But the boy's
intense joy at getting home, and the wonderful health he is in, and the
good character he brings, and the brave stories he tells of Rugby, its
doings and delights, soon mollify the Squire, and three happier people
didn't sit down to dinner that day in England (it is the boy's first
dinner at six o'clock at home--great promotion already) than the Squire
and his wife and Tom Brown, at the end of his first half-year at Rugby.
CHAPTER VIII--THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
"They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three."
--LOWELL, Stanzas on Freedom.
The lower-fourth form, in which Tom found himself at the beginning
of the next half-year, was the largest form in the lower school, and
numbered upwards of forty boys. Young gentlemen of all ages from nine to
fifteen were to be found there, who expended such part of their energies
as was devoted to Latin and Greek upon a book of Livy, the "Bucolics"
of Virgil, and the "Hecuba" of Euripides, which were ground out in small
daily portions. The driving of this unlucky lower-fourth must have been
grievous work to the unfortunate master, for it was the most unhappily
constituted of any in the school. Here stuck the great stupid boys,
who, for the life of them, could never master the accidence--the objects
alternately of mirth and terror to the youngsters, who were daily taking
them up and laughing at them in lesson, and getting kicked by them for
so doing in play-hours.
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