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16 SCHOOL LIFE, 1865-1868 [CHAP. U
relish of knocking a youthful stranger into the gutter was
an uncovenanted boon from Heaven I The dingy little
usher who attended us used to hurry to the other side
of the street and feign complete detachment from the
burly-burly. We " marched prospering, not through hiS '
presence." On receiving his report, Mrs. W., the dame,
delivered herself to us at tea-time. The burden of her
admonition was that the other school, though " highly
respectable," were "not a' class of boys whom I should
like you to associate with at all." The masters were a
random group of failures in other professions. One used
to come in the morning smelling of beer ; another was
found to be a wandering adventurer who appeared on·
the scene with a good black coat on his back and two
carpet-bags full of gravel. He knew no Latin, but was
set to teaeh the first class I The others were a variegated
gang, most of whom stayed with us a very short time.
The only chiU'acteristics they had in common were dinginess,
.ignorance, and dislike of teaching. Two of them
wrote begging-letters to us afterwards. No attempt
whatever was made to teach cleanliness of thought or
conversation. · By what seems now pure haziU'd, open
immorality did not actually spread, though it was often
on the point of doing so ; and one boy became a shocking
criminal afterwards, never · having received a word of
warning from any quarter.
Greediness, however, was rampant : a common introduction
to vice. .
This boyish infirmity, however, had its good side.
Dullness is always baneful, and as all thinking or discovery
was impossible in the classroom, we found some scope
for our nascent faculties by. evading observation and
slipping into confectioners' sh!>ps. This required some
skill, resource, and planning.. Moreover, it gave us the
only geography teaching in the curriculum, and I can
remember the whereabouts of the "grub shops " to the·
present day. Hampers from home were, I think, universal,
stuffed with comestibles not always wisely chosen, among