinful to wish for the death of a fellow-creature, but I could not help thinking of G----’s relative along with what is called a happy release; and he really was so kind, as we learned by an express from G----, as to break up just after his arrival, and that G---- consequently would return in time to resume his scholastic duties on the Monday morning. With infinite pleasure I heard this good bad news from Mrs. G----, who never interfered in the classical part of the house, and was consequently all unconscious of the reduction in the Spring Grove Establishment. I forged an excuse for immediately leaving off school; “resigned I kissed the rod” that I resigned, and as I departed, no master but my own, was overwhelmed by a torrent of grateful acknowledgments of the service I had done the school, which, as Mrs. G---- protested, could never have got on without me. How it got on I left G---- to discover, and I am told he behaved rather like Macduff at the loss of his “little ones”--but luckily, I had given myself warning before his arrival, and escaped from one porch of the Academy at that nick of time when the Archodidasculus was entering by another, perfectly convinced that, however adapted to “live and learn,” I should never be able to live and teach.

THE LOST HEIR.

“Oh, where, and oh where Is my bonny laddie gone?”--OLD SONG.

One day, as I was going by That part of Holborn christened High, I heard a loud and sudden cry That chill’d my very blood; And lo! from out a dirty alley, Where pigs and Irish wont to rally, I saw a crazy woman sally, Bedaub’d with grease and mud. She turn’d her East, she turn’d her West, Staring like Pythoness possest, With streaming hair and heaving breast As one stark mad with grief. This way and that she wildly ran, Jostling with woman and with man-- Her right hand held a frying pan, The left a lump of beef. At last her frenzy seem’d to reach A point just capable of speech, And with a tone almost a screech, As wild as ocean birds, Or female Ranter mov’d to preach, She gave her “sorrow words.”

“Oh Lord! oh dear, my heart will break, I shall go stick stark, staring wild! Has ever a one seen any thing about the streets like a crying lost-looking child? Lawk help me, I don’t know where to look, or to run, if I only knew which way-- A Child as is lost about London streets, and especially Seven Dials, is a needle in a bottle of hay. I am all in a quiver--get out of my sight, do, you wretch, you little Kitty M’Nab! You promised to have half an eye to him, you know you did, you dirty deceitful young drab. The last time as ever I see him, poor thing, was with my own blessed Motherly eyes, Sitting as good as gold in the gutter, a playing at making little dirt pies. I wonder he left the court where he was better off than all the other young boys, With two bricks, an old shoe, nine oyster-shells, and a dead kitten by way of toys. When his Father comes home, and he always comes home as sure as ever the clock strikes one, He’ll be rampant, he will, at his child being lost; and the beef and the inguns not done! La bless you, good folks, mind your own consarns, and don’t be making a mob in the street; Oh Serjeant M’Farlane! you have not come across my poor little boy, have you, in your beat? Do, good people, move on! don’t stand staring at me like a parcel of stupid stuck pigs; Saints forbid! but he’s p’r’aps been inviggled away up a court for the sake of his clothes by the prigs; He’d a very good jacket, for certain, for I bought it myself for a shilling one day in Rag Fair; And his trousers considering not very much patch’d, and red plush, they was once his Father’s best pair. His shirt, it’s very lucky I’d got washing in the tub, or that might have gone with the rest; But he’d got on a very good pinafore with only two slits and a burn on the breast. He’d a goodish sort of hat, if the crown was sew’d in, and not quite so much jagg’d at the brim. With one shoe on, and the other shoe is a boot, and not a fit, and you’ll know by that if it’s him. Except being so well dress’d my mind would misgive, some old beggar woman in want of an orphan, Had borrow’d the child to go a begging with, but I’d rather see him laid out in his coffin! Do, good people, move on, such a rabble of boys! I’ll break every bone of ’em I come near, Go home--you’re spilling the porter--go home Tommy Jones, go along home with your beer. This day is the sorrowfullest day of my life, ever since my name was Betty Morgan, Them vile Savoyards! they lost him once before all along of following a Monkey and an Organ. Oh my Billy--my head will turn right round--if he’s got kiddynapp’d with them Italians, They’ll make him a plaster parish image boy, they will, the outlandish tatterdemalions. Billy--where are you, Billy?--I’m as hoarse as a crow, with screaming for ye, you young sorrow! And sha’n’t have half a voice, no more I sha’n’t, for crying fresh herrings to-morrow. Oh Billy, you’re bursting my heart in two, and my life won’t be of no more vally, If I’m to see other folks’ darlins, and none of mine, playing like angels in our alley. And what shall I do but cry out my eyes, when I looks at the old three-legged chair As Billy used to make coach and horses of, and there a’n’t no Billy there! I would run all the wide world over to find him, if I only know’d where to run, Little Murphy, now I remember, was once lost for a month through stealing a penny bun,-- The Lord forbid of any child of mine! I think it would kill me raily, To find my Bill holdin’ up his little innocent hand at the Old Bailey. For though I say it as oughtn’t, yet I will say, you may search for miles and mileses And not find one better brought up, and more pretty behaved, from one end to t’other of St. Giles’s. And if I called him a beauty, it’s no lie, but only as a Mother ought to speak; You never set eyes on a more handsomer face, only it hasn’t been washed for a week; As for hair, tho’ its red, its the most nicest hair when I’ve time to just show it the comb; I’ll owe ’em five pounds, and a blessing besides, as will only bring him safe and sound home. He’s blue eyes, and not to be call’d a squint, though a little cast he’s certainly got; And his nose is still a good un, tho’ the bridge is broke, by his falling on a pewter pint pot; He’s got the most elegant wide mouth in the world, and very large teeth for his age; And quite as fit as Mrs. Murdockson’s child to play Cupid on the Drury Lane Stage. And then he has got such dear winning ways--but oh I never never shall see him no more! O dear! to think of losing him just after nursing him back from death’s door! Only the very last month when the windfalls, hang ’em, was at twenty a penny! And the threepence he’d got by grottoing was spent in plums, and sixty for a child is too many. And the Cholera man came and whitewash’d us all and, drat him, made a seize of our hog. It’s no use to send the Crier to cry him about, he’s such a blunderin’ drunken old dog; The last time he was fetched to find a lost child, he was guzzling with his bell at the Crown, And went and cried a boy instead of a girl, for a distracted Mother and Father about Town. Billy--where are you, Billy, I say? come Billy, come home, to your best of Mothers! I’m scared when I think of them Cabroleys, they drive so, they’d run over their own Sisters and Brothers. Or may be he’s stole by some chimbly sweeping wretch, to stick fast in narrow flues and what not, And be poked up behind with a picked pointed pole, when the soot has ketch’d, and the chimbly’s red hot. Oh I’d give the whole wide world, if the world was mine, to clap my two longin’ eyes on his face. For he’s my darlin of darlins, and if he don’t soon come back, you’ll see me drop stone dead on the place. I only wish I’d got him safe in these two Motherly arms, and wouldn’t I hug him and kiss him! Lauk! I never knew what a precious he was--but a child don’t not feel like a child till you miss him. Why there he is! Punch and Judy hunting, the young wretch, it’s that Billy as sartin as sin! But let me get him home, with a good grip of his hair, and I’m blest if he shall have a whole bone in his skin!”

SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.

THE OBSERVER.

“It’s very strange,” said the coachman,--looking at me over his left shoulder--“I never see it afore--but I’ve made three observations through life.”

Bat--so called for shortness, though in feet and inches he was rather an Upper Benjamin--was anything but what Othello denominates “a puny whipster.” He had brandished the whip for full thirty years, at an average of as many miles a day; the product of which, calculated according to Cocker, appears in a respectable sum total of six figures deep.

Now an experience picked up in a progress of some three hundred thousand miles is not to be slighted; so I leaned with my best ear over the coachman’s shoulder, in order to catch every syllable.

“I have set on the box, man and boy,” said Bat, looking straight ahead between his leaders, “a matter of full thirty year, and what’s more, never missing a day--barring the Friday I was married; and one of my remarks is--I never see a sailor in top-boots.”

“Now I think of it, Bat,” said I, a little disconcerted at my windfall from the tree of knowledge, “I have had some experience in travelling myself, and certainly do not recollect such a phenomenon.”

“I’ll take my oath you haven’t,” said Bat, giving the near leader a little switch of self-satisfaction. “I once driv the Phenomenon myself. There’s no such thing in nature. And I’ll tell you another remarkable remark I’ve made through life--I never yet see a Jew Pedlar with a Newfoundland dog.”

“As for that, Bat,” said I, perhaps willing to retort upon him a little of my own disappointment, “though I cannot call such a sight to mind--I will not undertake to say I have never met with such an association.”

“If you have, you’re a lucky man,” said Bat, somewhat sharply, and with a smart cut on the wheeler; “I belong to an association too, and we’ve none of us seen it. There’s a hundred members, and I’ve enquired of every man of ’em, for it’s my remark. But some people see a deal more than their fellows. Mayhap you’ve seen the other thing I’ve observed through life, and that’s this--I’ve never observed a black man drive a long stage.”

“Never, Bat,” said I, desiring to conciliate him, “never in the whole course of my stage practice; and for many years of my life I was a daily visitant to Richmond.”

“And no one else has ever seen it,” said Bat. “That’s a correct remark, anyhow. As for Richmond, he never drove a team in his life, for I asked him the question myself, just after his fight with Shelton.”

THE CONTRAST.

“I hope the Leviathan is outward-bound,” I ejaculated, half aloud, as I beheld the Kit-Kat portion of the Man-Mountain occupying the whole frame of the coach-window. But Hope deceived as usual; and in he came.

I ought rather to have said he essayed to come in,--for it was only after repeated experiments upon material substances, that he contrived to enter the vehicle edgeways,--if such blunt bodies may be said to have an edge at all. As I contemplated his bulk, I could not help thinking of the mighty Lambert, and was ready to exclaim with Gratiano, “A Daniel! a second Daniel!”

The Brobdignaggian had barely subsided in his seat, when the opposite door opened, and in stepped a Liliputian! The conjunction was whimsical. Yonder, thought I, is the Irish Giant, and the other is the dwarf, Count Borulawski. This coach is their travelling caravan--and as for myself, I am no doubt the showman.

I was amusing myself with this and kindred fancies, when a hand suddenly held up something, at the coach window. “It’s my luggage,” said the Giant, with a small penny-trumpet of a pipe, and taking possession of a mere golden pippin of a bundle.

“The three large trunks and the biggest carpet-bag are _my_ property,” said the Dwarf, with a voice as unexpectedly stentorian.

“Warm day, Sir,” squeaked the Giant, by way of small talk.

“Prodigious preponderance of caloric in the atmosphere,” thundered the Dwarf, by way of big talk.

“Have you paid your fare, gentlemen?” asked the coachman, looking in at the door.

“I have paid half of mine,” said the Stupendous, “and it’s booked. My name is Lightfoot.”

“Mine is Heavyside,” said the Pigmy, “and I have disbursed the sum total.”

The door slammed--the whip cracked--sixteen horse-shoes made a clatter, and away bowled the New Safety; but had barely rolled two hundred yards, when it gave an alarming bound over some loose paving stones, followed by a very critical swing. The Dwarf, in a tone louder than ever, gave vent to a prodigious oath; the Giant said, “Dear me!”

There will something come of this, said I to myself; so, feigning I sleep, I leaned back in a corner, with a wary ear to their conversation. The Gog had been that morning to the Exhibition of Fleas, in Regent Street, and thought them “prodigious!” The Runtling had visited the Great Whale at Charing-Cross, and “thought little of it.” The Goliath spoke with wonder of the “vast extent of view from the top of the Monument.” The David was “disappointed by the prospect from Plinlimmon.” The Hurlothrumbo was “amazed by the grandeur of St. Paul’s.” The Tom Thumb spoke slightingly of St. Peter’s at Rome. In theatricals their taste held the same mathematical proportion. Gog “must say he liked the Minors best.” The “Wee Thing” declared for the Majors. The Man-Mountain’s favourite was Miss _Foote_ = twelve inches. The Manikin preferred Miss _Cubitt_ = eighteen.

The conversation, and the contrast, flourished in full flower through several stages, till we stopped to dine at the Salisbury Arms, and then--