THE YOUTH’S CABINET. 27

joyed such a privilege, I will give you a
picture of the scene, from the hands of
the engraver. Most of the scholars
were ragged and dirty, stupid and saucy.
It took them days and days of practice
to make straight strokes, and pot hooks,
and round O’s. ‘Their round O’s had
sometimes three corners, sometimes
more. Their straight strokes were not
unlike a dog’s hinder leg; and as to
their hooks, they went up and down, a
little to the right and a little to the left,
and were so entangled and twisted, and
_ ran so often the one into the other, that,
for the life of you, you could not tell
where they began nor where they ended.
In their sums, they made two and two
five. They carried one to four, and made
seven of it easily ; took six from nine,
and left anything behind you please,
from thirteen to thirty; carried one to
eight, and made fifteen of it, as quick as
a wink; made three and sixpence out of
sixty pence; and in casting up twelve
pounds of butter, at a shilling and a
halfpenny a pound, they were pretty
sure to come near double the number of
shillings, either under or over, X and Z
they made vowels of, and turned E and
O into consonants, They found a plural
in a single pen; but a score was with
them singular, They pronounced an-
ique “ antikew,” and fatigue “ fatigew,”
nd no “ Noah,” They spelled com-
and “cumhand.” In their statements

as they went home, in the streams they
passed. They held their pens as a
house-maid does a poker; and when
they had blotted their copy-books all
Over, so as to leave no space to write,
they finished by blacking each other’s
faces with the remainder of the ink.
They broke up their slates to play at
“pitch and toss” with; and after the
schoolmaster had whacked them, so that
his arm fairly ached, they sat down upon
the benches, as if nothing at all had
happened, and said they “ didn’t care.”
If, to punish them, he withheld their
dinners till they went home, by keeping
hold of the basket in which their pro-
visions were stored,’and they could by
any chance get outside the door, they
rioted to excess on a raw turnip, ban-
queted, like an emperor, on beet-root,
and were in perfect ecstacy over a green
cabbage. If they could but get hold
of the cane with which they had been
beaten, they cut it up into small pieces
tosmoke, They got astride the benches,
when their *master’s back was turned,
and made them rear up, and played at
horses. There was scarcely a tree, for
miles round the school-house, that they
could not clamber up—no garden hedge
so thick, but they contrived to get
through it—no stable in the neighbor-
hood, out of which they could not get
the shaggy pony, if they took a fancy to
do so. They could run like greyhounds,
throw a stone to within an inch of the
object they aimed at, and when they
had done wrong, hide themselves in

»{Such holes and corners as you would
Joined each other; and Africa was with only think a rat would ever dream of
hem a market-town, where they sold | getting into. Sometimes they managed
Striches’ eggs, They tore up their books | to arrive at school just in time to see the
make paper boats of, and swam them, | better-behaved scholars leaving.

  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  

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