Railroads, Engines, and Telegraphs; the chairman has erected mills
and bridges in New Zealand.
The usher at Our School, who was considered to know everything as
opposed to the Chief, who was considered to know nothing, was a
bony, gentle-faced, clerical-looking young man in rusty black. It
was whispered that he was sweet upon one of Maxby’s sisters (Maxby
lived close by, and was a day pupil), and further that he ‘favoured
Maxby.’ As we remember, he taught Italian to Maxby’s sisters on
half-holidays. He once went to the play with them, and wore a
white waistcoat and a rose: which was considered among us
equivalent to a declaration. We were of opinion on that occasion,
that to the last moment he expected Maxby’s father to ask him to
dinner at five o’clock, and therefore neglected his own dinner at
half-past one, and finally got none. We exaggerated in our
imaginations the extent to which he punished Maxby’s father’s cold
meat at supper; and we agreed to believe that he was elevated with
wine and water when he came home. But, we all liked him; for he
had a good knowledge of boys, and would have made it a much better
school if he had had more power. He was writing master,
mathematical master, English master, made out the bills, mended the
pens, and did all sorts of things. He divided the little boys with
the Latin master (they were smuggled through their rudimentary
books, at odd times when there was nothing else to do), and he
always called at parents’ houses to inquire after sick boys,
because he had gentlemanly manners. He was rather musical, and on
some remote quarter-day had bought an old trombone; but a bit of it
was lost, and it made the most extraordinary sounds when he
sometimes tried to play it of an evening. His holidays never began
(on account of the bills) until long after ours; but, in the summer
vacations he used to take pedestrian excursions with a knapsack;
and at Christmas time, he went to see his father at Chipping
Norton, who we all said (on no authority) was a dairy-fed porkbutcher.
Poor fellow! He was very low all day on Maxby’s sister’s
wedding-day, and afterwards was thought to favour Maxby more than
ever, though he had been expected to spite him. He has been dead
these twenty years. Poor fellow!
Our remembrance of Our School, presents the Latin master as a
colourless doubled-up near-sighted man with a crutch, who was
always cold, and always putting onions into his ears for deafness,
and always disclosing ends of flannel under all his garments, and
almost always applying a ball of pocket-handkerchief to some part
of his face with a screwing action round and round. He was a very
good scholar, and took great pains where he saw intelligence and a
desire to learn: otherwise, perhaps not. Our memory presents him
(unless teased into a passion) with as little energy as colour – as
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having been worried and tormented into monotonous feebleness – as
having had the best part of his life ground out of him in a Mill of
boys. We remember with terror how he fell asleep one sultry
afternoon with the little smuggled class before him, and awoke not
when the footstep of the Chief fell heavy on the floor; how the
Chief aroused him, in the midst of a dread silence, and said, ‘Mr.
Blinkins, are you ill, sir?’ how he blushingly replied, ‘Sir,
rather so;’ how the Chief retorted with severity, ‘Mr. Blinkins,
this is no place to be ill in’ (which was very, very true), and
walked back solemn as the ghost in Hamlet, until, catching a
wandering eye, he called that boy for inattention, and happily
expressed his feelings towards the Latin master through the medium
of a substitute.
There was a fat little dancing-master who used to come in a gig,
and taught the more advanced among us hornpipes (as an
accomplishment in great social demand in after life); and there was
a brisk little French master who used to come in the sunniest
weather, with a handleless umbrella, and to whom the Chief was