Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

conveniences provided to facilitate their tumbling in. My object

in that uncommercial journey called up another train of thought,

and it ran as follows:

‘When I was at school, one of seventy boys, I wonder by what secret

understanding our attention began to wander when we had pored over

our books for some hours. I wonder by what ingenuity we brought on

that confused state of mind when sense became nonsense, when

figures wouldn’t work, when dead languages wouldn’t construe, when

live languages wouldn’t be spoken, when memory wouldn’t come, when

dulness and vacancy wouldn’t go. I cannot remember that we ever

conspired to be sleepy after dinner, or that we ever particularly

wanted to be stupid, and to have flushed faces and hot beating

heads, or to find blank hopelessness and obscurity this afternoon

in what would become perfectly clear and bright in the freshness of

to-morrow morning. We suffered for these things, and they made us

miserable enough. Neither do I remember that we ever bound

ourselves by any secret oath or other solemn obligation, to find

the seats getting too hard to be sat upon after a certain time; or

to have intolerable twitches in our legs, rendering us aggressive

and malicious with those members; or to be troubled with a similar

uneasiness in our elbows, attended with fistic consequences to our

neighbours; or to carry two pounds of lead in the chest, four

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pounds in the head, and several active blue-bottles in each ear.

Yet, for certain, we suffered under those distresses, and were

always charged at for labouring under them, as if we had brought

them on, of our own deliberate act and deed. As to the mental

portion of them being my own fault in my own case – I should like

to ask any well-trained and experienced teacher, not to say

psychologist. And as to the physical portion – I should like to

ask PROFESSOR OWEN.’

It happened that I had a small bundle of papers with me, on what is

called ‘The Half-Time System’ in schools. Referring to one of

those papers I found that the indefatigable MR. CHADWICK had been

beforehand with me, and had already asked Professor Owen: who had

handsomely replied that I was not to blame, but that, being

troubled with a skeleton, and having been constituted according to

certain natural laws, I and my skeleton were unfortunately bound by

those laws even in school – and had comported ourselves

accordingly. Much comforted by the good Professor’s being on my

side, I read on to discover whether the indefatigable Mr. Chadwick

had taken up the mental part of my afflictions. I found that he

had, and that he had gained on my behalf, SIR BENJAMIN BRODIE, SIR

DAVID WILKIE, SIR WALTER SCOTT, and the common sense of mankind.

For which I beg Mr. Chadwick, if this should meet his eye, to

accept my warm acknowledgments.

Up to that time I had retained a misgiving that the seventy

unfortunates of whom I was one, must have been, without knowing it,

leagued together by the spirit of evil in a sort of perpetual Guy

Fawkes Plot, to grope about in vaults with dark lanterns after a

certain period of continuous study. But now the misgiving

vanished, and I floated on with a quieted mind to see the Half-Time

System in action. For that was the purpose of my journey, both by

steamboat on the Thames, and by very dirty railway on the shore.

To which last institution, I beg to recommend the legal use of coke

as engine-fuel, rather than the illegal use of coal; the

recommendation is quite disinterested, for I was most liberally

supplied with small coal on the journey, for which no charge was

made. I had not only my eyes, nose, and ears filled, but my hat,

and all my pockets, and my pocket-book, and my watch.

The V.D.S.C.R.C. (or Very Dirty and Small Coal Railway Company)

delivered me close to my destination, and I soon found the Half-

Time System established in spacious premises, and freely placed at

my convenience and disposal.

What would I see first of the Half-Time System? I chose Military