There were no less than three unhappy fellows in
tail coats, with incipient down on their chins, whom the Doctor and
the master of the form were always endeavouring to hoist into the upper
school, but whose parsing and construing resisted the most well-meant
shoves. Then came the mass of the form, boys of eleven and twelve, the
most mischievous and reckless age of British youth, of whom East and Tom
Brown were fair specimens. As full of tricks as monkeys, and of excuses
as Irishwomen, making fun of their master, one another, and their
lessons, Argus himself would have been puzzled to keep an eye on them;
and as for making them steady or serious for half an hour together,
it was simply hopeless. The remainder of the form consisted of young
prodigies of nine and ten, who were going up the school at the rate of
a form a half-year, all boys' hands and wits being against them in their
progress. It would have been one man's work to see that the precocious
youngsters had fair play; and as the master had a good deal besides
to do, they hadn't, and were for ever being shoved down three or four
places, their verses stolen, their books inked, their jackets whitened,
and their lives otherwise made a burden to them.
The lower-fourth, and all the forms below it, were heard in the great
school, and were not trusted to prepare their lessons before coming in,
but were whipped into school three-quarters of an hour before the lesson
began by their respective masters, and there, scattered about on the
benches, with dictionary and grammar, hammered out their twenty lines
of Virgil and Euripides in the midst of babel.
Pages:
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180