The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0063/00635.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 18KB | 288 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00635}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Anthology Of Shorter Works
Our School}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{school
chief
always
master
boys
little
boy
even
never
another
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{}
$Log{See The Dancing Master*0063501.scf
}
Title:       Anthology Of Shorter Works
Book:        Our School
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Our School

     We went to look at it, only this last Midsummer, and found that the
Railway had cut it up root and branch.  A great trunk-line had swallowed the
play-ground, sliced away the schoolroom, and pared off the corner of the
house: which, thus curtailed of its proportions, presented itself, in a green
stage of stucco, profilewise towards the road, like a forlorn flat-iron
without a handle, standing on end.

     It seems as if our schools were doomed to be the sport of change.  We
have faint recollections of a Preparatory Day-School, which we have sought
in vain, and which must have been pulled down to make a new street, ages ago.
We have dim impressions, scarcely amounting to a belief, that it was over a
dyer's shop.  We know that you went up steps to it; that you frequently
grazed your knees in doing so; that you generally got your leg over the
scraper, in trying to scrape the mud off a very unsteady little shoe.  The
mistress of the Establishment holds no place in our memory; but, rampant on
one eternal door-mat, in an eternal entry long and narrow, is a puffy
pug-dog, with a personal animosity towards us, who triumphs over Time.  The
bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiating way he had of snapping at our
undefended legs, the ghastly grinning of his moist black muzzle and white
teeth, and the insolence of his crisp tail curled like a pastoral crook, all
live and flourish.  From an otherwise unaccountable association of him with
a fiddle, we conclude that he was of French extraction, and his name Fidele.
He belonged to some female, chiefly inhabiting a back-parlour, whose life
appears to us to have been consumed in sniffing, and in wearing a brown
beaver bonnet.  For her, he would sit up and balance cake upon his nose, and
not eat it until twenty had been counted.  To the best of our belief we were
once called in to witness this performance; when, unable, even in his milder
moments, to endure our presence, he instantly made at us, cake and all.

     Why a something in mourning, called "Miss Frost," should still connect
itself with our preparatory school, we are unable to say.  We retain no
impression of the beauty of Miss Frost - if she were beautiful; or of the
mental fascinations of Miss Frost - if she were accomplished; yet her name
and her black dress hold an enduring place in our remembrance.  An equally
impersonal boy, whose name has long since shaped itself unalterably into
"Master Mawls," is not to be dislodged from our brain.  Retaining no
vindictive feeling towards Mawls - no feeling whatever, indeed - we infer
that neither he nor we can have loved Miss Frost.  Our first impression of
Death and Burial is associated with this formless pair.  We all three nestled
awfully in a corner one wintry day, when the wind was blowing shrill, with
Miss Frost's pinafore over our heads; and Miss Frost told us in a whisper
about somebody being "screwed down." It is the only distinct recollection we
preserve of these impalpable creatures, except a suspicion that the manners
of Master Mawls were susceptible of much improvement.  Generally speaking,
we may observe that whenever we see a child intently occupied with its nose,
to the exclusion of all other subjects of interest, our mind reverts, in a
flash to Master Mawls.

     But, the School that was our School before the Railroad came and
overthrew it, was quite another sort of place.  We were old enough to be put
into Virgil when we went there, and to get Prizes for a variety of polishing
on which the rust has long accumulated.  It was a School of some celebrity
in its neighbourhood - nobody could have said why - and we had the honour to
attain and hold the eminent position of first boy.  The master was supposed
among us to know nothing, and one of the ushers was supposed to know
everything.  We are still inclined to think the first-named supposition
perfectly correct.

     We have a general idea that its subject had been in the leather trade,
and had bought us - meaning our school - of another proprietor, who was
immensely learned.  Whether this belief had any real foundation, we are not
likely ever to know now.  The only branches of education with which he showed
the least acquaintance, were, ruling and corporally punishing.  He was always
ruling ciphering-books with a bloated mahogany ruler, or smiting the palms
of offenders with the same diabolical instrument, or viciously drawing a pair
of pantaloons tight with one of his large hands, and caning the wearer with
the other.  We have no doubt whatever that this occupation was the principal
solace of his existence.

     A profound respect for money pervaded Our School which was, of course,
derived from its Chief.  We remember an idiotic goggle-eyed boy, with a big
head and half-crowns without end, who suddenly appeared as a parlour-boarder,
and was rumoured to have come by sea from some mysterious part of the earth
where his parents rolled in gold.  He was usually called "Mr." by the Chief,
and was said to feed in the parlour on steaks and gravy; likewise to drink
currant wine.  And he openly stated that if rolls and coffee were ever denied
him at breakfast, he would write home to that unknown part of the globe from
which he had come, and cause himself to be recalled to the regions of gold.
He was put into no form or class, but learnt alone, as little as he liked -
and he liked very little - and there was a belief among us that this was
because he was too wealthy to be "taken down."  His special treatment, and
our vague association of him with the sea, and with storms, and sharks, and
Coral Reefs occasioned the wildest legends to be circulated as his history.
A tragedy in blank verse was written on the subject - if our memory does not
deceive us, by the hand that now chronicles these recollections - in which
his father figured as a Pirate, and was shot for a voluminous catalogue of
atrocities: first imparting to his wife the secret of the cave in which his
wealth was stored, and from which his only son's half-crowns now issued.
Dumbledon (the boy's name) was represented as "yet unborn" when his brave
father met his fate; and the despair and grief of Mrs. Dumbledon at that
calamity was movingly shadowed forth as having weakened the parlour-boarder's
mind.  This production was received with great favour, and was twice
performed with closed doors in the dining-room.  But, it got wind, and was
seized as libellous, and brought the unlucky poet into severe affliction.
Some two years afterwards, all of a sudden one day, Dumbledon vanished.  It
was whispered that the Chief himself had taken him down to the Docks, and
re-shipped him for the Spanish Main; but nothing certain was ever known about
his disappearance.  At this hour, we cannot thoroughly disconnect him from
California.

     Our School was rather famous for mysterious pupils.  There was another
- a heavy young man, with a large double-cased silver watch, and a fat knife
the handle of which was a perfect tool-box - who unaccountably appeared one
day at a special desk of his own, erected close to that of the Chief, with
whom he held familiar converse.  He lived in the parlour, and went out for
walks, and never took the least notice of us - even of us, the first boy -
unless to give us a depreciatory kick, or grimly to take our hat off and
throw it away, when he encountered us out of doors, which unpleasant ceremony
he always performed as he passed - not even condescending to stop for the
purpose.  Some of us believed that the classical attainments of this
phenomenon were terrific, but that his penmanship and arithmetic were
defective, and he had come there to mend t