6d. per head. I
don't like that sort of school, because I don't see what business
the master had to be at the top of it instead of the bottom, and
because I never could understand the wholesomeness of the moral
preached by the abject appearance and degraded condition of the
teachers who plainly said to us by their looks every day of their
lives, "Boys, never be learned; whatever you are, above all things
be warned from that in time by our sunken cheeks, by our poor
pimply noses, by our meagre diet, by our acid-beer, and by our
extraordinary suits of clothes, of which no human being can say
whether they are snuff-coloured turned black, or black turned
snuff-coloured, a point upon which we ourselves are perfectly
unable to offer any ray of enlightenment, it is so very long since
they were undarned and new." I do not like that sort of school,
because I have never yet lost my ancient suspicion touching that
curious coincidence that the boy with four brothers to come always
got the prizes. In fact, and short, I do not like that sort of
school, which is a pernicious and abominable humbug, altogether.
Again, ladies and gentlemen, I don't like that sort of school--a
ladies' school--with which the other school used to dance on
Wednesdays, where the young ladies, as I look back upon them now,
seem to me always to have been in new stays and disgrace--the
latter concerning a place of which I know nothing at this day, that
bounds Timbuctoo on the north-east--and where memory always depicts
the youthful enthraller of my first affection as for ever standing
against a wall, in a curious machine of wood, which confined her
innocent feet in the first dancing position, while those arms,
which should have encircled my jacket, those precious arms, I say,
were pinioned behind her by an instrument of torture called a
backboard, fixed in the manner of a double direction post.
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