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young dredges and hulking mud-larks . were referred .
to the experiences of Thomas Twopence,who having re-
solved not to rob (under circuinstances of ' uncommon
atrocity) his particular friend and benefactor, of eighteen-
pence, presently came into supernatural possession of
three. and Sixpence, and lived a shining light ever after-
wards. ‘,(Note, that the benefactor came to no good.)
Several swa gering sinners had written their own biog-
raphies in t ie same strain : it always appearing from
the lessons of ‘those very boastful persons, that you were
to do good, not because it was good, but because you
were to make a good thing of it. Contrariwise, the
adult pupils were taught to read (if they could learn) out
of the new Testament ; and by (lint of stumbling over
the syllables and keeping their bewildered eyes on the
particular syllables coming round to their turn, were as
absolutely ignorant of the sublime history as if they had
never seen or heard of it. An exceedingly and confound-
inglypperplcxing jumble of a school, in fact, were black
spirits and grey, red spirits and white, jumbled jumbled
jumbled jumbled, jumbled every night. And particularly
every Sunday night. For then,an inclined plane of unfor-
tunate infants would be handed over to the prosiest and
worstiof all the teachers with good intentions, whom
nobody older would endure. “'ho, taking his stand on
the door before them as chief executioner, would be at-
tended by a conventional volunteer boy as executioner’s
assistant. “'hen and where it first became the conven-
tional system that a weary or inattentive infant in a class
must have its face smoothed downward with a hot hand,
or when and where the conventional volunteer boy first
beheld such system in operation, and became inflamed
with a sacred zeal to adminster it, matters not. It was
the function of the chief executioner to hold forth, and
it was the’ function of the acolyte to dart at sleeping in-
fants, yawning infants, restless infants, whimpering in-
fants, and smooth their wretched faces ; sometimes with
one hand, as if he were anointing them for a whisker:
sometimes with both hands, applied after the fashion of
blinkers. And so the jumble would be in action in this
department for a mortal hour ; the exponent drawling on
to My Dearerr .Cliilderrenerr, let us say, for example,
about the beautiful coming to the Sepulchrc; and re-
peating theword Sepulclire commonly used among in-
fants) five hundred times, an never once hinting what
it meant ; the conventional boy smoothing away right
and left, as an infallible commentary; the whole hot-
bed of flushed and exhausted infants exchanging meas-
les. rashes, whooping-cough, fever, and stomach dis-
orders, as if they were assembled in High Market for the
purpose.
Even in this temple of good intentions, an exception
ally sharp boy exceptionally determined to learn, could
learn something, and, having learned it, could impart it
much better than the teachers ; as being more knowing
than they, and not at the disadvantage in which they
stood towards the shrewder pupils. In this way it had
come about that Cnarley Hexam had risen in the jumble,
taught in the jumble, and been received from the jumble
into a better school.
“ So you want to go and see your sister, Hexam? ”
“If you please, Mr. Headstone.”
“I have half a mind to go with you. VVhere does your
sister live ‘.7 ”
" Why, she is not settled et, Mr. Headstone. I’d
rather you didn’t see her till s ie is settled, if it was all
the same to you.” -
“ Lookliere, Hexam.” Mr. Bradley Headstone, highly
certificated stipendiary schoolmaster, drew his right fore-
finger through one of the buttonholes of the boy’s coat,
and looked at it attentively. “I hope your sister may
be good company for you ‘I ” -
A“ Why do you doubt it, Mr. Headstone? ”
. “I did not say I doubted it."
,“No, sir; you didn't say so.” p
Bradley Headstone looked at his finger again, tools it
out of the buttonhole and looked at it closer, bit the side
of it and looked at it again. . .
‘(You see, Hexam, you will be one of us. In good time
you are sure to pass a creditable examination and become
one of us. Then the question is-" '
The boywaited so long for the question, while the
‘OUR 11rUTU.4L"1v1zrLWND. A 417
schoolmaster looked at anew side of his finger, and hit
it, and looked at it again, that at length the boy repeated:
“ The question is, sir-'2” ' r ‘4
. “ .VVhether you had not better leave well alone.”
‘.‘ Is it well to leave my sister alone, Mr. Headstone? "
“I do not say so, because I do not know. I put it to
You. , I ask you to think of it. I want you to consider.
’ou know how well you are doing here." -
“ After all, she got me here,” said the boy, with a
strugaglc. V '
“ erceiving the necessity of it,” acquiesced the school-
master, “ and making up her mind fully to the separation.
es.
The boy, with a return of that former reluctance or
struggle or whatever it was, seemed to debate with him-
ielf. At length he said, raising his eyes to his niastefs
ace : r
" I wish you’d come with me and see her, Mr. Head-
stone, though she is not settled. I wish you’d come with
m<1:% and take her in the rough, and judge her 'for.your-
se ;" ' ‘ ‘
“ You are sure you would not like,” asked the school-
master, “to prepare her?” .
“My sister Lizzie,” said the boy, proudly, “wants no
preparing, Mr. Headstone. VVhat she is, she is, and -
shows herself to be. There’s no pretending about my
sister." , -
His confidence in her sat more easily upon him than
the indecision with which he had twice contended.‘ It
was his better nature to be true to her, if it were his
worse nature to be wholly selfish. And as yet the better
nature had the stronger hold.
“ ‘Veil, I can spare the evening,” said the schoolmaster.
“ I am ready to walk with you.”
“ Thank you, Mr. Headstone. And I am ready to go."
Bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat and waist-
coat, and decent white shirt, and decent formal black
tie, and decent pantaloons of pepper and salt, with his
decent silver watch in his pocket and its decent hair-
guard round his neck, looked a thoroughly decent young
man of six-and-twenty. He was never seen in any other
dress, and yet there was a. certain stiffness in his manner
of wearing this, as if there were a want of adaptation
between him and it, recalling some mechanics in their
holiday clothes. He had acquired mechanically a great
store of teacher's knowledge. He could do mental arith-
metic mechauically, sing at sight mechanically, blow
various wind instruments mechanically, even play the
great church organ mechanically. From his early child-
hood up, his mind had been a place of mechanical stow-
age. The arrangement of his wholesale warehouse,.so
that it might be always ready to meet the demands of
retail dealers-history here, geography there, astronomy
to the right, political economy to the left-natural his-
tory, the physical sciences, figures, music, the lower
mathematics. and what not, all in their several places-
tliis care had imparted to his countenance a look of care;
while the habit of questioning and being questioned had
given him a suspicious manner, or a manner that would
be better described as one of lying in wait. There was
a kind of settled trouble in the face. It was the face
belonging to a naturally slow or inattentive intellect O
that had toiled hard to get what it had won, and that
had to hold it now that it was gotten. He always seemed
to be uneasy lest anything should be missing from his
mental warehouse, and taking stock to assure himself.
Sup ression of so much to make room for somuch, had
given iim a constrained manner, over and nb0ve- let
there was enough of wlint was animal, ‘arid. of what was
fiery (though smouldering), still visible in him, to suggest
that if young Bradley Headstone, when a paupcrlad. 11510
chanced to be told off for the sea, he would not have
been the last man in a ship’s crew. Ileganlingthat
origin of his, lie was proud, mood)’, and Sl111t.3D, 59511193
it to be forgotten. And few people knew of it.
In some visits to the J tiuible his attention had been
attracted to this boy Hexam. An undeniable boy for a
pupil-teacher; an undeniable boy to (lo credit. to the
master who should bring him On. C0ml7'1118d With ‘"113
consideration, there may have been some thought of the
pauper lad now never to be mentioned. Be that how.1t
might, he had with pains gradually worked the boy intn
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