79 9 THE DEATH OF THE DOMINIE. "Take him up, says the master."-OLD SPELLING BOOK. My old Schoolmaster is dead. He "died of a stroke;" and I wonder none of his pupils have ever done the same. I have been flogged by many masters, but his rod, like Aaron's, swallowed up all the rest. We have often wished that he whipt on the principle of Italian penmanship,-up strokes heavy and down strokes light; but he did it in English round hand, and we used to think with a very hard pen. Such was his love of flogging, that for some failure in English composition, after having been well corrected I have been ordered to be revised. I have heard of a road to learning, and 80 THE DEATH OF THE DOMINIE. he did justice to it; we certainly never went a stage in education without being well horsed. The mantle of Dr. Busby descended on his shoulders, and on ours. There was but one tree in the playground-a birch, but it never had a twig or leaf upon it. Spring or summer it always looked as bare as if the weather had been cutting at the latter end of the year. Pictures they say are incentives to learning, and certainly we never got through a page without cuts; for instance, I do not recollect a Latin article without a tail-piece. All the Latin at that school might be comprised in one line "Arma virumque cano." An arm, a man, and a cane. It was Englished to me one day in school hours, when I was studying Robinson Crusoe instead of Virgil, by a storm of bamboo that really carried on the illusion, and made me think for the time that I was assaulted by a set of savages. He seemed to consider a boy as a bear's cub, and set himself literally to lick him into shape. He was so particularly fond of striking us, with a leather strap on the flats of our hands that he never allowed them a day's rest. There was no such thing as a Palm Sunday in our calendar. In one word he was disinterestedly cruel, and used as industriously to strike for nothing as other workmen strike for wages. Some of the elder boys, who had read Smollett, christened him Roderic, from his often hitting like Random, and being so partial to Strap. After making his His death was characteristic. will he sent for Mr. Taddy, the head usher, and addressed him as follows: "It is all over, Mr. Taddy-I am sinking fast-I am going from the terrestrial globe-to the celestial-and have promised Tomkins a flogging-mind he has it—and don't let him pick off the buds-I have asked Aristotle" (here his head wandered)" and he says I cannot live an hour-I don't like that black horse grinning at me-cane him soundly for not knowing his verbs-Castigo te, non quod odio habeam-Oh, Mr. Taddy, it's breaking up with me-the vacation's coming-There is that black horse again-Dulcis. G |