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+Project Gutenberg's Doctor Birch and His Young Friends, by M. A. Titmarsh
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Doctor Birch and His Young Friends
+
+Author: M. A. Titmarsh
+
+Release Date: May 1, 2014 [EBook #45554]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR BIRCH AND HIS YOUNG FRIENDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger from page images generously
+provided by the Internet Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DOCTOR BIRCH AND HIS YOUNG FRIENDS.
+
+By Mr. M. A. Titmarsh.
+
+London:
+
+Chapman and Hall
+
+1840.
+
+[Illustration: 0008]
+
+[Illustration: 0009]
+
+[Illustration: 00011]
+
+
+
+
+DOCTOR BIRCH.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOCTOR AND HIS STAFF.
+
+|There is no need to say why I became Assistant Master and Professor of
+the English and French languages, flower-painting, and the German flute,
+in Doctor Birch's Academy, at Rodwell Regis. Good folks may depend on
+this that there was good reason for my leaving lodgings near London,
+and a genteel society, for an under-master's desk in that old school.
+I promise you, the fare at the Usher's table, the getting up at five
+o'clock in the morning, the walking out with little boys in the fields,
+(who used to play me tricks, and never could be got to respect my awful
+and responsible character as teacher in the school,) Miss Birch's vulgar
+insolence, Jack Birch's glum condescension, and the poor old Doctor's
+patronage, were not matters in themselves pleasurable: and that that
+patronage and those dinners were sometimes cruel hard to swallow. Never
+mind--my connexion with the place is over now, and I hope they have got
+a more efficient under-master.
+
+Jack Birch (Rev. J. Birch, of St. Neot's Hall, Oxford,) is partner with
+his father the Doctor, and takes some of the classes. About his Greek
+I can't say much; but I will construe him in Latin any day. A more
+supercilious little prig, (giving himself airs, too, about his cousin,
+Miss Baby, who lives with the Doctor,) a more empty pompous little
+coxcomb I never saw. His white neckcloth looked as if it choked him. He
+used to try and look over that starch upon me and Prince the assistant,
+as if we were a couple of footmen. He didn't do much business in the
+school; but occupied his time in writing sanctified letters to the boys'
+parents, and in composing dreary sermons to preach to them.
+
+The real master of the school is Prince; an Oxford man too: shy,
+haughty, and learned; crammed with Greek and a quantity of useless
+learning; uncommonly kind to the small boys; pitiless with the fools
+and the braggarts: respected of all for his honesty, his learning, his
+bravery, (for he hit out once in a boat-row in a way which astonished
+the boys and the bargemen,) and for a latent power about him, which all
+saw and confessed somehow. Jack Birch could never look him in the face.
+Old Miss Z. dared not put off any of _her_ airs upon him. Miss Rosa made
+him the lowest of curtsies. Miss Raby said she was afraid of him.
+Good old Prince! many a pleasant night we have smoked in the Doctor's
+harness-room, whither we retired when our boys were gone to bed, and our
+cares and canes put by.
+
+After Jack Birch had taken his degree at Oxford--a process which he
+effected with great difficulty--this place, which used to be called
+"Birch's," "Dr. Birch's Academy," and what not, became suddenly
+"Archbishop Wigsby's College of Rodwell Regis." They took down the old
+blue board with the gold letters, which has been used to mend the pig-
+stye since. Birch had a large school-room run up in the Gothic taste,
+with statuettes, and a little belfry, and a bust of Archbishop Wigsby in
+the middle of the school. He put the six senior boys into caps and
+gowns, which had rather a good effect as the lads sauntered down the
+street of the town, but which certainly provoked the contempt and
+hostility of the bargemen; and so great was his rage for academic
+costumes and ordinances, that he would have put me myself into a lay
+gown, with red knots and fringes, but that I flatly resisted, and said
+that a writing-master had no business with such paraphernalia.
+
+By the way, I have forgotten to mention the Doctor himself. And what
+shall I say of him? Well, he has a very crisp gown and bands, a solemn
+air, a tremendous loud voice, and a grand and solemn air with the boys'
+parents, whom he receives in a study, covered round with the best bound
+books, which imposes upon many--upon the women especially--and makes
+them fancy that this is a Doctor indeed. But, Law bless you! He never
+reads the books; or opens one of them, except that in which he keeps his
+bands--and a Dugdale's Monasticon, which looks like a book, but is in
+reality a cupboard, where he has his almond cakes, and decanter of port
+wine. He gets up his classics with translations, or what the boys call
+cribs. They pass wicked tricks upon him when he hears the forms. The
+elder wags go to his study, and ask him to help them in hard bits of
+Herodotus or Thucydides: he says he will look over the passage, and
+flies for refuge to Mr. Prince, or to the crib.
+
+He keeps the flogging department in his own hands; finding that his
+son was too savage. He has awful brows and a big voice. But his roar
+frightens nobody. It is only a lion's skin, or, so to say, a muff.
+
+Little Mordant made a picture of him with large ears, like a well-known
+domestic animal, and had his own justly boxed for the caricature.
+The Doctor discovered him in the fact, and was in a flaming rage, and
+threatened whipping at first; but in the course of the day an opportune
+basket of game arriving from Mordant's father, the Doctor became
+mollified, and has burnt the picture with the ears. However I have one
+wafered up in my desk by the hand of the same little rascal: and the
+frontispiece of this very book is drawn from it.
+
+
+
+
+THE COCK OF THE SCHOOL.
+
+|I am growing an old fellow--and have seen many great folks in the
+course of my travels and time--Louis Philippe coming out of the
+Tuileries, His Majesty the King of Prussia and the Reichsverweser
+accolading each other, at Cologne, at my elbow; Admiral Sir Charles
+Napier (in an omnibus once), the Duke of Wellington, the immortal Goethe
+at Weimar, the late benevolent Pope Gregory XVI., and a score more of
+the famous in this world--the whom, whenever one looks at, one has a
+mild shock of awe and tremor. I like this feeling and decent fear and
+trembling with which a modest spirit salutes a _Great Man_.
+
+Well, I have seen Generals capering on horseback at the head of their
+crimson battalions; Bishops sailing down cathedral aisles, with downcast
+eyes, pressing their trencher caps to their hearts with their fat white
+hands; College heads when her Majesty is on a visit; the Doctor in all
+his glory at the head of his school on Speech-day, a great sight,--and
+all great men these.
+
+I have never met the late Mr. Thomas Cribb, but I have no doubt should
+have regarded him with the same feeling of awe with which I look every
+day at George Champion, the cock of Dr. Birch's school.
+
+When, I say, I reflect as I go up and set him a sum, that he could whop
+me in two minutes, double up Prince and the other assistant, and pitch
+the Doctor out of window, I can't but think how great, how generous, how
+magnanimous a creature this is, that sits quite quiet and good-natured,
+and works his equation, and ponders through his Greek play. He might
+take the schoolroom pillars and pull the house down if he liked. He
+might close the door, and demolish every one of us like Antar, the lover
+of Ibla; but he lets us live. He never thrashes anybody without a cause,
+when woe betide the tyrant or the sneak!
+
+I think that to be strong, and able to whop everybody,--(not to do
+it, mind you, but to feel that you were able to do it,)--would be the
+greatest of all gifts. There is a serene good humour which plays about
+George Champion's broad face, which shows the consciousness of this
+power, and lights up his honest blue eyes with a magnanimous calm.
+
+He is invictus. Even when a cub there was no beating this lion. Six
+years ago the undaunted little warrior actually stood up to Frank
+Davison,--(the Indian officer now--poor little Charley's brother, whom
+Miss Raby nursed so affectionately,)--then seventeen years old, and the
+cock of Birch's. They were obliged to drag off the boy, and Frank, with
+admiration and regard for him, prophesied the great things he would do.
+Legends of combats are preserved fondly in schools; they have stories of
+such at Rodwell Regis, performed in the old Doctor's time, forty years
+ago.
+
+Champion's affair with the Young Tutbury Pet, who was down here in
+training,--with Black the Bargeman,--with the three head boys of Doctor
+Wapshot's academy, whom he caught maltreating an outlying day-boy
+of ours, &c.,--are known to all the Rodwell Regis men. He was always
+victorious. He is modest and kind, like all great men. He has a good,
+brave, honest understanding. He cannot make verses like young Pinder,
+or read Greek like Lawrence the Prefect, who is a perfect young abyss of
+learning, and knows enough, Prince says, to furnish any six first-class
+men; but he does his work in a sound, downright way, and he is made
+to be the bravest of soldiers, the best of country parsons, an honest
+English gentleman wherever he may go.
+
+[Illustration: 0021]
+
+Like all great men, George is good-humoured and lazy. There is a
+particular bench in the play-ground on which he will loll for hours on
+half-holidays, and is so affable that the smallest boys come and speak
+to him. It is pleasant to see the young cubs frisking round the honest
+lion. His chief friend and attendant, however, is young Jack Hall, whom
+he saved when drowning, out of the Miller's Pool. The attachment of the
+two is curious to witness. The smaller lad gambolling, playing tricks
+round the bigger one, and perpetually making fun of his protector. They
+are never far apart, and of holidays you may meet them miles away from
+the school. George sauntering heavily down the lanes with his big stick,
+and little Jack larking with the pretty girls in the cottage windows.
+
+George has a boat on the river, in which, however, he commonly lies
+smoking, whilst Jack sculls him. He does not play at cricket, except
+when the school plays the county, or at Lord's in the holidays. The boys
+can't stand his bowling, and when he hits, it is like trying to catch a
+cannon-ball. I have seen him at tennis. It is a splendid sight to behold
+the young fellow bounding over the court with streaming yellow hair,
+like young Apollo in a flannel jacket.
+
+The other head boys are Lawrence the Captain, Bunce, famous chiefly for
+his magnificent appetite, and Pitman, sur-named Roscius, for his love of
+the drama. Add to these Swanky, called Macassar, from his partiality
+to that condiment, and who has varnished boots, wears white gloves on
+Sundays, and looks out for Miss Pinkerton's school (transferred from
+Chiswick to Rodwell Regis, and conducted by the nieces of the late Miss
+Barbara Pinkerton, the friend of Our Great Lexicograplier, upon the
+principles approved by him and practised by that admirable woman,) as it
+passes into church.
+
+[Illustration: 0025]
+
+Representations have been made concerning Mr. Horace Swanky's
+behaviour; rumours have been uttered about notes in verse, conveyed in
+three-cornered puffs, by Mrs. Buggies, who serves Miss Pinkerton's young
+ladies on Fridays--and how Miss Didow, to whom the tart and enclosure
+were addressed, tried to make away with herself by swallowing a ball of
+cotton. But I pass over these absurd reports, as likely to affect the
+reputation of an admirable Seminary conducted by irreproachable females.
+As they go into church (Miss P. driving in her flock of lambkins with
+the crook of her parasol,) how can it be helped if her forces and ours
+sometimes collide, as the boys are on their way up to the organ-loft?
+And I don't believe a word about the three-cornered puff, but rather
+that it was the invention of that jealous Miss Birch, who is jealous of
+Miss Raby, jealous of everybody who is good and handsome, and who has
+_her own ends_ in view, or I am very much in error.
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE SCHOOL-ROOM.
+
+|What they call the little school-room is a small room at the other end
+of the great school; through which you go to the Doctor's private house,
+and where Miss Raby sits with her pupils. She has a half-dozen very
+small ones over whom she presides and teaches them in her simple way,
+until they are big or learned enough to face the great school-room. Many
+of them are in a hurry for promotion, the graceless little simpletons,
+and know no more than their elders when they are well off.
+
+[Illustration: 0029]
+
+She keeps the accounts, writes out the bills, superintends the linen and
+sews on the general shirt-buttons. Think of having such a woman at home
+to sew on one's shirt-buttons! But peace, peace, thou foolish heart!
+
+Miss Raby is the Doctor's niece. Her mother was a beauty (quite unlike
+old Zoe therefore); and she married a pupil in the old Doctor's time,
+who was killed afterwards, a Captain in the East India service, at
+the siege of Bhurtpore. Hence a number of Indian children come to the
+Doctor's, for Raby was very much liked, and the uncle's kind reception
+of the orphan has been a good speculation for the school-keeper.
+
+It is wonderful how brightly and gaily that little quick creature
+does her duty. She is the first to rise, and the last to sleep, if any
+business is to be done. She sees the other two women go off to parties
+in the town without even so much as wishing to join them. It is
+Cinderella, only contented to stay at home--content to bear Zoe's scorn
+and to admit Flora's superior charms,--and to do her utmost to repay her
+uncle for his great kindness in housing her.
+
+So, you see, she works as much as three maid-servants for the wages of
+one. She is as thankful when the Doctor gives her a new gown, as if
+he had presented her with a fortune: laughs at his stories most
+good-humouredly, listens to Zoe's scolding most meekly, admires Flora
+with all her heart, and only goes out of the way when Jack Birch shows
+his sallow face: for she can't bear him, and always finds work when he
+comes near.
+
+How different she is when some folks approach her! I won't be
+presumptuous; but I think, I think, I have made a not unfavourable
+impression in some quarters. However, let us be mum on this subject. I
+like to see her, because she always looks good-humoured; because she is
+always kind, because she is always modest, because she is fond of those
+poor little brats--orphans some of them,--because she is rather pretty,
+I dare say, or because I think so, which comes to the same thing.
+
+Though she is kind to all, it must be owned she shows the most gross
+favouritism towards the amiable children. She brings them cakes from
+dessert, and regales them with Zoe's preserves; spends many of her
+little shillings in presents for her favourites, and will tell them
+stories by the hour. She has one very sad story about a little boy, who
+died long ago; the younger children are never weary of hearing about
+him; and Miss Raby has shown to one of them a lock of the little chap's
+hair, which she keeps in her work-box to this day.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEAR BROTHERS.
+
+_A Melodrama in several Rounds_.
+
+The Doctor.
+
+Mr. Tipper, Uncle to the Masters Boxall.
+
+Boxall Major, Boxall Minor, Brown, Jones, Smith,
+
+Robinson, Tiffin Minimus.
+
+B. Go it old Boxall.
+
+J. Give it him young Boxall.
+
+R. Pitch into him old Boxall.
+
+S. Two to one on young Boxall.
+
+                        [Enter Tiffin Minimus, _running._
+
+_Tiffin Minimus_. Boxalls! you 're wanted.
+
+(_The Doctor to Mr. Tipper._) Every boy in the school loves them,
+my dear sir; your nephews are a credit to my establishment. They are
+orderly, well-conducted, gentleman-like boys. Let us enter and find them
+at their studies.
+
+                        [_Enter_ The Doctor _and_ Mr. Tipper.
+
+GRAND TABLEAU.
+
+
+
+
+A HOPELESS CASE.
+
+|Let us, people who are so uncommonly clever and learned, have a great
+tenderness and pity for the poor folks who are not endowed with the
+prodigious talents which we have. I have always had a regard for
+dunces;--those of my own school-days were amongst the pleasantest of the
+fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest in life; whereas
+many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by the yard, and
+construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble prig now, with
+not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before his beard
+grew.
+
+Those poor dunces! Talk of being the last man, ah! what a pang it must
+be to be the last boy--huge, misshapen, fourteen years of age,--and
+"taken up" by a chap who is but six years old, and can't speak quite
+plain yet!
+
+[Illustration: 0037]
+
+Master Hulker is in that condition at Birch's. He is the most honest,
+kind, active, plucky, generous creature. He can do many things better
+than most boys. He can go up a tree, jump, play at cricket, dive and
+swim perfectly--he can eat twice as much as almost any lady (as Miss
+Birch well knows), he has a pretty talent at carving figures with his
+hack-knife, he makes and paints little coaches, he can take a watch to
+pieces and put it together again. He can do everything but learn his
+lesson; and there he sticks at the bottom of the school, hopeless. As
+the little boys are drafted in from Miss Raby's class, (it is true she
+is one of the best instructresses in the world,) they enter and hop over
+poor Hulker. He would be handed over to the governess only he is too
+big. Sometimes I used to think, that this desperate stupidity was a
+stratagem of the poor rascal's; and that he shammed dulness so that he
+might be degraded into Miss Raby's class: if she would teach _me_, I
+know, before George, I would put on a pinafore and a little jacket--but
+no, it is a natural incapacity for the Latin Grammar.
+
+If you could see his grammar, it is a perfect curiosity of dog's ears.
+The leaves and cover are all curled and ragged. Many of the pages are
+worn away, with the rubbing of his elbows as he sits poring over the
+hopeless volume, with the blows of his fists as he thumps it madly, or
+with the poor fellow's tears. You see him wiping them away with the back
+of his hand, as he tries and tries, and can't do it.
+
+When I think of that Latin Grammar, and that infernal As in Pręsenti,
+and of other things which I was made to learn in my youth: upon my
+conscience I am surprised that we ever survived it. When one thinks
+of the boys who have been caned because they could not master that
+intolerable jargon! Good Lord, what a pitiful chorus these poor little
+creatures send up! Be gentle with them, ye schoolmasters, and only whop
+those who _won't_ learn.
+
+The Doctor has operated upon Hulker (between ourselves), but the boy was
+so little affected you would have thought he had taken chloroform. Birch
+is weary of whipping now, and leaves the boy to go his own gait. Prince,
+when he hears the lesson, and who cannot help making fun of a fool,
+adopts the sarcastic manner with Master Hulker, and says, "Mr. Hulker,
+may I take the liberty to inquire if your brilliant intellect has
+enabled you to perceive the difference between those words which
+grammarians have defined as substantive and adjective nouns?--if not,
+perhaps Mr. Ferdinand Timmins will instruct you." And Timmins hops over
+Hulker's head.
+
+I wish Prince would leave off girding at the poor lad. He's an only son,
+and his mother is a widow woman, who loves him with all her might. There
+is a famous sneer about the suckling of fools and the chronicling of
+small beer; but remember it was a rascal who uttered it.
+
+
+
+
+A WORD ABOUT MISS BIRCH.
+
+"The Gentlemen, and especially the younger and more tender of the
+Pupils, will have the advantage of the constant superintendence and
+affectionate care of Miss Zoe Birch, sister of the Principal: whose
+dearest aim will be to supply (as far as may be) the absent maternal
+friend."--_Prospectus of Rodwell Regis School_.
+
+This is all very fine in the Doctor's circulars, and Miss Zoe Birch--(a
+sweet birch blossom it is, fifty-five years old, during two score of
+which she has dosed herself with pills; with a nose as red and a face as
+sour as a crab-apple)--may do mighty well in a prospectus. But I should
+like to know who would take Miss Zoe for a mother, or would have her for
+one?
+
+[Illustration: 0042]
+
+The only persons in the house who are not afraid of her are Miss Flora
+and I--no, I am afraid of her, though I _do_ know the story about the
+French usher in 1830--but all the rest tremble before the woman, from
+the Doctor down to poor Francis the knife-boy, and whom she bullies into
+his miserable blacking-hole.
+
+The Doctor is a pompous and outwardly severe man--but inwardly weak
+and easy: loving a joke and a glass of port wine. I get on with him,
+therefore, much better than Mr. Prince, who scorns him for an ass,
+and under whose keen eyes the worthy Doctor writhes like a convicted
+impostor; and many a sunshiny afternoon would he have said, "Mr. T.,
+Sir, shall we try another glass of that yellow sealed wine which you
+seem to like?" (and which he likes even better than I do), had not the
+old harridan of a Zoe been down upon us, and insisted on turning me
+out with her miserable weak coffee. She a mother indeed! A sour milk
+generation she would have nursed. She is always croaking, scolding,
+bullying,--yowling at the housemaids, snarling at Miss Raby, bowwowing
+after the little boys, barking after the big ones. She knows how much
+every boy eats to an ounce; and her delight is to ply with fat the
+little ones who can't bear it, and with raw meat those who hate
+underdone. It was she who caused the Doctor to be eaten out three times;
+and nearly created a rebellion in the school because she insisted on his
+flogging Goliah Longman.
+
+The only time that woman is happy is when she comes in of a morning to
+the little boys' dormitories with a cup of hot Epsom salts, and a sippet
+of bread. Boo!--the very notion makes me quiver. She stands over them.
+I saw her do it to young Byles only a few days since--and her presence
+makes the abomination doubly abominable.
+
+As for attending them in real illness, do you suppose that she would
+watch a single night for any one of them? Not she. When poor little
+Charley Davison (that child, a lock of whose soft hair I have said how
+Miss Raby still keeps) lay ill of scarlet fever in the holidays--for the
+Colonel, the father of these boys, was in India--it was Anne Raby who
+tended the child, who watched him all through the fever, who never left
+him while it lasted, or until she had closed the little eyes that were
+never to brighten or moisten more. Anny watched and deplored him, but it
+was Miss Birch who wrote the letter announcing his demise, and got the
+gold chain and locket which the Colonel ordered as a memento of his
+gratitude. It was through a row with Miss Birch that Frank Davison ran
+away. I promise you that after he joined his regiment in India, the
+Ahmednuggar Irregulars, which his gallant father commands, there came
+over no more annual shawls and presents to Dr. and Miss Birch, and that
+if she fancied the Colonel was coming home to marry her (on account of
+her tenderness to his motherless children, which he was always writing
+about), _that_ notion was very soon given up. But these affairs are
+of early date, seven years back, and I only heard of them in a very
+confused manner from Miss Raby, who was a girl, and had just come to
+Rodwell Regis. She is always very much moved when she speaks about those
+boys, which is but seldom. I take it the death of the little one still
+grieves her tender heart.
+
+Yes, it is Miss Birch, who has turned away seventeen ushers and second
+masters in eleven years, and half as many French masters; inconsolable,
+I suppose, since the departure of her _favourite_, M. Grinche, with her
+gold watch, &c.; but this is only surmise--and what I gather from the
+taunts of Miss Rosa when she and her aunt have a tiff at tea.
+
+But besides this, I have another way of keeping her in order.
+
+Whenever she is particularly odious or insolent to Miss Raby, I have but
+to introduce raspberry jam into the conversation, and the woman holds
+her tongue. She will understand me. I need not say more.
+
+_Note, 12th December_.--I _may_ speak now. I have left the place and
+don't mind. I say then at once, and without caring twopence for the
+consequences, that I saw this woman, this _mother_ of the boys, _eating
+jam with a spoon out of Master Wiggins's trunk in the box-room_; and of
+this I am ready to take an affidavit any day.
+
+
+
+
+A TRAGEDY.
+
+THIS DRAMA OUGHT TO BE REPRESENTED IN ABOUT SIX CUTS.
+
+_[The School is hushed. Lawrence the Prefect, and Custos of the rods, is
+marching after the Doctor into the operating-room. Master Backhouse is
+about to follow.]_
+
+[Illustration: 0048]
+
+_Master Backhouse_. It's all very well, but you see if I don't pay you
+out after school--you sneak, you.
+
+_Master Lurcher_. If you do I '1l tell again.
+
+                        [Exit Backhouse.
+
+[_The rod is heard from the adjoining apartment.
+Hwish--Hhwish--hwish--hwish--hwish--hwish--hwish._]
+
+                        [Re-enter Backhouse.
+
+
+
+
+BRIGGS IN LUCK.
+
+_Enter the Knife-boy_.--Hamper for Briggses!
+
+_Master Brown._--Hurray, Tom Briggs! I'll lend you my knife.
+
+If this story does not carry its own moral, what fable does, I wonder?
+Before the arrival of that hamper, Master Briggs was in no better repute
+than any other young gentleman of the lower school; and in fact I had
+occasion myself, only lately, to correct Master Brown for kicking his
+friend's shins during the writing-lesson. But how this basket directed
+by his mother's housekeeper, and marked "Glass with care," (whence I
+conclude that it contains some jam and some bottles of wine probably, as
+well as the usual cake and game-pie, and half a sovereign for the elder
+Master B., and five new shillings for Master Decimus Briggs)--how,
+I say, the arrival of this basket, alters all Master Briggs's
+circumstances in life, and the estimation in which many persons regard
+him!
+
+[Illustration: 0051]
+
+If he is a good-hearted boy, as I have reason to think, the very first
+thing he will do, before inspecting the contents of the hamper, or
+cutting into them with the knife which Master Brown has so considerately
+lent him; will be to read over the letter from home which lies on the
+top of the parcel. He does so, as I remark to Miss Raby (for whom I
+happened to be mending pens when the little circumstance arose), with a
+flushed face and winking eyes. Look how the other boys are peering into
+the basket as he reads.--I say to her, "Isn't it a pretty picture?" Part
+of the letter is in a very large hand. That is from his little sister.
+And I would wager that she netted the little purse which he has just
+taken out of it, and which Master Lynx is eyeing.
+
+"You are a droll man, and remark all sorts of queer things," Miss Raby
+says, smiling, and plying her swift needle and fingers as quick as
+possible.
+
+"I am glad we are both on the spot, and that the little fellow
+lies under our guns as it were, and so is protected from some such
+brutal school-pirates as young Duval for instance, who would rob him
+probably of some of those good things, good in themselves, and better
+because fresh from home. See, there is a pie as I said, and which I dare
+say is better than those which are served at our table (but you never
+take any notice of these kind of things, Miss Raby), a cake of course, a
+bottle of currant wine, jam-pots, and no end of pears in the straw.
+
+"With this money little Briggs will be able to pay the tick which that
+imprudent child has run up with Mrs. Ruggles; and I shall let Briggs
+Major pay for the pencil-case which Bullock sold to him.--It will be a
+lesson to the young prodigal for the future.
+
+"But, I say, what a change there will be in his life for some time to
+come, and at least until his present wealth is spent! The boys who bully
+him will mollify towards him, and accept his pie and sweetmeats.
+They will have feasts in the bed-room; and that wine will taste more
+deliciously to them than the best out of the Doctor's cellar. The
+cronies will be invited. Young Master Wagg will tell his most dreadful
+story and sing his best song for a slice of that pie. What a jolly night
+they will have! When we go the rounds at night, Mr. Prince and I will
+take care to make a noise before we come to Briggs's room, so that the
+boys may have time to put the light out, to push the things away, and
+to scud into bed. Doctor Spry may be put in requisition the next
+morning..."
+
+"Nonsense! you absurd creature," cries out Miss Raby, laughing; and I
+lay down the twelfth pen very nicely mended.
+
+"Yes; after luxury comes the doctor, I say; after extravagance, a hole
+in the breeches pocket. To judge from his disposition, Briggs Major will
+not be much better off a couple of days hence than he is now, and, if
+I am not mistaken, will end life a poor man. Brown will be kicking his
+shins before a week is over, depend upon it. There are boys and men of
+all sorts, Miss R.--there are selfish sneaks who hoard until the store
+they daren't use grows mouldy--there are spendthrifts who fling away,
+parasites who flatter and lick its shoes, and snarling curs who hate
+and envy, good fortune."--I put down the last of the pens, brushing away
+with it the quill-chips from her desk first, and she looked at me with a
+kind wondering face. I brushed them away, clicked the pen-knife into
+my pocket, made her a bow, and walked off--for the bell was ringing for
+school.
+
+
+
+
+A YOUNG FELLOW WHO IS PRETTY SURE TO SUCCEED.
+
+|If Master Briggs is destined in all probability to be a poor man, the
+chances are, that Mr. Bullock will have a very different lot. He is
+a son of a partner of the eminent banking firm of Bullock and Hulker,
+Lombard Street, and very high in the upper school--quite out of my
+jurisdiction, consequently.
+
+He writes the most beautiful current hand ever seen; and the way in
+which he mastered arithmetic (going away into recondite and wonderful
+rules in the Tutor's Assistant, which some masters even dare not
+approach) is described by the Doctor in terms of admiration. He is
+Mr. Prince's best algebra pupil; and a very fair classic, too, doing
+everything well for which he has a mind.
+
+He does not busy himself with the sports of his comrades, and holds a
+cricket-bat no better than Miss Raby would. He employs the play hours
+in improving his mind, and reading the newspaper; he is a profound
+politician, and, it must be owned, on the Liberal side. The elder boys
+despise him rather; and when Champion Major passes, he turns his head,
+and looks down. I don't like the expression of Bullock's narrow, green
+eyes, as they follow the elder Champion, who does not seem to know or
+care how much the other hates him.
+
+No--Mr. Bullock, though perhaps the cleverest and most accomplished boy
+in the school, associates with the quite little boys when he is minded
+for society. To these he is quite affable, courteous, and winning.
+He never fagged or thrashed one of them. He has done the verses and
+corrected the exercises of many, and many is the little lad to whom he
+has lent a little money.
+
+It is true he charges at the rate of a penny a week for every sixpence
+lent out, but many a fellow to whom tarts are a present necessity is
+happy to pay this interest for the loan. These transactions are kept
+secret. Mr. Bullock, in rather a whining tone, when he takes Master
+Green aside and does the requisite business for him, says, "You know
+you'll go and talk about it everywhere. I don't want to lend you the
+money, I want to buy something with it. It's only to oblige you; and yet
+I am sure you will go and make fun of me." Whereon, of course, Green,
+eager for the money, vows solemnly that the transaction shall be
+confidential, and only speaks when the payment of the interest becomes
+oppressive.
+
+Thus it is that Mr. Bullock's practices are at all known. At a very
+early period indeed his commercial genius manifested itself; and by
+happy speculations in toffey; by composing a sweet drink made of stick
+liquorice and brown sugar, and selling it at a profit to the younger
+children; by purchasing a series of novels, which he let out at an
+adequate remuneration; by doing boys exercises for a penny, and other
+processes, he showed the bent of his mind. At the end of the half year
+he always went home richer than when he arrived at school, with his
+purse full of money.
+
+Nobody knows how much he brought: but the accounts are fabulous. Twenty,
+thirty, fifty--it is impossible to say how many sovereigns. When joked
+about his money, he turns pale and swears he has not a shilling: whereas
+he has had a banker's account ever since he was thirteen years old.
+
+At the present moment he is employed in negotiating the sale of a knife
+with Master Green, and is pointing out to the latter the beauty of the
+six blades, and that he need not pay until after the holidays.
+
+[Illustration: 0059]
+
+Champion Major has sworn that he will break every bone in his skin the
+next time that he cheats a little boy, and is bearing down upon him.
+Let us come away. It is frightful to see that big peaceful clever coward
+moaning under well deserved blows and whining for mercy.
+
+
+
+
+DUVAL, THE PIRATE.
+
+(_Jones Minimus passes, laden with tarts._)
+
+[Illustration: 0062]
+
+_Duval_. Hullo! you small boy with the tarts! Come here, Sir.
+
+_Jones Minimus_. Please, Duval, they ain't mine.
+
+_Duval._ O you abominable young story-teller.
+
+                        [He confiscates the goods.
+
+I think I like young Duval's mode of levying contributions better than
+Bullock's. The former's, at least, has the merit of more candour. Duval
+is the pirate of Birch's, and lies in wait for small boys laden with
+money or provender. He scents plunder from afar off: and pounces out on
+it. Woe betide the little fellow when Duval boards him!
+
+There was a youth here whose money I used to keep, as he was of an
+extravagant and weak disposition; and I doled it out to him in weekly
+shillings, sufficient for the purchase of the necessary tarts. This boy
+came to me one day for half a sovereign, for a very particular purpose,
+he said. I afterwards found he wanted to lend the money to Duval.
+
+The young ogre burst out laughing, when in a great wrath and fury I
+ordered him to refund to the little boy: and proposed a bill of exchange
+at three months. It is true Duval's father does not pay the Doctor, and
+the lad never has a shilling, save that which he levies; and though he
+is always bragging about the splendour of Freenystown, Co. Cork, and
+the fox-hounds his father keeps, and the claret they drink there--there
+comes no remittance from Castle Freeny in these bad times to the honest
+Doctor, who is a kindly man enough, and never yet turned an insolvent
+boy out of doors.
+
+
+
+
+THE DORMITORIES.
+
+_MASTER HEWLETT AND MASTER NIGHTINGALE._
+
+(Rather a cold winter night.)
+
+_Hewlett (flinging a shoe at Master Nightingale's bed, with which he
+hits that young gentleman.)_ Hullo! You! Get up and bring me that shoe.
+
+[Illustration: 0066]
+
+_Nightingale._ Yes, Hewlett. _(He gets up.)_
+
+_Hewlett_. Don't drop it, and be very careful of it, Sir.
+
+_Nightingale_. Yes, Hewlett.
+
+_Hewlett_. Silence in the Dormitory! Any boy who opens his mouth I'll
+murder him. Now, Sir, are not you the boy what can sing?
+
+_Nightingale_. Yes, Hewlett.
+
+_Hewlett_. Chaunt then till I go to sleep, and if I wake when you stop,
+you 'll have this at your head.
+
+          [Master Hewlett lays his Bluchers on the bed, ready to shy at Master
+Nightingale's head in the case contemplated.
+
+_Nightingale (timidly.)_ Please, Hewlett?
+
+_Hewlett_. Well, Sir.
+
+_Nightingale_. May I put on my trowsers, please? _Hewlett. No_, Sir. Go
+on, or I '11--
+
+_Nightingale_,
+
+                   "Through pleasures and palaces
+
+                        Though we may roam,
+
+                   Be it ever so humble,
+
+                        There's no place like home.
+
+               "Home, home! sweet, sweet home!
+
+                   There's no place like ho-ome!
+
+                   There's no place like home!"
+
+                        (Da Capo.)
+
+
+
+
+A CAPTURE AND A RESCUE.
+
+[Illustration: 0070]
+
+My young friend, Patrick Champion, George's younger brother, is a late
+arrival among us; has much of the family quality and good-nature; is not
+in the least a tyrant to the small boys, but is as eager as an Amadis to
+fight. He is boxing his way up the school, emulating his great brother.
+He fixes his eye on a boy above him in strength or size, and you hear
+somehow that a difference has arisen between them at football, and they
+have their coats off presently. He has thrashed himself over the heads
+of many youths in this manner; for instance, if Champion can lick
+Dobson, who can thrash Hobson, how much more, then, can he thrash
+Hobson. Thus he works up and establishes his position in the school. Nor
+does Mr. Prince think it advisable that we ushers should walk much in
+the way when these little differences are being settled, unless there is
+some gross disparity, or danger is apprehended.
+
+For instance, I own to having seen the row depicted here as I was
+shaving at my bed-room window. I did not hasten down to prevent its
+consequences. Fogle had confiscated a top, the property of Snivins, the
+which, as the little wretch was always pegging it at my toes, I did
+not regret. Snivins whimpered; and young Champion came up, lusting for
+battle. Directly he made out Fogle, he steered for him, pulling up his
+coat-sleeves, and clearing for action.
+
+"Who spoke to _you_, young Champion?" Fogle said, and he flung down
+the top to Master Snivins. I knew there would be no fight; and perhaps
+Champion, too, was disappointed.
+
+
+
+
+THE GARDEN,
+
+_WHERE THE PARLOUR-BOARDERS GO._
+
+Noblemen have been rather scarce at Birch's--but the heir of a great
+Prince has been living with the Doctor for some years.--He is Lord
+George Gaunt's eldest son, the noble Plan-tagenet Gaunt Gaunt, and
+nephew of the Most Honourable the Marquis of Steyne.
+
+[Illustration: 0074]
+
+They are very proud of him at the Doctor's--and the two Misses and Papa,
+whenever a stranger comes down whom they want to dazzle, are pretty sure
+to bring Lord Steyne into the conversation, mentioning the last party
+at Gaunt House, and cursorily remarking that they have with them a young
+friend who will be in all human probability Marquis of Steyne and Earl
+of Gaunt, &c.
+
+Plantagenet does not care much about these future honours: provided
+he can get some brown sugar on his bread and butter, or sit with three
+chairs and play at coach and horses, quite quietly by himself, he is
+tolerably happy. He saunters in and out of school when he likes, and
+looks at the masters and other boys with a listless grin. He used to be
+taken to church, but he laughed and talked in odd places, so they are
+forced to leave him at home now. He will sit with a bit of string and
+play cats-cradle for many hours. He likes to go and join the very small
+children at their games. Some are frightened at him, but they soon cease
+to fear, and order him about. I have seen him go and fetch tarts from
+Mrs. Ruggles for a boy of eight years old; and cry bitterly if he did
+not get a piece. He cannot speak quite plain, but very nearly; and is
+not more, I suppose, than three-and-twenty.
+
+Of course at home they know his age, though they never come and see him.
+But they forget that Miss Rosa Birch is no longer a young chit as
+she was ten years ago, when Gaunt was brought to the school. On the
+contrary, she has had no small experience in the tender passion, and is
+at this moment smitten with a disinterested affection for Plantagenet
+Gaunt.
+
+Next to a little doll with a burnt nose, which he hides away in cunning
+places, Mr. Gaunt is very fond of Miss Rosa too. What a pretty match
+it would make! and how pleased they would be at Gaunt House, if the
+grandson and heir of the great Marquis of Steyne, the descendant of a
+hundred Gaunts and Tudors, should marry Miss Birch, the schoolmaster's
+daughter! It is true she has the sense on her side, and poor Plantagenet
+is only an idiot: but there he is, a zany, with such expectations and
+such a pedigree!
+
+If Miss Rosa would run away with Mr. Gaunt, she would leave off bullying
+her cousin, Miss Anny Raby. Shall I put her up to the notion, and offer
+to lend her the money to run away? Mr. Gaunt is not allowed money. He
+had some once, but Bullock took him into a corner, and got it from him.
+He has a moderate tick opened at the tart-woman's. He stops at Rodwell
+Regis through the year, school-time and holiday time; it is all the same
+to him. Nobody asks about him, or thinks about him, save twice a year,
+when the Doctor goes to Gaunt House, and gets the amount of his bills,
+and a glass of wine in the steward's room.
+
+And yet you see somehow that he is a gentleman. His manner is different
+to that of the owners of that coarse table and parlour at which he is a
+boarder, (I do not speak of Miss R. of course, for _her_ manners are
+as good as those of a Duchess). When he caught Miss Rosa boxing
+little Fiddes's ears, his face grew red, and he broke into a fierce,
+inarticulate rage. After that, and for some days, he used to shrink
+from her; but they are reconciled now. I saw them this afternoon in
+the garden, where only the parlour-boarders walk. He was playful, and
+touched her with his stick. She raised her handsome eyes in surprise,
+and smiled on him very kindly.
+
+The thing was so clear, that I thought it my duty to speak to old Zoe
+about it. The wicked old catamaran told me she wished that some people
+would mind their own business, and hold their tongues--that some people
+were paid to teach writing, and not to tell tales and make mischief:
+and I have since been thinking whether I ought to communicate with the
+Doctor.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD PUPIL.
+
+|As I came into the play-grounds this morning, I saw a dashing young
+fellow, with a tanned face and a blonde moustache, who was walking up
+and down the green, arm-in-arm with Champion Major, and followed by a
+little crowd of boys.
+
+They were talking of old times evidently. "What had become of Irvine and
+Smith?"--"Where was Bill Harris and Jones, not Squinny Jones, but Cocky
+Jones?"--and so forth. The gentleman was no stranger; he was an old
+pupil evidently, come to see if any of his old comrades remained, and to
+revisit the _cari luogi_ of his youth.
+
+Champion was evidently proud of his arm-fellow. He espied his brother,
+young Champion, and introduced him. "Come here, Sir," he called. "The
+young 'un wasn't here in your time, Davison."
+
+"Pat, Sir," said he, "this is Captain Davison, one of Birch's boys. Ask
+him who was among the first in the lines at Sobraon?"
+
+Pat's face kindled up as he looked Davison full in the face, and held
+out his hand. Old Champion and Davison both blushed. The infantry set up
+a "Hurray! hurray! hurray!" Champion leading, and waving his wide-awake.
+I protest that the scene did one good to witness. Here was the hero and
+cock of the school come back to see his old haunts and cronies. He had
+always remembered them. Since he had seen them last, he had faced death
+and achieved honour. But for my dignity I would have shied up my hat
+too.
+
+With a resolute step, and his arm still linked in Champion's, Captain
+Davison now advanced, followed by a wake of little boys, to that corner
+of the green where Mrs. Buggies has her tart-stand.
+
+"Hullo, Mother Buggies! don't you remember me?" he said, and shook her
+by the hand.
+
+"Lor, if it ain't Davison Major!" she said. "Well, Davison Major, you
+owe me fourpence for two sausage-rolls from when you went away."
+
+Davison laughed, and all the little crew of boys set up a similar
+chorus.
+
+"I buy the whole shop," he said. "Now, young 'uns--eat away!"
+
+Then there was such a "Hurray! hurray!" as surpassed the former cheer in
+loudness. Everybody engaged in it except Piggy Duff, who made an instant
+dash at the three-cornered puffs, but was stopped by Champion, who
+said there should be a fair distribution. And so there was, and no one
+lacked, neither of raspberry open-tarts, nor of mellifluous bull's-eyes,
+nor of polonies, beautiful to the sight and taste.
+
+The hurraying brought out the Doctor himself, who put his hand up to his
+spectacles and started when he saw the old pupil. Each blushed when
+he recognised the other; for seven years ago they had parted not good
+friends.
+
+"What--Davison?" the Doctor said, with a tremulous voice. "God bless
+you, my dear fellow!"--and they shook hands. "A half-holiday, of course,
+boys," he added, and there was another hurray: there was to be no end to
+the cheering that day.
+
+"How's--how's the family, Sir?" Captain Davison asked.
+
+"Come in and see. Flora's grown quite a lady. Dine with us, of course.
+Champion Major, come to dinner at five. Mr. Titmarsh, the pleasure of
+your company?" The Doctor swung open the garden-gate: the old master and
+pupil entered the house reconciled.
+
+I thought I would just peep into Miss Raby's room, and tell her of this
+event. She was working away at her linen there, as usual, quiet and
+cheerful.
+
+"You should put up," I said with a smile; "the Doctor has given us a
+half-holiday."
+
+"I never have holidays," Miss Raby replied.
+
+Then I told her of the scene I had just witnessed, of the arrival of the
+old pupil, the purchase of the tarts, the proclamation of the holiday,
+and the shouts of the boys of "Hurray, Davison."
+
+"_Who_ is it?" cried out Miss Raby, starting and turning as white as a
+sheet.
+
+I told her it was Captain Davison from India, and described the
+appearance and behaviour of the Captain. When I had finished speaking,
+she asked me to go and get her a glass of water; she felt unwell. But
+she was gone when I came back with the water.
+
+I know all now. After sitting for a quarter of an hour with the Doctor,
+who attributed his guest's uneasiness no doubt to his desire to see Miss
+Laura Birch, Davison started up and said he wanted to see Miss Raby.
+"You remember, Sir, how kind she was to my little brother," he said.
+Whereupon the Doctor, with a look of surprise that anybody should want
+to see Miss Raby, said she was in the little school-room, whither the
+Captain went, knowing the way from old times.
+
+A few minutes afterwards, Miss B. and Miss Z. returned from a drive
+with Plantagenet Gaunt in their one-horse fly, and being informed of
+Davison's arrival, and that he was closeted with Miss Raby in the little
+school-room, of course made for that apartment at once. I was coming
+into it from the other door. I wanted to know whether she had drunk the
+water.
+
+[Illustration: 0084]
+
+This is what both parties saw. The two were in this very attitude.
+"Well, upon my word!" cries out Miss Zoe, But Davison did not let go his
+hold; and Miss Raby's head only sank down on his hand.
+
+"You must get another governess, Sir, for the little boys," Frank
+Davison said to the Doctor. "Anny Raby has promised to come with me."
+
+You may suppose I shut to the door on my side. And when I returned to
+the little school-room, it was blank and empty. Everybody was gone. I
+could hear the boys shouting at play in the green, outside. The glass
+of water was on the table where I had placed it. I took it and drank
+it myself, to the health of Anny Raby and her husband. It was rather a
+choker.
+
+But of course I wasn't going to stop on at Birch's. When his young
+friends re-assemble on the 1st of February next, they will have two new
+masters. Prince resigned too, and is at present living with me at my
+old lodgings at Mrs. Cammysole's. If any nobleman or gentleman wants a
+private tutor for his son, a note to the Rev. F. Prince will find him
+there.
+
+Miss Clapperclaw says we are both a couple of old fools; and that she
+knew, when I set off last year to Rodwell Regis, after meeting the two
+young ladies at a party at General Champion's house in our street, that
+I was going on a goose's errand. Well, well, that journey is over now; I
+shall dine at the General's on Christmas-day, where I shall meet Captain
+and Mrs. Davison, and some of the old pupils of Birch's; and I wish a
+merry Christmas to them, and to all young and old boys.
+
+|The play is done; the curtain drops,
+
+Slow falling, to the prompter's bell:
+
+A moment yet the actor stops,
+
+               And looks around, to say farewell.
+
+               It is an irksome word and task;
+
+               And when he 's laughed and said his say,
+
+               He shows, as he removes the mask,
+
+               A face that's anything but gay.
+
+               One word, ere yet the evening ends,
+
+               Let's close it with a parting rhyme,
+
+               And pledge a hand to all young friends,
+
+               As fits the merry Christmas-time.
+
+               On life's wide scene you, too, have parts,
+
+               That Fate ere long shall bid you play;
+
+               Good night! with honest gentle hearts
+
+               A kindly greeting go alway!
+
+               Good night!--I'd say, the griefs, the joys,
+
+               Just hinted in this mimic page,
+
+               The triumphs and defeats of boys,
+
+               Are but repeated in our age.
+
+               I 'd say, your woes were not less keen,
+
+               Your hopes more vain, than those of men;
+
+               Your pangs or pleasures of fifteen,
+
+               At forty-five played o'er again.
+
+               I'd say, we suffer and we strive
+
+               Not less nor more as men than boys;
+
+               With grizzled beards at forty-five,
+
+               As erst at twelve, in corduroys.
+
+               And if, in time of sacred youth,
+
+               We learned at home to love and pray,
+
+               Pray Heaven, that early Love and Truth
+
+               May never wholly pass away.
+
+               And in the world, as in the school,
+
+               I 'd say, how fate may change and shift;
+
+               The prize be sometimes with the fool,
+
+               The race not always to the swift.
+
+               The strong may yield, the good may fall,
+
+               The great man he a vulgar clown,
+
+               The knave be lifted over all,
+
+               The kind cast pitilessly down.
+
+               Who knows the inscrutable design?
+
+               Blessed be He who took and gave!
+
+               Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,
+
+               Be weeping at her darling's grave? *
+
+               We bow to Heaven that will'd it so,
+
+               That darkly rules the fate of all,
+
+               That sends the respite or the blow,
+
+               That's free to give or to recall.
+
+               This crowns his feast with wine and wit:
+
+               Who brought him to that mirth aud state?
+
+               His betters, see, below him sit,
+
+               Or hunger hopeless at the gate.
+
+               Who bade the mud from Dives' wheel
+
+               To spurn the rags of Lazarus?
+
+               Come, brother, in that dust we '11 kneel,
+
+               Confessing Heaven that ruled it thus.
+
+                               * C. B., ob. 29 Nov. 1848, set. 42.
+
+               So each shall mourn, in life's advance,
+
+               Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed;
+
+               Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance,
+
+               And longing passion unfulfilled.
+
+               Amen! whatever fate be sent,--
+
+               Pray God the heart may kindly glow,
+
+               Although the heart with cares be bent,
+
+               And whitened with the winter-snow.
+
+               Come wealth or want, come good or ill,
+
+               Let young and old accept their part,
+
+               And bow before the Awful Will,
+
+               And bear it with an honest heart.
+
+               Who misses, or who wins the prize?
+
+               Go, lose or conquer as you can:
+
+               But if you fail, or if you rise,
+
+               Be each, pray God, a gentleman,
+
+               A gentleman, or old or young!
+
+               (Bear kindly with my humble lays);
+
+               The sacred chorus first was sung
+
+               Upon the first of Christmas-days:
+
+               The shepherds heard it overhead--
+
+               The joyful angels raised it then:
+
+               Glory to Heaven 011 high, it said,
+
+               And peace 011 earth to gentle men.
+
+               My song, save this, is little worth;
+
+               I lay the weary pen aside,
+
+               And wish you health, and love, and mirth,
+
+               As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.
+
+               As fits the holy Christmas birth,
+
+               Be this, good friends, our carol still--
+
+               Be peace on earth, be peace on earth,
+
+               To men of gentle will.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Doctor Birch and His Young Friends, by 
+M. A. Titmarsh
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR BIRCH AND HIS YOUNG FRIENDS ***
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@@ -0,0 +1,2204 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Doctor Birch and his Young Friends., by Mr. M. A. Titmarsh.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent5   { margin-left: 5%;}
+    .indent10  { margin-left: 10%;}
+    .indent15  { margin-left: 15%;}
+    .indent20  { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent30  { margin-left: 30%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 100%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    .side      { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+    p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
+    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 1 }
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Doctor Birch and His Young Friends, by M. A. Titmarsh
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Doctor Birch and His Young Friends
+
+Author: M. A. Titmarsh
+
+Release Date: May 1, 2014 [EBook #45554]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR BIRCH AND HIS YOUNG FRIENDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger from page images generously
+provided by the Internet Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      DOCTOR BIRCH AND HIS YOUNG FRIENDS.
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Mr. M. A. Titmarsh.
+    </h2>
+    <h5>
+      London: <br /> <br /> Chapman and Hall <br /> <br /> 1840.
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0008m.jpg" alt="0008m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0008.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0009m.jpg" alt="0009m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0009.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0011m.jpg" alt="0011m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0011.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> DOCTOR BIRCH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> THE DOCTOR AND HIS STAFF. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> THE COCK OF THE SCHOOL. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE LITTLE SCHOOL-ROOM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THE DEAR BROTHERS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> A HOPELESS CASE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> A WORD ABOUT MISS BIRCH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> A TRAGEDY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> BRIGGS IN LUCK. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> A YOUNG FELLOW WHO IS PRETTY SURE TO SUCCEED.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> DUVAL, THE PIRATE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> THE DORMITORIES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> A CAPTURE AND A RESCUE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> THE GARDEN, </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> THE OLD PUPIL. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      DOCTOR BIRCH.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DOCTOR AND HIS STAFF.
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here is no need to
+      say why I became Assistant Master and Professor of the English and French
+      languages, flower-painting, and the German flute, in Doctor Birch's
+      Academy, at Rodwell Regis. Good folks may depend on this that there was
+      good reason for my leaving lodgings near London, and a genteel society,
+      for an under-master's desk in that old school. I promise you, the fare at
+      the Usher's table, the getting up at five o'clock in the morning, the
+      walking out with little boys in the fields, (who used to play me tricks,
+      and never could be got to respect my awful and responsible character as
+      teacher in the school,) Miss Birch's vulgar insolence, Jack Birch's glum
+      condescension, and the poor old Doctor's patronage, were not matters in
+      themselves pleasurable: and that that patronage and those dinners were
+      sometimes cruel hard to swallow. Never mind&mdash;my connexion with the
+      place is over now, and I hope they have got a more efficient under-master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack Birch (Rev. J. Birch, of St. Neot's Hall, Oxford,) is partner with
+      his father the Doctor, and takes some of the classes. About his Greek I
+      can't say much; but I will construe him in Latin any day. A more
+      supercilious little prig, (giving himself airs, too, about his cousin,
+      Miss Baby, who lives with the Doctor,) a more empty pompous little coxcomb
+      I never saw. His white neckcloth looked as if it choked him. He used to
+      try and look over that starch upon me and Prince the assistant, as if we
+      were a couple of footmen. He didn't do much business in the school; but
+      occupied his time in writing sanctified letters to the boys' parents, and
+      in composing dreary sermons to preach to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The real master of the school is Prince; an Oxford man too: shy, haughty,
+      and learned; crammed with Greek and a quantity of useless learning;
+      uncommonly kind to the small boys; pitiless with the fools and the
+      braggarts: respected of all for his honesty, his learning, his bravery,
+      (for he hit out once in a boat-row in a way which astonished the boys and
+      the bargemen,) and for a latent power about him, which all saw and
+      confessed somehow. Jack Birch could never look him in the face. Old Miss
+      Z. dared not put off any of <i>her</i> airs upon him. Miss Rosa made him
+      the lowest of curtsies. Miss Raby said she was afraid of him. Good old
+      Prince! many a pleasant night we have smoked in the Doctor's harness-room,
+      whither we retired when our boys were gone to bed, and our cares and canes
+      put by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Jack Birch had taken his degree at Oxford&mdash;a process which he
+      effected with great difficulty&mdash;this place, which used to be called
+      "Birch's," "Dr. Birch's Academy," and what not, became suddenly
+      "Archbishop Wigsby's College of Rodwell Regis." They took down the old
+      blue board with the gold letters, which has been used to mend the pig-
+      stye since. Birch had a large school-room run up in the Gothic taste, with
+      statuettes, and a little belfry, and a bust of Archbishop Wigsby in the
+      middle of the school. He put the six senior boys into caps and gowns,
+      which had rather a good effect as the lads sauntered down the street of
+      the town, but which certainly provoked the contempt and hostility of the
+      bargemen; and so great was his rage for academic costumes and ordinances,
+      that he would have put me myself into a lay gown, with red knots and
+      fringes, but that I flatly resisted, and said that a writing-master had no
+      business with such paraphernalia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the way, I have forgotten to mention the Doctor himself. And what shall
+      I say of him? Well, he has a very crisp gown and bands, a solemn air, a
+      tremendous loud voice, and a grand and solemn air with the boys' parents,
+      whom he receives in a study, covered round with the best bound books,
+      which imposes upon many&mdash;upon the women especially&mdash;and makes
+      them fancy that this is a Doctor indeed. But, Law bless you! He never
+      reads the books; or opens one of them, except that in which he keeps his
+      bands&mdash;and a Dugdale's Monasticon, which looks like a book, but is in
+      reality a cupboard, where he has his almond cakes, and decanter of port
+      wine. He gets up his classics with translations, or what the boys call
+      cribs. They pass wicked tricks upon him when he hears the forms. The elder
+      wags go to his study, and ask him to help them in hard bits of Herodotus
+      or Thucydides: he says he will look over the passage, and flies for refuge
+      to Mr. Prince, or to the crib.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He keeps the flogging department in his own hands; finding that his son
+      was too savage. He has awful brows and a big voice. But his roar frightens
+      nobody. It is only a lion's skin, or, so to say, a muff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Mordant made a picture of him with large ears, like a well-known
+      domestic animal, and had his own justly boxed for the caricature. The
+      Doctor discovered him in the fact, and was in a flaming rage, and
+      threatened whipping at first; but in the course of the day an opportune
+      basket of game arriving from Mordant's father, the Doctor became
+      mollified, and has burnt the picture with the ears. However I have one
+      wafered up in my desk by the hand of the same little rascal: and the
+      frontispiece of this very book is drawn from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE COCK OF THE SCHOOL.
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> am growing an old
+      fellow&mdash;and have seen many great folks in the course of my travels
+      and time&mdash;Louis Philippe coming out of the Tuileries, His Majesty the
+      King of Prussia and the Reichsverweser accolading each other, at Cologne,
+      at my elbow; Admiral Sir Charles Napier (in an omnibus once), the Duke of
+      Wellington, the immortal Goethe at Weimar, the late benevolent Pope
+      Gregory XVI., and a score more of the famous in this world&mdash;the whom,
+      whenever one looks at, one has a mild shock of awe and tremor. I like this
+      feeling and decent fear and trembling with which a modest spirit salutes a
+      <i>Great Man</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I have seen Generals capering on horseback at the head of their
+      crimson battalions; Bishops sailing down cathedral aisles, with downcast
+      eyes, pressing their trencher caps to their hearts with their fat white
+      hands; College heads when her Majesty is on a visit; the Doctor in all his
+      glory at the head of his school on Speech-day, a great sight,&mdash;and
+      all great men these.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have never met the late Mr. Thomas Cribb, but I have no doubt should
+      have regarded him with the same feeling of awe with which I look every day
+      at George Champion, the cock of Dr. Birch's school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, I say, I reflect as I go up and set him a sum, that he could whop me
+      in two minutes, double up Prince and the other assistant, and pitch the
+      Doctor out of window, I can't but think how great, how generous, how
+      magnanimous a creature this is, that sits quite quiet and good-natured,
+      and works his equation, and ponders through his Greek play. He might take
+      the schoolroom pillars and pull the house down if he liked. He might close
+      the door, and demolish every one of us like Antar, the lover of Ibla; but
+      he lets us live. He never thrashes anybody without a cause, when woe
+      betide the tyrant or the sneak!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think that to be strong, and able to whop everybody,&mdash;(not to do
+      it, mind you, but to feel that you were able to do it,)&mdash;would be the
+      greatest of all gifts. There is a serene good humour which plays about
+      George Champion's broad face, which shows the consciousness of this power,
+      and lights up his honest blue eyes with a magnanimous calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is invictus. Even when a cub there was no beating this lion. Six years
+      ago the undaunted little warrior actually stood up to Frank Davison,&mdash;(the
+      Indian officer now&mdash;poor little Charley's brother, whom Miss Raby
+      nursed so affectionately,)&mdash;then seventeen years old, and the cock of
+      Birch's. They were obliged to drag off the boy, and Frank, with admiration
+      and regard for him, prophesied the great things he would do. Legends of
+      combats are preserved fondly in schools; they have stories of such at
+      Rodwell Regis, performed in the old Doctor's time, forty years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Champion's affair with the Young Tutbury Pet, who was down here in
+      training,&mdash;with Black the Bargeman,&mdash;with the three head boys of
+      Doctor Wapshot's academy, whom he caught maltreating an outlying day-boy
+      of ours, &amp;c.,&mdash;are known to all the Rodwell Regis men. He was
+      always victorious. He is modest and kind, like all great men. He has a
+      good, brave, honest understanding. He cannot make verses like young
+      Pinder, or read Greek like Lawrence the Prefect, who is a perfect young
+      abyss of learning, and knows enough, Prince says, to furnish any six
+      first-class men; but he does his work in a sound, downright way, and he is
+      made to be the bravest of soldiers, the best of country parsons, an honest
+      English gentleman wherever he may go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0021m.jpg" alt="0021m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0021.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Like all great men, George is good-humoured and lazy. There is a
+      particular bench in the play-ground on which he will loll for hours on
+      half-holidays, and is so affable that the smallest boys come and speak to
+      him. It is pleasant to see the young cubs frisking round the honest lion.
+      His chief friend and attendant, however, is young Jack Hall, whom he saved
+      when drowning, out of the Miller's Pool. The attachment of the two is
+      curious to witness. The smaller lad gambolling, playing tricks round the
+      bigger one, and perpetually making fun of his protector. They are never
+      far apart, and of holidays you may meet them miles away from the school.
+      George sauntering heavily down the lanes with his big stick, and little
+      Jack larking with the pretty girls in the cottage windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George has a boat on the river, in which, however, he commonly lies
+      smoking, whilst Jack sculls him. He does not play at cricket, except when
+      the school plays the county, or at Lord's in the holidays. The boys can't
+      stand his bowling, and when he hits, it is like trying to catch a
+      cannon-ball. I have seen him at tennis. It is a splendid sight to behold
+      the young fellow bounding over the court with streaming yellow hair, like
+      young Apollo in a flannel jacket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other head boys are Lawrence the Captain, Bunce, famous chiefly for
+      his magnificent appetite, and Pitman, sur-named Roscius, for his love of
+      the drama. Add to these Swanky, called Macassar, from his partiality to
+      that condiment, and who has varnished boots, wears white gloves on
+      Sundays, and looks out for Miss Pinkerton's school (transferred from
+      Chiswick to Rodwell Regis, and conducted by the nieces of the late Miss
+      Barbara Pinkerton, the friend of Our Great Lexicograplier, upon the
+      principles approved by him and practised by that admirable woman,) as it
+      passes into church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0025m.jpg" alt="0025m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0025.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Representations have been made concerning Mr. Horace Swanky's behaviour;
+      rumours have been uttered about notes in verse, conveyed in three-cornered
+      puffs, by Mrs. Buggies, who serves Miss Pinkerton's young ladies on
+      Fridays&mdash;and how Miss Didow, to whom the tart and enclosure were
+      addressed, tried to make away with herself by swallowing a ball of cotton.
+      But I pass over these absurd reports, as likely to affect the reputation
+      of an admirable Seminary conducted by irreproachable females. As they go
+      into church (Miss P. driving in her flock of lambkins with the crook of
+      her parasol,) how can it be helped if her forces and ours sometimes
+      collide, as the boys are on their way up to the organ-loft? And I don't
+      believe a word about the three-cornered puff, but rather that it was the
+      invention of that jealous Miss Birch, who is jealous of Miss Raby, jealous
+      of everybody who is good and handsome, and who has <i>her own ends</i> in
+      view, or I am very much in error.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE LITTLE SCHOOL-ROOM.
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hat they call the
+      little school-room is a small room at the other end of the great school;
+      through which you go to the Doctor's private house, and where Miss Raby
+      sits with her pupils. She has a half-dozen very small ones over whom she
+      presides and teaches them in her simple way, until they are big or learned
+      enough to face the great school-room. Many of them are in a hurry for
+      promotion, the graceless little simpletons, and know no more than their
+      elders when they are well off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0029m.jpg" alt="0029m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0029.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      She keeps the accounts, writes out the bills, superintends the linen and
+      sews on the general shirt-buttons. Think of having such a woman at home to
+      sew on one's shirt-buttons! But peace, peace, thou foolish heart!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Raby is the Doctor's niece. Her mother was a beauty (quite unlike old
+      Zoe therefore); and she married a pupil in the old Doctor's time, who was
+      killed afterwards, a Captain in the East India service, at the siege of
+      Bhurtpore. Hence a number of Indian children come to the Doctor's, for
+      Raby was very much liked, and the uncle's kind reception of the orphan has
+      been a good speculation for the school-keeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is wonderful how brightly and gaily that little quick creature does her
+      duty. She is the first to rise, and the last to sleep, if any business is
+      to be done. She sees the other two women go off to parties in the town
+      without even so much as wishing to join them. It is Cinderella, only
+      contented to stay at home&mdash;content to bear Zoe's scorn and to admit
+      Flora's superior charms,&mdash;and to do her utmost to repay her uncle for
+      his great kindness in housing her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, you see, she works as much as three maid-servants for the wages of
+      one. She is as thankful when the Doctor gives her a new gown, as if he had
+      presented her with a fortune: laughs at his stories most good-humouredly,
+      listens to Zoe's scolding most meekly, admires Flora with all her heart,
+      and only goes out of the way when Jack Birch shows his sallow face: for
+      she can't bear him, and always finds work when he comes near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How different she is when some folks approach her! I won't be
+      presumptuous; but I think, I think, I have made a not unfavourable
+      impression in some quarters. However, let us be mum on this subject. I
+      like to see her, because she always looks good-humoured; because she is
+      always kind, because she is always modest, because she is fond of those
+      poor little brats&mdash;orphans some of them,&mdash;because she is rather
+      pretty, I dare say, or because I think so, which comes to the same thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though she is kind to all, it must be owned she shows the most gross
+      favouritism towards the amiable children. She brings them cakes from
+      dessert, and regales them with Zoe's preserves; spends many of her little
+      shillings in presents for her favourites, and will tell them stories by
+      the hour. She has one very sad story about a little boy, who died long
+      ago; the younger children are never weary of hearing about him; and Miss
+      Raby has shown to one of them a lock of the little chap's hair, which she
+      keeps in her work-box to this day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DEAR BROTHERS.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      <i>A Melodrama in several Rounds</i>.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Tipper, Uncle to the Masters Boxall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Boxall Major, Boxall Minor, Brown, Jones, Smith,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Robinson, Tiffin Minimus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      B. Go it old Boxall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      J. Give it him young Boxall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      R. Pitch into him old Boxall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      S. Two to one on young Boxall.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent30">
+      [Enter Tiffin Minimus, <i>running.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Tiffin Minimus</i>. Boxalls! you 're wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (<i>The Doctor to Mr. Tipper.</i>) Every boy in the school loves them, my
+      dear sir; your nephews are a credit to my establishment. They are orderly,
+      well-conducted, gentleman-like boys. Let us enter and find them at their
+      studies.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent30">
+      [<i>Enter</i> The Doctor <i>and</i> Mr. Tipper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      GRAND TABLEAU.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A HOPELESS CASE.
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>et us, people who
+      are so uncommonly clever and learned, have a great tenderness and pity for
+      the poor folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we
+      have. I have always had a regard for dunces;&mdash;those of my own
+      school-days were amongst the pleasantest of the fellows, and have turned
+      out by no means the dullest in life; whereas many a youth who could turn
+      off Latin hexameters by the yard, and construe Greek quite glibly, is no
+      better than a feeble prig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were
+      in his head before his beard grew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those poor dunces! Talk of being the last man, ah! what a pang it must be
+      to be the last boy&mdash;huge, misshapen, fourteen years of age,&mdash;and
+      "taken up" by a chap who is but six years old, and can't speak quite plain
+      yet!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0037m.jpg" alt="0037m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0037.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Master Hulker is in that condition at Birch's. He is the most honest,
+      kind, active, plucky, generous creature. He can do many things better than
+      most boys. He can go up a tree, jump, play at cricket, dive and swim
+      perfectly&mdash;he can eat twice as much as almost any lady (as Miss Birch
+      well knows), he has a pretty talent at carving figures with his
+      hack-knife, he makes and paints little coaches, he can take a watch to
+      pieces and put it together again. He can do everything but learn his
+      lesson; and there he sticks at the bottom of the school, hopeless. As the
+      little boys are drafted in from Miss Raby's class, (it is true she is one
+      of the best instructresses in the world,) they enter and hop over poor
+      Hulker. He would be handed over to the governess only he is too big.
+      Sometimes I used to think, that this desperate stupidity was a stratagem
+      of the poor rascal's; and that he shammed dulness so that he might be
+      degraded into Miss Raby's class: if she would teach <i>me</i>, I know,
+      before George, I would put on a pinafore and a little jacket&mdash;but no,
+      it is a natural incapacity for the Latin Grammar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you could see his grammar, it is a perfect curiosity of dog's ears. The
+      leaves and cover are all curled and ragged. Many of the pages are worn
+      away, with the rubbing of his elbows as he sits poring over the hopeless
+      volume, with the blows of his fists as he thumps it madly, or with the
+      poor fellow's tears. You see him wiping them away with the back of his
+      hand, as he tries and tries, and can't do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I think of that Latin Grammar, and that infernal As in Pręsenti, and
+      of other things which I was made to learn in my youth: upon my conscience
+      I am surprised that we ever survived it. When one thinks of the boys who
+      have been caned because they could not master that intolerable jargon!
+      Good Lord, what a pitiful chorus these poor little creatures send up! Be
+      gentle with them, ye schoolmasters, and only whop those who <i>won't</i>
+      learn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor has operated upon Hulker (between ourselves), but the boy was
+      so little affected you would have thought he had taken chloroform. Birch
+      is weary of whipping now, and leaves the boy to go his own gait. Prince,
+      when he hears the lesson, and who cannot help making fun of a fool, adopts
+      the sarcastic manner with Master Hulker, and says, "Mr. Hulker, may I take
+      the liberty to inquire if your brilliant intellect has enabled you to
+      perceive the difference between those words which grammarians have defined
+      as substantive and adjective nouns?&mdash;if not, perhaps Mr. Ferdinand
+      Timmins will instruct you." And Timmins hops over Hulker's head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wish Prince would leave off girding at the poor lad. He's an only son,
+      and his mother is a widow woman, who loves him with all her might. There
+      is a famous sneer about the suckling of fools and the chronicling of small
+      beer; but remember it was a rascal who uttered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A WORD ABOUT MISS BIRCH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      "The Gentlemen, and especially the younger and more tender of the Pupils,
+      will have the advantage of the constant superintendence and affectionate
+      care of Miss Zoe Birch, sister of the Principal: whose dearest aim will be
+      to supply (as far as may be) the absent maternal friend."&mdash;<i>Prospectus
+      of Rodwell Regis School</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is all very fine in the Doctor's circulars, and Miss Zoe Birch&mdash;(a
+      sweet birch blossom it is, fifty-five years old, during two score of which
+      she has dosed herself with pills; with a nose as red and a face as sour as
+      a crab-apple)&mdash;may do mighty well in a prospectus. But I should like
+      to know who would take Miss Zoe for a mother, or would have her for one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0042m.jpg" alt="0042m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0042.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      The only persons in the house who are not afraid of her are Miss Flora and
+      I&mdash;no, I am afraid of her, though I <i>do</i> know the story about
+      the French usher in 1830&mdash;but all the rest tremble before the woman,
+      from the Doctor down to poor Francis the knife-boy, and whom she bullies
+      into his miserable blacking-hole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor is a pompous and outwardly severe man&mdash;but inwardly weak
+      and easy: loving a joke and a glass of port wine. I get on with him,
+      therefore, much better than Mr. Prince, who scorns him for an ass, and
+      under whose keen eyes the worthy Doctor writhes like a convicted impostor;
+      and many a sunshiny afternoon would he have said, "Mr. T., Sir, shall we
+      try another glass of that yellow sealed wine which you seem to like?" (and
+      which he likes even better than I do), had not the old harridan of a Zoe
+      been down upon us, and insisted on turning me out with her miserable weak
+      coffee. She a mother indeed! A sour milk generation she would have nursed.
+      She is always croaking, scolding, bullying,&mdash;yowling at the
+      housemaids, snarling at Miss Raby, bowwowing after the little boys,
+      barking after the big ones. She knows how much every boy eats to an ounce;
+      and her delight is to ply with fat the little ones who can't bear it, and
+      with raw meat those who hate underdone. It was she who caused the Doctor
+      to be eaten out three times; and nearly created a rebellion in the school
+      because she insisted on his flogging Goliah Longman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only time that woman is happy is when she comes in of a morning to the
+      little boys' dormitories with a cup of hot Epsom salts, and a sippet of
+      bread. Boo!&mdash;the very notion makes me quiver. She stands over them. I
+      saw her do it to young Byles only a few days since&mdash;and her presence
+      makes the abomination doubly abominable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for attending them in real illness, do you suppose that she would watch
+      a single night for any one of them? Not she. When poor little Charley
+      Davison (that child, a lock of whose soft hair I have said how Miss Raby
+      still keeps) lay ill of scarlet fever in the holidays&mdash;for the
+      Colonel, the father of these boys, was in India&mdash;it was Anne Raby who
+      tended the child, who watched him all through the fever, who never left
+      him while it lasted, or until she had closed the little eyes that were
+      never to brighten or moisten more. Anny watched and deplored him, but it
+      was Miss Birch who wrote the letter announcing his demise, and got the
+      gold chain and locket which the Colonel ordered as a memento of his
+      gratitude. It was through a row with Miss Birch that Frank Davison ran
+      away. I promise you that after he joined his regiment in India, the
+      Ahmednuggar Irregulars, which his gallant father commands, there came over
+      no more annual shawls and presents to Dr. and Miss Birch, and that if she
+      fancied the Colonel was coming home to marry her (on account of her
+      tenderness to his motherless children, which he was always writing about),
+      <i>that</i> notion was very soon given up. But these affairs are of early
+      date, seven years back, and I only heard of them in a very confused manner
+      from Miss Raby, who was a girl, and had just come to Rodwell Regis. She is
+      always very much moved when she speaks about those boys, which is but
+      seldom. I take it the death of the little one still grieves her tender
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, it is Miss Birch, who has turned away seventeen ushers and second
+      masters in eleven years, and half as many French masters; inconsolable, I
+      suppose, since the departure of her <i>favourite</i>, M. Grinche, with her
+      gold watch, &amp;c.; but this is only surmise&mdash;and what I gather from
+      the taunts of Miss Rosa when she and her aunt have a tiff at tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But besides this, I have another way of keeping her in order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whenever she is particularly odious or insolent to Miss Raby, I have but
+      to introduce raspberry jam into the conversation, and the woman holds her
+      tongue. She will understand me. I need not say more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Note, 12th December</i>.&mdash;I <i>may</i> speak now. I have left the
+      place and don't mind. I say then at once, and without caring twopence for
+      the consequences, that I saw this woman, this <i>mother</i> of the boys,
+      <i>eating jam with a spoon out of Master Wiggins's trunk in the box-room</i>;
+      and of this I am ready to take an affidavit any day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A TRAGEDY.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THIS DRAMA OUGHT TO BE REPRESENTED IN ABOUT SIX CUTS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <i>[The School is hushed. Lawrence the Prefect, and Custos of the rods, is
+      marching after the Doctor into the operating-room. Master Backhouse is
+      about to follow.]</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0048m.jpg" alt="0048m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0048.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <i>Master Backhouse</i>. It's all very well, but you see if I don't pay
+      you out after school&mdash;you sneak, you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Master Lurcher</i>. If you do I '1l tell again.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent30">
+      [Exit Backhouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [<i>The rod is heard from the adjoining apartment. Hwish&mdash;Hhwish&mdash;hwish&mdash;hwish&mdash;hwish&mdash;hwish&mdash;hwish.</i>]
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent30">
+      [Re-enter Backhouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BRIGGS IN LUCK.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Enter the Knife-boy</i>.&mdash;Hamper for Briggses!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Master Brown.</i>&mdash;Hurray, Tom Briggs! I'll lend you my knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If this story does not carry its own moral, what fable does, I wonder?
+      Before the arrival of that hamper, Master Briggs was in no better repute
+      than any other young gentleman of the lower school; and in fact I had
+      occasion myself, only lately, to correct Master Brown for kicking his
+      friend's shins during the writing-lesson. But how this basket directed by
+      his mother's housekeeper, and marked "Glass with care," (whence I conclude
+      that it contains some jam and some bottles of wine probably, as well as
+      the usual cake and game-pie, and half a sovereign for the elder Master B.,
+      and five new shillings for Master Decimus Briggs)&mdash;how, I say, the
+      arrival of this basket, alters all Master Briggs's circumstances in life,
+      and the estimation in which many persons regard him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0010" id="linkimage-0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0051m.jpg" alt="0051m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0051.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      If he is a good-hearted boy, as I have reason to think, the very first
+      thing he will do, before inspecting the contents of the hamper, or cutting
+      into them with the knife which Master Brown has so considerately lent him;
+      will be to read over the letter from home which lies on the top of the
+      parcel. He does so, as I remark to Miss Raby (for whom I happened to be
+      mending pens when the little circumstance arose), with a flushed face and
+      winking eyes. Look how the other boys are peering into the basket as he
+      reads.&mdash;I say to her, "Isn't it a pretty picture?" Part of the letter
+      is in a very large hand. That is from his little sister. And I would wager
+      that she netted the little purse which he has just taken out of it, and
+      which Master Lynx is eyeing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are a droll man, and remark all sorts of queer things," Miss Raby
+      says, smiling, and plying her swift needle and fingers as quick as
+      possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am glad we are both on the spot, and that the little fellow lies under
+      our guns as it were, and so is protected from some such brutal
+      school-pirates as young Duval for instance, who would rob him probably of
+      some of those good things, good in themselves, and better because fresh
+      from home. See, there is a pie as I said, and which I dare say is better
+      than those which are served at our table (but you never take any notice of
+      these kind of things, Miss Raby), a cake of course, a bottle of currant
+      wine, jam-pots, and no end of pears in the straw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With this money little Briggs will be able to pay the tick which that
+      imprudent child has run up with Mrs. Ruggles; and I shall let Briggs Major
+      pay for the pencil-case which Bullock sold to him.&mdash;It will be a
+      lesson to the young prodigal for the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, I say, what a change there will be in his life for some time to
+      come, and at least until his present wealth is spent! The boys who bully
+      him will mollify towards him, and accept his pie and sweetmeats. They will
+      have feasts in the bed-room; and that wine will taste more deliciously to
+      them than the best out of the Doctor's cellar. The cronies will be
+      invited. Young Master Wagg will tell his most dreadful story and sing his
+      best song for a slice of that pie. What a jolly night they will have! When
+      we go the rounds at night, Mr. Prince and I will take care to make a noise
+      before we come to Briggs's room, so that the boys may have time to put the
+      light out, to push the things away, and to scud into bed. Doctor Spry may
+      be put in requisition the next morning..."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nonsense! you absurd creature," cries out Miss Raby, laughing; and I lay
+      down the twelfth pen very nicely mended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; after luxury comes the doctor, I say; after extravagance, a hole in
+      the breeches pocket. To judge from his disposition, Briggs Major will not
+      be much better off a couple of days hence than he is now, and, if I am not
+      mistaken, will end life a poor man. Brown will be kicking his shins before
+      a week is over, depend upon it. There are boys and men of all sorts, Miss
+      R.&mdash;there are selfish sneaks who hoard until the store they daren't
+      use grows mouldy&mdash;there are spendthrifts who fling away, parasites
+      who flatter and lick its shoes, and snarling curs who hate and envy, good
+      fortune."&mdash;I put down the last of the pens, brushing away with it the
+      quill-chips from her desk first, and she looked at me with a kind
+      wondering face. I brushed them away, clicked the pen-knife into my pocket,
+      made her a bow, and walked off&mdash;for the bell was ringing for school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A YOUNG FELLOW WHO IS PRETTY SURE TO SUCCEED.
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>f Master Briggs is
+      destined in all probability to be a poor man, the chances are, that Mr.
+      Bullock will have a very different lot. He is a son of a partner of the
+      eminent banking firm of Bullock and Hulker, Lombard Street, and very high
+      in the upper school&mdash;quite out of my jurisdiction, consequently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He writes the most beautiful current hand ever seen; and the way in which
+      he mastered arithmetic (going away into recondite and wonderful rules in
+      the Tutor's Assistant, which some masters even dare not approach) is
+      described by the Doctor in terms of admiration. He is Mr. Prince's best
+      algebra pupil; and a very fair classic, too, doing everything well for
+      which he has a mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He does not busy himself with the sports of his comrades, and holds a
+      cricket-bat no better than Miss Raby would. He employs the play hours in
+      improving his mind, and reading the newspaper; he is a profound
+      politician, and, it must be owned, on the Liberal side. The elder boys
+      despise him rather; and when Champion Major passes, he turns his head, and
+      looks down. I don't like the expression of Bullock's narrow, green eyes,
+      as they follow the elder Champion, who does not seem to know or care how
+      much the other hates him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No&mdash;Mr. Bullock, though perhaps the cleverest and most accomplished
+      boy in the school, associates with the quite little boys when he is minded
+      for society. To these he is quite affable, courteous, and winning. He
+      never fagged or thrashed one of them. He has done the verses and corrected
+      the exercises of many, and many is the little lad to whom he has lent a
+      little money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true he charges at the rate of a penny a week for every sixpence
+      lent out, but many a fellow to whom tarts are a present necessity is happy
+      to pay this interest for the loan. These transactions are kept secret. Mr.
+      Bullock, in rather a whining tone, when he takes Master Green aside and
+      does the requisite business for him, says, "You know you'll go and talk
+      about it everywhere. I don't want to lend you the money, I want to buy
+      something with it. It's only to oblige you; and yet I am sure you will go
+      and make fun of me." Whereon, of course, Green, eager for the money, vows
+      solemnly that the transaction shall be confidential, and only speaks when
+      the payment of the interest becomes oppressive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus it is that Mr. Bullock's practices are at all known. At a very early
+      period indeed his commercial genius manifested itself; and by happy
+      speculations in toffey; by composing a sweet drink made of stick liquorice
+      and brown sugar, and selling it at a profit to the younger children; by
+      purchasing a series of novels, which he let out at an adequate
+      remuneration; by doing boys exercises for a penny, and other processes, he
+      showed the bent of his mind. At the end of the half year he always went
+      home richer than when he arrived at school, with his purse full of money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody knows how much he brought: but the accounts are fabulous. Twenty,
+      thirty, fifty&mdash;it is impossible to say how many sovereigns. When
+      joked about his money, he turns pale and swears he has not a shilling:
+      whereas he has had a banker's account ever since he was thirteen years
+      old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the present moment he is employed in negotiating the sale of a knife
+      with Master Green, and is pointing out to the latter the beauty of the six
+      blades, and that he need not pay until after the holidays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0011" id="linkimage-0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0059m.jpg" alt="0059m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0059.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Champion Major has sworn that he will break every bone in his skin the
+      next time that he cheats a little boy, and is bearing down upon him. Let
+      us come away. It is frightful to see that big peaceful clever coward
+      moaning under well deserved blows and whining for mercy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DUVAL, THE PIRATE.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      (<i>Jones Minimus passes, laden with tarts.</i>)
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0062m.jpg" alt="0062m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0062.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <i>Duval</i>. Hullo! you small boy with the tarts! Come here, Sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Jones Minimus</i>. Please, Duval, they ain't mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Duval.</i> O you abominable young story-teller.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent30">
+      [He confiscates the goods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think I like young Duval's mode of levying contributions better than
+      Bullock's. The former's, at least, has the merit of more candour. Duval is
+      the pirate of Birch's, and lies in wait for small boys laden with money or
+      provender. He scents plunder from afar off: and pounces out on it. Woe
+      betide the little fellow when Duval boards him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a youth here whose money I used to keep, as he was of an
+      extravagant and weak disposition; and I doled it out to him in weekly
+      shillings, sufficient for the purchase of the necessary tarts. This boy
+      came to me one day for half a sovereign, for a very particular purpose, he
+      said. I afterwards found he wanted to lend the money to Duval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young ogre burst out laughing, when in a great wrath and fury I
+      ordered him to refund to the little boy: and proposed a bill of exchange
+      at three months. It is true Duval's father does not pay the Doctor, and
+      the lad never has a shilling, save that which he levies; and though he is
+      always bragging about the splendour of Freenystown, Co. Cork, and the
+      fox-hounds his father keeps, and the claret they drink there&mdash;there
+      comes no remittance from Castle Freeny in these bad times to the honest
+      Doctor, who is a kindly man enough, and never yet turned an insolvent boy
+      out of doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DORMITORIES.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      <i>MASTER HEWLETT AND MASTER NIGHTINGALE.</i>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      (Rather a cold winter night.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Hewlett (flinging a shoe at Master Nightingale's bed, with which he
+      hits that young gentleman.)</i> Hullo! You! Get up and bring me that shoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0066m.jpg" alt="0066m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0066.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <i>Nightingale.</i> Yes, Hewlett. <i>(He gets up.)</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Hewlett</i>. Don't drop it, and be very careful of it, Sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Nightingale</i>. Yes, Hewlett.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Hewlett</i>. Silence in the Dormitory! Any boy who opens his mouth I'll
+      murder him. Now, Sir, are not you the boy what can sing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Nightingale</i>. Yes, Hewlett.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Hewlett</i>. Chaunt then till I go to sleep, and if I wake when you
+      stop, you 'll have this at your head.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent10">
+      [Master Hewlett lays his Bluchers on the bed, ready to shy at Master
+      Nightingale's head in the case contemplated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Nightingale (timidly.)</i> Please, Hewlett?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Hewlett</i>. Well, Sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Nightingale</i>. May I put on my trowsers, please? <i>Hewlett. No</i>,
+      Sir. Go on, or I '11&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Nightingale</i>,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent20">
+      "Through pleasures and palaces
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent30">
+      Though we may roam,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent20">
+      Be it ever so humble,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent30">
+      There's no place like home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      "Home, home! sweet, sweet home!
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent20">
+      There's no place like ho-ome!
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent20">
+      There's no place like home!"
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent30">
+      (Da Capo.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A CAPTURE AND A RESCUE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0070m.jpg" alt="0070m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0070.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      My young friend, Patrick Champion, George's younger brother, is a late
+      arrival among us; has much of the family quality and good-nature; is not
+      in the least a tyrant to the small boys, but is as eager as an Amadis to
+      fight. He is boxing his way up the school, emulating his great brother. He
+      fixes his eye on a boy above him in strength or size, and you hear somehow
+      that a difference has arisen between them at football, and they have their
+      coats off presently. He has thrashed himself over the heads of many youths
+      in this manner; for instance, if Champion can lick Dobson, who can thrash
+      Hobson, how much more, then, can he thrash Hobson. Thus he works up and
+      establishes his position in the school. Nor does Mr. Prince think it
+      advisable that we ushers should walk much in the way when these little
+      differences are being settled, unless there is some gross disparity, or
+      danger is apprehended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For instance, I own to having seen the row depicted here as I was shaving
+      at my bed-room window. I did not hasten down to prevent its consequences.
+      Fogle had confiscated a top, the property of Snivins, the which, as the
+      little wretch was always pegging it at my toes, I did not regret. Snivins
+      whimpered; and young Champion came up, lusting for battle. Directly he
+      made out Fogle, he steered for him, pulling up his coat-sleeves, and
+      clearing for action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who spoke to <i>you</i>, young Champion?" Fogle said, and he flung down
+      the top to Master Snivins. I knew there would be no fight; and perhaps
+      Champion, too, was disappointed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE GARDEN,
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      <i>WHERE THE PARLOUR-BOARDERS GO.</i>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Noblemen have been rather scarce at Birch's&mdash;but the heir of a great
+      Prince has been living with the Doctor for some years.&mdash;He is Lord
+      George Gaunt's eldest son, the noble Plan-tagenet Gaunt Gaunt, and nephew
+      of the Most Honourable the Marquis of Steyne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0074m.jpg" alt="0074m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0074.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      They are very proud of him at the Doctor's&mdash;and the two Misses and
+      Papa, whenever a stranger comes down whom they want to dazzle, are pretty
+      sure to bring Lord Steyne into the conversation, mentioning the last party
+      at Gaunt House, and cursorily remarking that they have with them a young
+      friend who will be in all human probability Marquis of Steyne and Earl of
+      Gaunt, &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Plantagenet does not care much about these future honours: provided he can
+      get some brown sugar on his bread and butter, or sit with three chairs and
+      play at coach and horses, quite quietly by himself, he is tolerably happy.
+      He saunters in and out of school when he likes, and looks at the masters
+      and other boys with a listless grin. He used to be taken to church, but he
+      laughed and talked in odd places, so they are forced to leave him at home
+      now. He will sit with a bit of string and play cats-cradle for many hours.
+      He likes to go and join the very small children at their games. Some are
+      frightened at him, but they soon cease to fear, and order him about. I
+      have seen him go and fetch tarts from Mrs. Ruggles for a boy of eight
+      years old; and cry bitterly if he did not get a piece. He cannot speak
+      quite plain, but very nearly; and is not more, I suppose, than
+      three-and-twenty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course at home they know his age, though they never come and see him.
+      But they forget that Miss Rosa Birch is no longer a young chit as she was
+      ten years ago, when Gaunt was brought to the school. On the contrary, she
+      has had no small experience in the tender passion, and is at this moment
+      smitten with a disinterested affection for Plantagenet Gaunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next to a little doll with a burnt nose, which he hides away in cunning
+      places, Mr. Gaunt is very fond of Miss Rosa too. What a pretty match it
+      would make! and how pleased they would be at Gaunt House, if the grandson
+      and heir of the great Marquis of Steyne, the descendant of a hundred
+      Gaunts and Tudors, should marry Miss Birch, the schoolmaster's daughter!
+      It is true she has the sense on her side, and poor Plantagenet is only an
+      idiot: but there he is, a zany, with such expectations and such a
+      pedigree!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Miss Rosa would run away with Mr. Gaunt, she would leave off bullying
+      her cousin, Miss Anny Raby. Shall I put her up to the notion, and offer to
+      lend her the money to run away? Mr. Gaunt is not allowed money. He had
+      some once, but Bullock took him into a corner, and got it from him. He has
+      a moderate tick opened at the tart-woman's. He stops at Rodwell Regis
+      through the year, school-time and holiday time; it is all the same to him.
+      Nobody asks about him, or thinks about him, save twice a year, when the
+      Doctor goes to Gaunt House, and gets the amount of his bills, and a glass
+      of wine in the steward's room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet you see somehow that he is a gentleman. His manner is different to
+      that of the owners of that coarse table and parlour at which he is a
+      boarder, (I do not speak of Miss R. of course, for <i>her</i> manners are
+      as good as those of a Duchess). When he caught Miss Rosa boxing little
+      Fiddes's ears, his face grew red, and he broke into a fierce, inarticulate
+      rage. After that, and for some days, he used to shrink from her; but they
+      are reconciled now. I saw them this afternoon in the garden, where only
+      the parlour-boarders walk. He was playful, and touched her with his stick.
+      She raised her handsome eyes in surprise, and smiled on him very kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thing was so clear, that I thought it my duty to speak to old Zoe
+      about it. The wicked old catamaran told me she wished that some people
+      would mind their own business, and hold their tongues&mdash;that some
+      people were paid to teach writing, and not to tell tales and make
+      mischief: and I have since been thinking whether I ought to communicate
+      with the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE OLD PUPIL.
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>s I came into the
+      play-grounds this morning, I saw a dashing young fellow, with a tanned
+      face and a blonde moustache, who was walking up and down the green,
+      arm-in-arm with Champion Major, and followed by a little crowd of boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were talking of old times evidently. "What had become of Irvine and
+      Smith?"&mdash;"Where was Bill Harris and Jones, not Squinny Jones, but
+      Cocky Jones?"&mdash;and so forth. The gentleman was no stranger; he was an
+      old pupil evidently, come to see if any of his old comrades remained, and
+      to revisit the <i>cari luogi</i> of his youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Champion was evidently proud of his arm-fellow. He espied his brother,
+      young Champion, and introduced him. "Come here, Sir," he called. "The
+      young 'un wasn't here in your time, Davison."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pat, Sir," said he, "this is Captain Davison, one of Birch's boys. Ask
+      him who was among the first in the lines at Sobraon?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pat's face kindled up as he looked Davison full in the face, and held out
+      his hand. Old Champion and Davison both blushed. The infantry set up a
+      "Hurray! hurray! hurray!" Champion leading, and waving his wide-awake. I
+      protest that the scene did one good to witness. Here was the hero and cock
+      of the school come back to see his old haunts and cronies. He had always
+      remembered them. Since he had seen them last, he had faced death and
+      achieved honour. But for my dignity I would have shied up my hat too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a resolute step, and his arm still linked in Champion's, Captain
+      Davison now advanced, followed by a wake of little boys, to that corner of
+      the green where Mrs. Buggies has her tart-stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hullo, Mother Buggies! don't you remember me?" he said, and shook her by
+      the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lor, if it ain't Davison Major!" she said. "Well, Davison Major, you owe
+      me fourpence for two sausage-rolls from when you went away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Davison laughed, and all the little crew of boys set up a similar chorus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I buy the whole shop," he said. "Now, young 'uns&mdash;eat away!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was such a "Hurray! hurray!" as surpassed the former cheer in
+      loudness. Everybody engaged in it except Piggy Duff, who made an instant
+      dash at the three-cornered puffs, but was stopped by Champion, who said
+      there should be a fair distribution. And so there was, and no one lacked,
+      neither of raspberry open-tarts, nor of mellifluous bull's-eyes, nor of
+      polonies, beautiful to the sight and taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hurraying brought out the Doctor himself, who put his hand up to his
+      spectacles and started when he saw the old pupil. Each blushed when he
+      recognised the other; for seven years ago they had parted not good
+      friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What&mdash;Davison?" the Doctor said, with a tremulous voice. "God bless
+      you, my dear fellow!"&mdash;and they shook hands. "A half-holiday, of
+      course, boys," he added, and there was another hurray: there was to be no
+      end to the cheering that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How's&mdash;how's the family, Sir?" Captain Davison asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come in and see. Flora's grown quite a lady. Dine with us, of course.
+      Champion Major, come to dinner at five. Mr. Titmarsh, the pleasure of your
+      company?" The Doctor swung open the garden-gate: the old master and pupil
+      entered the house reconciled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought I would just peep into Miss Raby's room, and tell her of this
+      event. She was working away at her linen there, as usual, quiet and
+      cheerful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You should put up," I said with a smile; "the Doctor has given us a
+      half-holiday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never have holidays," Miss Raby replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I told her of the scene I had just witnessed, of the arrival of the
+      old pupil, the purchase of the tarts, the proclamation of the holiday, and
+      the shouts of the boys of "Hurray, Davison."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Who</i> is it?" cried out Miss Raby, starting and turning as white as
+      a sheet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told her it was Captain Davison from India, and described the appearance
+      and behaviour of the Captain. When I had finished speaking, she asked me
+      to go and get her a glass of water; she felt unwell. But she was gone when
+      I came back with the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know all now. After sitting for a quarter of an hour with the Doctor,
+      who attributed his guest's uneasiness no doubt to his desire to see Miss
+      Laura Birch, Davison started up and said he wanted to see Miss Raby. "You
+      remember, Sir, how kind she was to my little brother," he said. Whereupon
+      the Doctor, with a look of surprise that anybody should want to see Miss
+      Raby, said she was in the little school-room, whither the Captain went,
+      knowing the way from old times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes afterwards, Miss B. and Miss Z. returned from a drive with
+      Plantagenet Gaunt in their one-horse fly, and being informed of Davison's
+      arrival, and that he was closeted with Miss Raby in the little
+      school-room, of course made for that apartment at once. I was coming into
+      it from the other door. I wanted to know whether she had drunk the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+      <img src="images/0084m.jpg" alt="0084m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0084.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      This is what both parties saw. The two were in this very attitude. "Well,
+      upon my word!" cries out Miss Zoe, But Davison did not let go his hold;
+      and Miss Raby's head only sank down on his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must get another governess, Sir, for the little boys," Frank Davison
+      said to the Doctor. "Anny Raby has promised to come with me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You may suppose I shut to the door on my side. And when I returned to the
+      little school-room, it was blank and empty. Everybody was gone. I could
+      hear the boys shouting at play in the green, outside. The glass of water
+      was on the table where I had placed it. I took it and drank it myself, to
+      the health of Anny Raby and her husband. It was rather a choker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But of course I wasn't going to stop on at Birch's. When his young friends
+      re-assemble on the 1st of February next, they will have two new masters.
+      Prince resigned too, and is at present living with me at my old lodgings
+      at Mrs. Cammysole's. If any nobleman or gentleman wants a private tutor
+      for his son, a note to the Rev. F. Prince will find him there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Clapperclaw says we are both a couple of old fools; and that she
+      knew, when I set off last year to Rodwell Regis, after meeting the two
+      young ladies at a party at General Champion's house in our street, that I
+      was going on a goose's errand. Well, well, that journey is over now; I
+      shall dine at the General's on Christmas-day, where I shall meet Captain
+      and Mrs. Davison, and some of the old pupils of Birch's; and I wish a
+      merry Christmas to them, and to all young and old boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he play is done;
+      the curtain drops,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slow falling, to the prompter's bell:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment yet the actor stops,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      And looks around, to say farewell.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      It is an irksome word and task;
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      And when he 's laughed and said his say,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      He shows, as he removes the mask,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      A face that's anything but gay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      One word, ere yet the evening ends,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Let's close it with a parting rhyme,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      And pledge a hand to all young friends,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      As fits the merry Christmas-time.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      On life's wide scene you, too, have parts,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      That Fate ere long shall bid you play;
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Good night! with honest gentle hearts
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      A kindly greeting go alway!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Good night!&mdash;I'd say, the griefs, the joys,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Just hinted in this mimic page,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      The triumphs and defeats of boys,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Are but repeated in our age.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      I 'd say, your woes were not less keen,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Your hopes more vain, than those of men;
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Your pangs or pleasures of fifteen,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      At forty-five played o'er again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      I'd say, we suffer and we strive
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Not less nor more as men than boys;
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      With grizzled beards at forty-five,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      As erst at twelve, in corduroys.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      And if, in time of sacred youth,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      We learned at home to love and pray,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Pray Heaven, that early Love and Truth
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      May never wholly pass away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      And in the world, as in the school,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      I 'd say, how fate may change and shift;
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      The prize be sometimes with the fool,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      The race not always to the swift.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      The strong may yield, the good may fall,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      The great man he a vulgar clown,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      The knave be lifted over all,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      The kind cast pitilessly down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Who knows the inscrutable design?
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Blessed be He who took and gave!
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Be weeping at her darling's grave? *
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      We bow to Heaven that will'd it so,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      That darkly rules the fate of all,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      That sends the respite or the blow,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      That's free to give or to recall.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      This crowns his feast with wine and wit:
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Who brought him to that mirth aud state?
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      His betters, see, below him sit,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Or hunger hopeless at the gate.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Who bade the mud from Dives' wheel
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      To spurn the rags of Lazarus?
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Come, brother, in that dust we '11 kneel,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Confessing Heaven that ruled it thus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent30">
+      * <i>C. B., ob. 29 Nov. 1848, set. 42.</i> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      So each shall mourn, in life's advance,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed;
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      And longing passion unfulfilled.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Amen! whatever fate be sent,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Pray God the heart may kindly glow,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Although the heart with cares be bent,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      And whitened with the winter-snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Come wealth or want, come good or ill,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Let young and old accept their part,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      And bow before the Awful Will,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      And bear it with an honest heart.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Who misses, or who wins the prize?
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Go, lose or conquer as you can:
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      But if you fail, or if you rise,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Be each, pray God, a gentleman,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      A gentleman, or old or young!
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      (Bear kindly with my humble lays);
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      The sacred chorus first was sung
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Upon the first of Christmas-days:
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      The shepherds heard it overhead&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      The joyful angels raised it then:
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Glory to Heaven 011 high, it said,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      And peace 011 earth to gentle men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      My song, save this, is little worth;
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      I lay the weary pen aside,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      And wish you health, and love, and mirth,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      As fits the holy Christmas birth,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Be this, good friends, our carol still&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Be peace on earth, be peace on earth,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      To men of gentle will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE END.
+    </h3>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Doctor Birch and His Young Friends, by 
+M. A. Titmarsh
+
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+  </body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,1580 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Doctor Birch and His Young Friends, by M. A. Titmarsh
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Doctor Birch and His Young Friends
+
+Author: M. A. Titmarsh
+
+Release Date: May 1, 2014 [EBook #45554]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR BIRCH AND HIS YOUNG FRIENDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger from page images generously
+provided by the Internet Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DOCTOR BIRCH AND HIS YOUNG FRIENDS.
+
+By Mr. M. A. Titmarsh.
+
+London:
+
+Chapman and Hall
+
+1840.
+
+[Illustration: 0008]
+
+[Illustration: 0009]
+
+[Illustration: 00011]
+
+
+
+
+DOCTOR BIRCH.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOCTOR AND HIS STAFF.
+
+|There is no need to say why I became Assistant Master and Professor of
+the English and French languages, flower-painting, and the German flute,
+in Doctor Birch's Academy, at Rodwell Regis. Good folks may depend on
+this that there was good reason for my leaving lodgings near London,
+and a genteel society, for an under-master's desk in that old school.
+I promise you, the fare at the Usher's table, the getting up at five
+o'clock in the morning, the walking out with little boys in the fields,
+(who used to play me tricks, and never could be got to respect my awful
+and responsible character as teacher in the school,) Miss Birch's vulgar
+insolence, Jack Birch's glum condescension, and the poor old Doctor's
+patronage, were not matters in themselves pleasurable: and that that
+patronage and those dinners were sometimes cruel hard to swallow. Never
+mind--my connexion with the place is over now, and I hope they have got
+a more efficient under-master.
+
+Jack Birch (Rev. J. Birch, of St. Neot's Hall, Oxford,) is partner with
+his father the Doctor, and takes some of the classes. About his Greek
+I can't say much; but I will construe him in Latin any day. A more
+supercilious little prig, (giving himself airs, too, about his cousin,
+Miss Baby, who lives with the Doctor,) a more empty pompous little
+coxcomb I never saw. His white neckcloth looked as if it choked him. He
+used to try and look over that starch upon me and Prince the assistant,
+as if we were a couple of footmen. He didn't do much business in the
+school; but occupied his time in writing sanctified letters to the boys'
+parents, and in composing dreary sermons to preach to them.
+
+The real master of the school is Prince; an Oxford man too: shy,
+haughty, and learned; crammed with Greek and a quantity of useless
+learning; uncommonly kind to the small boys; pitiless with the fools
+and the braggarts: respected of all for his honesty, his learning, his
+bravery, (for he hit out once in a boat-row in a way which astonished
+the boys and the bargemen,) and for a latent power about him, which all
+saw and confessed somehow. Jack Birch could never look him in the face.
+Old Miss Z. dared not put off any of _her_ airs upon him. Miss Rosa made
+him the lowest of curtsies. Miss Raby said she was afraid of him.
+Good old Prince! many a pleasant night we have smoked in the Doctor's
+harness-room, whither we retired when our boys were gone to bed, and our
+cares and canes put by.
+
+After Jack Birch had taken his degree at Oxford--a process which he
+effected with great difficulty--this place, which used to be called
+"Birch's," "Dr. Birch's Academy," and what not, became suddenly
+"Archbishop Wigsby's College of Rodwell Regis." They took down the old
+blue board with the gold letters, which has been used to mend the pig-
+stye since. Birch had a large school-room run up in the Gothic taste,
+with statuettes, and a little belfry, and a bust of Archbishop Wigsby in
+the middle of the school. He put the six senior boys into caps and
+gowns, which had rather a good effect as the lads sauntered down the
+street of the town, but which certainly provoked the contempt and
+hostility of the bargemen; and so great was his rage for academic
+costumes and ordinances, that he would have put me myself into a lay
+gown, with red knots and fringes, but that I flatly resisted, and said
+that a writing-master had no business with such paraphernalia.
+
+By the way, I have forgotten to mention the Doctor himself. And what
+shall I say of him? Well, he has a very crisp gown and bands, a solemn
+air, a tremendous loud voice, and a grand and solemn air with the boys'
+parents, whom he receives in a study, covered round with the best bound
+books, which imposes upon many--upon the women especially--and makes
+them fancy that this is a Doctor indeed. But, Law bless you! He never
+reads the books; or opens one of them, except that in which he keeps his
+bands--and a Dugdale's Monasticon, which looks like a book, but is in
+reality a cupboard, where he has his almond cakes, and decanter of port
+wine. He gets up his classics with translations, or what the boys call
+cribs. They pass wicked tricks upon him when he hears the forms. The
+elder wags go to his study, and ask him to help them in hard bits of
+Herodotus or Thucydides: he says he will look over the passage, and
+flies for refuge to Mr. Prince, or to the crib.
+
+He keeps the flogging department in his own hands; finding that his
+son was too savage. He has awful brows and a big voice. But his roar
+frightens nobody. It is only a lion's skin, or, so to say, a muff.
+
+Little Mordant made a picture of him with large ears, like a well-known
+domestic animal, and had his own justly boxed for the caricature.
+The Doctor discovered him in the fact, and was in a flaming rage, and
+threatened whipping at first; but in the course of the day an opportune
+basket of game arriving from Mordant's father, the Doctor became
+mollified, and has burnt the picture with the ears. However I have one
+wafered up in my desk by the hand of the same little rascal: and the
+frontispiece of this very book is drawn from it.
+
+
+
+
+THE COCK OF THE SCHOOL.
+
+|I am growing an old fellow--and have seen many great folks in the
+course of my travels and time--Louis Philippe coming out of the
+Tuileries, His Majesty the King of Prussia and the Reichsverweser
+accolading each other, at Cologne, at my elbow; Admiral Sir Charles
+Napier (in an omnibus once), the Duke of Wellington, the immortal Goethe
+at Weimar, the late benevolent Pope Gregory XVI., and a score more of
+the famous in this world--the whom, whenever one looks at, one has a
+mild shock of awe and tremor. I like this feeling and decent fear and
+trembling with which a modest spirit salutes a _Great Man_.
+
+Well, I have seen Generals capering on horseback at the head of their
+crimson battalions; Bishops sailing down cathedral aisles, with downcast
+eyes, pressing their trencher caps to their hearts with their fat white
+hands; College heads when her Majesty is on a visit; the Doctor in all
+his glory at the head of his school on Speech-day, a great sight,--and
+all great men these.
+
+I have never met the late Mr. Thomas Cribb, but I have no doubt should
+have regarded him with the same feeling of awe with which I look every
+day at George Champion, the cock of Dr. Birch's school.
+
+When, I say, I reflect as I go up and set him a sum, that he could whop
+me in two minutes, double up Prince and the other assistant, and pitch
+the Doctor out of window, I can't but think how great, how generous, how
+magnanimous a creature this is, that sits quite quiet and good-natured,
+and works his equation, and ponders through his Greek play. He might
+take the schoolroom pillars and pull the house down if he liked. He
+might close the door, and demolish every one of us like Antar, the lover
+of Ibla; but he lets us live. He never thrashes anybody without a cause,
+when woe betide the tyrant or the sneak!
+
+I think that to be strong, and able to whop everybody,--(not to do
+it, mind you, but to feel that you were able to do it,)--would be the
+greatest of all gifts. There is a serene good humour which plays about
+George Champion's broad face, which shows the consciousness of this
+power, and lights up his honest blue eyes with a magnanimous calm.
+
+He is invictus. Even when a cub there was no beating this lion. Six
+years ago the undaunted little warrior actually stood up to Frank
+Davison,--(the Indian officer now--poor little Charley's brother, whom
+Miss Raby nursed so affectionately,)--then seventeen years old, and the
+cock of Birch's. They were obliged to drag off the boy, and Frank, with
+admiration and regard for him, prophesied the great things he would do.
+Legends of combats are preserved fondly in schools; they have stories of
+such at Rodwell Regis, performed in the old Doctor's time, forty years
+ago.
+
+Champion's affair with the Young Tutbury Pet, who was down here in
+training,--with Black the Bargeman,--with the three head boys of Doctor
+Wapshot's academy, whom he caught maltreating an outlying day-boy
+of ours, &c.,--are known to all the Rodwell Regis men. He was always
+victorious. He is modest and kind, like all great men. He has a good,
+brave, honest understanding. He cannot make verses like young Pinder,
+or read Greek like Lawrence the Prefect, who is a perfect young abyss of
+learning, and knows enough, Prince says, to furnish any six first-class
+men; but he does his work in a sound, downright way, and he is made
+to be the bravest of soldiers, the best of country parsons, an honest
+English gentleman wherever he may go.
+
+[Illustration: 0021]
+
+Like all great men, George is good-humoured and lazy. There is a
+particular bench in the play-ground on which he will loll for hours on
+half-holidays, and is so affable that the smallest boys come and speak
+to him. It is pleasant to see the young cubs frisking round the honest
+lion. His chief friend and attendant, however, is young Jack Hall, whom
+he saved when drowning, out of the Miller's Pool. The attachment of the
+two is curious to witness. The smaller lad gambolling, playing tricks
+round the bigger one, and perpetually making fun of his protector. They
+are never far apart, and of holidays you may meet them miles away from
+the school. George sauntering heavily down the lanes with his big stick,
+and little Jack larking with the pretty girls in the cottage windows.
+
+George has a boat on the river, in which, however, he commonly lies
+smoking, whilst Jack sculls him. He does not play at cricket, except
+when the school plays the county, or at Lord's in the holidays. The boys
+can't stand his bowling, and when he hits, it is like trying to catch a
+cannon-ball. I have seen him at tennis. It is a splendid sight to behold
+the young fellow bounding over the court with streaming yellow hair,
+like young Apollo in a flannel jacket.
+
+The other head boys are Lawrence the Captain, Bunce, famous chiefly for
+his magnificent appetite, and Pitman, sur-named Roscius, for his love of
+the drama. Add to these Swanky, called Macassar, from his partiality
+to that condiment, and who has varnished boots, wears white gloves on
+Sundays, and looks out for Miss Pinkerton's school (transferred from
+Chiswick to Rodwell Regis, and conducted by the nieces of the late Miss
+Barbara Pinkerton, the friend of Our Great Lexicograplier, upon the
+principles approved by him and practised by that admirable woman,) as it
+passes into church.
+
+[Illustration: 0025]
+
+Representations have been made concerning Mr. Horace Swanky's
+behaviour; rumours have been uttered about notes in verse, conveyed in
+three-cornered puffs, by Mrs. Buggies, who serves Miss Pinkerton's young
+ladies on Fridays--and how Miss Didow, to whom the tart and enclosure
+were addressed, tried to make away with herself by swallowing a ball of
+cotton. But I pass over these absurd reports, as likely to affect the
+reputation of an admirable Seminary conducted by irreproachable females.
+As they go into church (Miss P. driving in her flock of lambkins with
+the crook of her parasol,) how can it be helped if her forces and ours
+sometimes collide, as the boys are on their way up to the organ-loft?
+And I don't believe a word about the three-cornered puff, but rather
+that it was the invention of that jealous Miss Birch, who is jealous of
+Miss Raby, jealous of everybody who is good and handsome, and who has
+_her own ends_ in view, or I am very much in error.
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE SCHOOL-ROOM.
+
+|What they call the little school-room is a small room at the other end
+of the great school; through which you go to the Doctor's private house,
+and where Miss Raby sits with her pupils. She has a half-dozen very
+small ones over whom she presides and teaches them in her simple way,
+until they are big or learned enough to face the great school-room. Many
+of them are in a hurry for promotion, the graceless little simpletons,
+and know no more than their elders when they are well off.
+
+[Illustration: 0029]
+
+She keeps the accounts, writes out the bills, superintends the linen and
+sews on the general shirt-buttons. Think of having such a woman at home
+to sew on one's shirt-buttons! But peace, peace, thou foolish heart!
+
+Miss Raby is the Doctor's niece. Her mother was a beauty (quite unlike
+old Zoe therefore); and she married a pupil in the old Doctor's time,
+who was killed afterwards, a Captain in the East India service, at
+the siege of Bhurtpore. Hence a number of Indian children come to the
+Doctor's, for Raby was very much liked, and the uncle's kind reception
+of the orphan has been a good speculation for the school-keeper.
+
+It is wonderful how brightly and gaily that little quick creature
+does her duty. She is the first to rise, and the last to sleep, if any
+business is to be done. She sees the other two women go off to parties
+in the town without even so much as wishing to join them. It is
+Cinderella, only contented to stay at home--content to bear Zoe's scorn
+and to admit Flora's superior charms,--and to do her utmost to repay her
+uncle for his great kindness in housing her.
+
+So, you see, she works as much as three maid-servants for the wages of
+one. She is as thankful when the Doctor gives her a new gown, as if
+he had presented her with a fortune: laughs at his stories most
+good-humouredly, listens to Zoe's scolding most meekly, admires Flora
+with all her heart, and only goes out of the way when Jack Birch shows
+his sallow face: for she can't bear him, and always finds work when he
+comes near.
+
+How different she is when some folks approach her! I won't be
+presumptuous; but I think, I think, I have made a not unfavourable
+impression in some quarters. However, let us be mum on this subject. I
+like to see her, because she always looks good-humoured; because she is
+always kind, because she is always modest, because she is fond of those
+poor little brats--orphans some of them,--because she is rather pretty,
+I dare say, or because I think so, which comes to the same thing.
+
+Though she is kind to all, it must be owned she shows the most gross
+favouritism towards the amiable children. She brings them cakes from
+dessert, and regales them with Zoe's preserves; spends many of her
+little shillings in presents for her favourites, and will tell them
+stories by the hour. She has one very sad story about a little boy, who
+died long ago; the younger children are never weary of hearing about
+him; and Miss Raby has shown to one of them a lock of the little chap's
+hair, which she keeps in her work-box to this day.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEAR BROTHERS.
+
+_A Melodrama in several Rounds_.
+
+The Doctor.
+
+Mr. Tipper, Uncle to the Masters Boxall.
+
+Boxall Major, Boxall Minor, Brown, Jones, Smith,
+
+Robinson, Tiffin Minimus.
+
+B. Go it old Boxall.
+
+J. Give it him young Boxall.
+
+R. Pitch into him old Boxall.
+
+S. Two to one on young Boxall.
+
+                        [Enter Tiffin Minimus, _running._
+
+_Tiffin Minimus_. Boxalls! you 're wanted.
+
+(_The Doctor to Mr. Tipper._) Every boy in the school loves them,
+my dear sir; your nephews are a credit to my establishment. They are
+orderly, well-conducted, gentleman-like boys. Let us enter and find them
+at their studies.
+
+                        [_Enter_ The Doctor _and_ Mr. Tipper.
+
+GRAND TABLEAU.
+
+
+
+
+A HOPELESS CASE.
+
+|Let us, people who are so uncommonly clever and learned, have a great
+tenderness and pity for the poor folks who are not endowed with the
+prodigious talents which we have. I have always had a regard for
+dunces;--those of my own school-days were amongst the pleasantest of the
+fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest in life; whereas
+many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by the yard, and
+construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble prig now, with
+not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before his beard
+grew.
+
+Those poor dunces! Talk of being the last man, ah! what a pang it must
+be to be the last boy--huge, misshapen, fourteen years of age,--and
+"taken up" by a chap who is but six years old, and can't speak quite
+plain yet!
+
+[Illustration: 0037]
+
+Master Hulker is in that condition at Birch's. He is the most honest,
+kind, active, plucky, generous creature. He can do many things better
+than most boys. He can go up a tree, jump, play at cricket, dive and
+swim perfectly--he can eat twice as much as almost any lady (as Miss
+Birch well knows), he has a pretty talent at carving figures with his
+hack-knife, he makes and paints little coaches, he can take a watch to
+pieces and put it together again. He can do everything but learn his
+lesson; and there he sticks at the bottom of the school, hopeless. As
+the little boys are drafted in from Miss Raby's class, (it is true she
+is one of the best instructresses in the world,) they enter and hop over
+poor Hulker. He would be handed over to the governess only he is too
+big. Sometimes I used to think, that this desperate stupidity was a
+stratagem of the poor rascal's; and that he shammed dulness so that he
+might be degraded into Miss Raby's class: if she would teach _me_, I
+know, before George, I would put on a pinafore and a little jacket--but
+no, it is a natural incapacity for the Latin Grammar.
+
+If you could see his grammar, it is a perfect curiosity of dog's ears.
+The leaves and cover are all curled and ragged. Many of the pages are
+worn away, with the rubbing of his elbows as he sits poring over the
+hopeless volume, with the blows of his fists as he thumps it madly, or
+with the poor fellow's tears. You see him wiping them away with the back
+of his hand, as he tries and tries, and can't do it.
+
+When I think of that Latin Grammar, and that infernal As in Praesenti,
+and of other things which I was made to learn in my youth: upon my
+conscience I am surprised that we ever survived it. When one thinks
+of the boys who have been caned because they could not master that
+intolerable jargon! Good Lord, what a pitiful chorus these poor little
+creatures send up! Be gentle with them, ye schoolmasters, and only whop
+those who _won't_ learn.
+
+The Doctor has operated upon Hulker (between ourselves), but the boy was
+so little affected you would have thought he had taken chloroform. Birch
+is weary of whipping now, and leaves the boy to go his own gait. Prince,
+when he hears the lesson, and who cannot help making fun of a fool,
+adopts the sarcastic manner with Master Hulker, and says, "Mr. Hulker,
+may I take the liberty to inquire if your brilliant intellect has
+enabled you to perceive the difference between those words which
+grammarians have defined as substantive and adjective nouns?--if not,
+perhaps Mr. Ferdinand Timmins will instruct you." And Timmins hops over
+Hulker's head.
+
+I wish Prince would leave off girding at the poor lad. He's an only son,
+and his mother is a widow woman, who loves him with all her might. There
+is a famous sneer about the suckling of fools and the chronicling of
+small beer; but remember it was a rascal who uttered it.
+
+
+
+
+A WORD ABOUT MISS BIRCH.
+
+"The Gentlemen, and especially the younger and more tender of the
+Pupils, will have the advantage of the constant superintendence and
+affectionate care of Miss Zoe Birch, sister of the Principal: whose
+dearest aim will be to supply (as far as may be) the absent maternal
+friend."--_Prospectus of Rodwell Regis School_.
+
+This is all very fine in the Doctor's circulars, and Miss Zoe Birch--(a
+sweet birch blossom it is, fifty-five years old, during two score of
+which she has dosed herself with pills; with a nose as red and a face as
+sour as a crab-apple)--may do mighty well in a prospectus. But I should
+like to know who would take Miss Zoe for a mother, or would have her for
+one?
+
+[Illustration: 0042]
+
+The only persons in the house who are not afraid of her are Miss Flora
+and I--no, I am afraid of her, though I _do_ know the story about the
+French usher in 1830--but all the rest tremble before the woman, from
+the Doctor down to poor Francis the knife-boy, and whom she bullies into
+his miserable blacking-hole.
+
+The Doctor is a pompous and outwardly severe man--but inwardly weak
+and easy: loving a joke and a glass of port wine. I get on with him,
+therefore, much better than Mr. Prince, who scorns him for an ass,
+and under whose keen eyes the worthy Doctor writhes like a convicted
+impostor; and many a sunshiny afternoon would he have said, "Mr. T.,
+Sir, shall we try another glass of that yellow sealed wine which you
+seem to like?" (and which he likes even better than I do), had not the
+old harridan of a Zoe been down upon us, and insisted on turning me
+out with her miserable weak coffee. She a mother indeed! A sour milk
+generation she would have nursed. She is always croaking, scolding,
+bullying,--yowling at the housemaids, snarling at Miss Raby, bowwowing
+after the little boys, barking after the big ones. She knows how much
+every boy eats to an ounce; and her delight is to ply with fat the
+little ones who can't bear it, and with raw meat those who hate
+underdone. It was she who caused the Doctor to be eaten out three times;
+and nearly created a rebellion in the school because she insisted on his
+flogging Goliah Longman.
+
+The only time that woman is happy is when she comes in of a morning to
+the little boys' dormitories with a cup of hot Epsom salts, and a sippet
+of bread. Boo!--the very notion makes me quiver. She stands over them.
+I saw her do it to young Byles only a few days since--and her presence
+makes the abomination doubly abominable.
+
+As for attending them in real illness, do you suppose that she would
+watch a single night for any one of them? Not she. When poor little
+Charley Davison (that child, a lock of whose soft hair I have said how
+Miss Raby still keeps) lay ill of scarlet fever in the holidays--for the
+Colonel, the father of these boys, was in India--it was Anne Raby who
+tended the child, who watched him all through the fever, who never left
+him while it lasted, or until she had closed the little eyes that were
+never to brighten or moisten more. Anny watched and deplored him, but it
+was Miss Birch who wrote the letter announcing his demise, and got the
+gold chain and locket which the Colonel ordered as a memento of his
+gratitude. It was through a row with Miss Birch that Frank Davison ran
+away. I promise you that after he joined his regiment in India, the
+Ahmednuggar Irregulars, which his gallant father commands, there came
+over no more annual shawls and presents to Dr. and Miss Birch, and that
+if she fancied the Colonel was coming home to marry her (on account of
+her tenderness to his motherless children, which he was always writing
+about), _that_ notion was very soon given up. But these affairs are
+of early date, seven years back, and I only heard of them in a very
+confused manner from Miss Raby, who was a girl, and had just come to
+Rodwell Regis. She is always very much moved when she speaks about those
+boys, which is but seldom. I take it the death of the little one still
+grieves her tender heart.
+
+Yes, it is Miss Birch, who has turned away seventeen ushers and second
+masters in eleven years, and half as many French masters; inconsolable,
+I suppose, since the departure of her _favourite_, M. Grinche, with her
+gold watch, &c.; but this is only surmise--and what I gather from the
+taunts of Miss Rosa when she and her aunt have a tiff at tea.
+
+But besides this, I have another way of keeping her in order.
+
+Whenever she is particularly odious or insolent to Miss Raby, I have but
+to introduce raspberry jam into the conversation, and the woman holds
+her tongue. She will understand me. I need not say more.
+
+_Note, 12th December_.--I _may_ speak now. I have left the place and
+don't mind. I say then at once, and without caring twopence for the
+consequences, that I saw this woman, this _mother_ of the boys, _eating
+jam with a spoon out of Master Wiggins's trunk in the box-room_; and of
+this I am ready to take an affidavit any day.
+
+
+
+
+A TRAGEDY.
+
+THIS DRAMA OUGHT TO BE REPRESENTED IN ABOUT SIX CUTS.
+
+_[The School is hushed. Lawrence the Prefect, and Custos of the rods, is
+marching after the Doctor into the operating-room. Master Backhouse is
+about to follow.]_
+
+[Illustration: 0048]
+
+_Master Backhouse_. It's all very well, but you see if I don't pay you
+out after school--you sneak, you.
+
+_Master Lurcher_. If you do I '1l tell again.
+
+                        [Exit Backhouse.
+
+[_The rod is heard from the adjoining apartment.
+Hwish--Hhwish--hwish--hwish--hwish--hwish--hwish._]
+
+                        [Re-enter Backhouse.
+
+
+
+
+BRIGGS IN LUCK.
+
+_Enter the Knife-boy_.--Hamper for Briggses!
+
+_Master Brown._--Hurray, Tom Briggs! I'll lend you my knife.
+
+If this story does not carry its own moral, what fable does, I wonder?
+Before the arrival of that hamper, Master Briggs was in no better repute
+than any other young gentleman of the lower school; and in fact I had
+occasion myself, only lately, to correct Master Brown for kicking his
+friend's shins during the writing-lesson. But how this basket directed
+by his mother's housekeeper, and marked "Glass with care," (whence I
+conclude that it contains some jam and some bottles of wine probably, as
+well as the usual cake and game-pie, and half a sovereign for the elder
+Master B., and five new shillings for Master Decimus Briggs)--how,
+I say, the arrival of this basket, alters all Master Briggs's
+circumstances in life, and the estimation in which many persons regard
+him!
+
+[Illustration: 0051]
+
+If he is a good-hearted boy, as I have reason to think, the very first
+thing he will do, before inspecting the contents of the hamper, or
+cutting into them with the knife which Master Brown has so considerately
+lent him; will be to read over the letter from home which lies on the
+top of the parcel. He does so, as I remark to Miss Raby (for whom I
+happened to be mending pens when the little circumstance arose), with a
+flushed face and winking eyes. Look how the other boys are peering into
+the basket as he reads.--I say to her, "Isn't it a pretty picture?" Part
+of the letter is in a very large hand. That is from his little sister.
+And I would wager that she netted the little purse which he has just
+taken out of it, and which Master Lynx is eyeing.
+
+"You are a droll man, and remark all sorts of queer things," Miss Raby
+says, smiling, and plying her swift needle and fingers as quick as
+possible.
+
+"I am glad we are both on the spot, and that the little fellow
+lies under our guns as it were, and so is protected from some such
+brutal school-pirates as young Duval for instance, who would rob him
+probably of some of those good things, good in themselves, and better
+because fresh from home. See, there is a pie as I said, and which I dare
+say is better than those which are served at our table (but you never
+take any notice of these kind of things, Miss Raby), a cake of course, a
+bottle of currant wine, jam-pots, and no end of pears in the straw.
+
+"With this money little Briggs will be able to pay the tick which that
+imprudent child has run up with Mrs. Ruggles; and I shall let Briggs
+Major pay for the pencil-case which Bullock sold to him.--It will be a
+lesson to the young prodigal for the future.
+
+"But, I say, what a change there will be in his life for some time to
+come, and at least until his present wealth is spent! The boys who bully
+him will mollify towards him, and accept his pie and sweetmeats.
+They will have feasts in the bed-room; and that wine will taste more
+deliciously to them than the best out of the Doctor's cellar. The
+cronies will be invited. Young Master Wagg will tell his most dreadful
+story and sing his best song for a slice of that pie. What a jolly night
+they will have! When we go the rounds at night, Mr. Prince and I will
+take care to make a noise before we come to Briggs's room, so that the
+boys may have time to put the light out, to push the things away, and
+to scud into bed. Doctor Spry may be put in requisition the next
+morning..."
+
+"Nonsense! you absurd creature," cries out Miss Raby, laughing; and I
+lay down the twelfth pen very nicely mended.
+
+"Yes; after luxury comes the doctor, I say; after extravagance, a hole
+in the breeches pocket. To judge from his disposition, Briggs Major will
+not be much better off a couple of days hence than he is now, and, if
+I am not mistaken, will end life a poor man. Brown will be kicking his
+shins before a week is over, depend upon it. There are boys and men of
+all sorts, Miss R.--there are selfish sneaks who hoard until the store
+they daren't use grows mouldy--there are spendthrifts who fling away,
+parasites who flatter and lick its shoes, and snarling curs who hate
+and envy, good fortune."--I put down the last of the pens, brushing away
+with it the quill-chips from her desk first, and she looked at me with a
+kind wondering face. I brushed them away, clicked the pen-knife into
+my pocket, made her a bow, and walked off--for the bell was ringing for
+school.
+
+
+
+
+A YOUNG FELLOW WHO IS PRETTY SURE TO SUCCEED.
+
+|If Master Briggs is destined in all probability to be a poor man, the
+chances are, that Mr. Bullock will have a very different lot. He is
+a son of a partner of the eminent banking firm of Bullock and Hulker,
+Lombard Street, and very high in the upper school--quite out of my
+jurisdiction, consequently.
+
+He writes the most beautiful current hand ever seen; and the way in
+which he mastered arithmetic (going away into recondite and wonderful
+rules in the Tutor's Assistant, which some masters even dare not
+approach) is described by the Doctor in terms of admiration. He is
+Mr. Prince's best algebra pupil; and a very fair classic, too, doing
+everything well for which he has a mind.
+
+He does not busy himself with the sports of his comrades, and holds a
+cricket-bat no better than Miss Raby would. He employs the play hours
+in improving his mind, and reading the newspaper; he is a profound
+politician, and, it must be owned, on the Liberal side. The elder boys
+despise him rather; and when Champion Major passes, he turns his head,
+and looks down. I don't like the expression of Bullock's narrow, green
+eyes, as they follow the elder Champion, who does not seem to know or
+care how much the other hates him.
+
+No--Mr. Bullock, though perhaps the cleverest and most accomplished boy
+in the school, associates with the quite little boys when he is minded
+for society. To these he is quite affable, courteous, and winning.
+He never fagged or thrashed one of them. He has done the verses and
+corrected the exercises of many, and many is the little lad to whom he
+has lent a little money.
+
+It is true he charges at the rate of a penny a week for every sixpence
+lent out, but many a fellow to whom tarts are a present necessity is
+happy to pay this interest for the loan. These transactions are kept
+secret. Mr. Bullock, in rather a whining tone, when he takes Master
+Green aside and does the requisite business for him, says, "You know
+you'll go and talk about it everywhere. I don't want to lend you the
+money, I want to buy something with it. It's only to oblige you; and yet
+I am sure you will go and make fun of me." Whereon, of course, Green,
+eager for the money, vows solemnly that the transaction shall be
+confidential, and only speaks when the payment of the interest becomes
+oppressive.
+
+Thus it is that Mr. Bullock's practices are at all known. At a very
+early period indeed his commercial genius manifested itself; and by
+happy speculations in toffey; by composing a sweet drink made of stick
+liquorice and brown sugar, and selling it at a profit to the younger
+children; by purchasing a series of novels, which he let out at an
+adequate remuneration; by doing boys exercises for a penny, and other
+processes, he showed the bent of his mind. At the end of the half year
+he always went home richer than when he arrived at school, with his
+purse full of money.
+
+Nobody knows how much he brought: but the accounts are fabulous. Twenty,
+thirty, fifty--it is impossible to say how many sovereigns. When joked
+about his money, he turns pale and swears he has not a shilling: whereas
+he has had a banker's account ever since he was thirteen years old.
+
+At the present moment he is employed in negotiating the sale of a knife
+with Master Green, and is pointing out to the latter the beauty of the
+six blades, and that he need not pay until after the holidays.
+
+[Illustration: 0059]
+
+Champion Major has sworn that he will break every bone in his skin the
+next time that he cheats a little boy, and is bearing down upon him.
+Let us come away. It is frightful to see that big peaceful clever coward
+moaning under well deserved blows and whining for mercy.
+
+
+
+
+DUVAL, THE PIRATE.
+
+(_Jones Minimus passes, laden with tarts._)
+
+[Illustration: 0062]
+
+_Duval_. Hullo! you small boy with the tarts! Come here, Sir.
+
+_Jones Minimus_. Please, Duval, they ain't mine.
+
+_Duval._ O you abominable young story-teller.
+
+                        [He confiscates the goods.
+
+I think I like young Duval's mode of levying contributions better than
+Bullock's. The former's, at least, has the merit of more candour. Duval
+is the pirate of Birch's, and lies in wait for small boys laden with
+money or provender. He scents plunder from afar off: and pounces out on
+it. Woe betide the little fellow when Duval boards him!
+
+There was a youth here whose money I used to keep, as he was of an
+extravagant and weak disposition; and I doled it out to him in weekly
+shillings, sufficient for the purchase of the necessary tarts. This boy
+came to me one day for half a sovereign, for a very particular purpose,
+he said. I afterwards found he wanted to lend the money to Duval.
+
+The young ogre burst out laughing, when in a great wrath and fury I
+ordered him to refund to the little boy: and proposed a bill of exchange
+at three months. It is true Duval's father does not pay the Doctor, and
+the lad never has a shilling, save that which he levies; and though he
+is always bragging about the splendour of Freenystown, Co. Cork, and
+the fox-hounds his father keeps, and the claret they drink there--there
+comes no remittance from Castle Freeny in these bad times to the honest
+Doctor, who is a kindly man enough, and never yet turned an insolvent
+boy out of doors.
+
+
+
+
+THE DORMITORIES.
+
+_MASTER HEWLETT AND MASTER NIGHTINGALE._
+
+(Rather a cold winter night.)
+
+_Hewlett (flinging a shoe at Master Nightingale's bed, with which he
+hits that young gentleman.)_ Hullo! You! Get up and bring me that shoe.
+
+[Illustration: 0066]
+
+_Nightingale._ Yes, Hewlett. _(He gets up.)_
+
+_Hewlett_. Don't drop it, and be very careful of it, Sir.
+
+_Nightingale_. Yes, Hewlett.
+
+_Hewlett_. Silence in the Dormitory! Any boy who opens his mouth I'll
+murder him. Now, Sir, are not you the boy what can sing?
+
+_Nightingale_. Yes, Hewlett.
+
+_Hewlett_. Chaunt then till I go to sleep, and if I wake when you stop,
+you 'll have this at your head.
+
+          [Master Hewlett lays his Bluchers on the bed, ready to shy at Master
+Nightingale's head in the case contemplated.
+
+_Nightingale (timidly.)_ Please, Hewlett?
+
+_Hewlett_. Well, Sir.
+
+_Nightingale_. May I put on my trowsers, please? _Hewlett. No_, Sir. Go
+on, or I '11--
+
+_Nightingale_,
+
+                   "Through pleasures and palaces
+
+                        Though we may roam,
+
+                   Be it ever so humble,
+
+                        There's no place like home.
+
+               "Home, home! sweet, sweet home!
+
+                   There's no place like ho-ome!
+
+                   There's no place like home!"
+
+                        (Da Capo.)
+
+
+
+
+A CAPTURE AND A RESCUE.
+
+[Illustration: 0070]
+
+My young friend, Patrick Champion, George's younger brother, is a late
+arrival among us; has much of the family quality and good-nature; is not
+in the least a tyrant to the small boys, but is as eager as an Amadis to
+fight. He is boxing his way up the school, emulating his great brother.
+He fixes his eye on a boy above him in strength or size, and you hear
+somehow that a difference has arisen between them at football, and they
+have their coats off presently. He has thrashed himself over the heads
+of many youths in this manner; for instance, if Champion can lick
+Dobson, who can thrash Hobson, how much more, then, can he thrash
+Hobson. Thus he works up and establishes his position in the school. Nor
+does Mr. Prince think it advisable that we ushers should walk much in
+the way when these little differences are being settled, unless there is
+some gross disparity, or danger is apprehended.
+
+For instance, I own to having seen the row depicted here as I was
+shaving at my bed-room window. I did not hasten down to prevent its
+consequences. Fogle had confiscated a top, the property of Snivins, the
+which, as the little wretch was always pegging it at my toes, I did
+not regret. Snivins whimpered; and young Champion came up, lusting for
+battle. Directly he made out Fogle, he steered for him, pulling up his
+coat-sleeves, and clearing for action.
+
+"Who spoke to _you_, young Champion?" Fogle said, and he flung down
+the top to Master Snivins. I knew there would be no fight; and perhaps
+Champion, too, was disappointed.
+
+
+
+
+THE GARDEN,
+
+_WHERE THE PARLOUR-BOARDERS GO._
+
+Noblemen have been rather scarce at Birch's--but the heir of a great
+Prince has been living with the Doctor for some years.--He is Lord
+George Gaunt's eldest son, the noble Plan-tagenet Gaunt Gaunt, and
+nephew of the Most Honourable the Marquis of Steyne.
+
+[Illustration: 0074]
+
+They are very proud of him at the Doctor's--and the two Misses and Papa,
+whenever a stranger comes down whom they want to dazzle, are pretty sure
+to bring Lord Steyne into the conversation, mentioning the last party
+at Gaunt House, and cursorily remarking that they have with them a young
+friend who will be in all human probability Marquis of Steyne and Earl
+of Gaunt, &c.
+
+Plantagenet does not care much about these future honours: provided
+he can get some brown sugar on his bread and butter, or sit with three
+chairs and play at coach and horses, quite quietly by himself, he is
+tolerably happy. He saunters in and out of school when he likes, and
+looks at the masters and other boys with a listless grin. He used to be
+taken to church, but he laughed and talked in odd places, so they are
+forced to leave him at home now. He will sit with a bit of string and
+play cats-cradle for many hours. He likes to go and join the very small
+children at their games. Some are frightened at him, but they soon cease
+to fear, and order him about. I have seen him go and fetch tarts from
+Mrs. Ruggles for a boy of eight years old; and cry bitterly if he did
+not get a piece. He cannot speak quite plain, but very nearly; and is
+not more, I suppose, than three-and-twenty.
+
+Of course at home they know his age, though they never come and see him.
+But they forget that Miss Rosa Birch is no longer a young chit as
+she was ten years ago, when Gaunt was brought to the school. On the
+contrary, she has had no small experience in the tender passion, and is
+at this moment smitten with a disinterested affection for Plantagenet
+Gaunt.
+
+Next to a little doll with a burnt nose, which he hides away in cunning
+places, Mr. Gaunt is very fond of Miss Rosa too. What a pretty match
+it would make! and how pleased they would be at Gaunt House, if the
+grandson and heir of the great Marquis of Steyne, the descendant of a
+hundred Gaunts and Tudors, should marry Miss Birch, the schoolmaster's
+daughter! It is true she has the sense on her side, and poor Plantagenet
+is only an idiot: but there he is, a zany, with such expectations and
+such a pedigree!
+
+If Miss Rosa would run away with Mr. Gaunt, she would leave off bullying
+her cousin, Miss Anny Raby. Shall I put her up to the notion, and offer
+to lend her the money to run away? Mr. Gaunt is not allowed money. He
+had some once, but Bullock took him into a corner, and got it from him.
+He has a moderate tick opened at the tart-woman's. He stops at Rodwell
+Regis through the year, school-time and holiday time; it is all the same
+to him. Nobody asks about him, or thinks about him, save twice a year,
+when the Doctor goes to Gaunt House, and gets the amount of his bills,
+and a glass of wine in the steward's room.
+
+And yet you see somehow that he is a gentleman. His manner is different
+to that of the owners of that coarse table and parlour at which he is a
+boarder, (I do not speak of Miss R. of course, for _her_ manners are
+as good as those of a Duchess). When he caught Miss Rosa boxing
+little Fiddes's ears, his face grew red, and he broke into a fierce,
+inarticulate rage. After that, and for some days, he used to shrink
+from her; but they are reconciled now. I saw them this afternoon in
+the garden, where only the parlour-boarders walk. He was playful, and
+touched her with his stick. She raised her handsome eyes in surprise,
+and smiled on him very kindly.
+
+The thing was so clear, that I thought it my duty to speak to old Zoe
+about it. The wicked old catamaran told me she wished that some people
+would mind their own business, and hold their tongues--that some people
+were paid to teach writing, and not to tell tales and make mischief:
+and I have since been thinking whether I ought to communicate with the
+Doctor.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD PUPIL.
+
+|As I came into the play-grounds this morning, I saw a dashing young
+fellow, with a tanned face and a blonde moustache, who was walking up
+and down the green, arm-in-arm with Champion Major, and followed by a
+little crowd of boys.
+
+They were talking of old times evidently. "What had become of Irvine and
+Smith?"--"Where was Bill Harris and Jones, not Squinny Jones, but Cocky
+Jones?"--and so forth. The gentleman was no stranger; he was an old
+pupil evidently, come to see if any of his old comrades remained, and to
+revisit the _cari luogi_ of his youth.
+
+Champion was evidently proud of his arm-fellow. He espied his brother,
+young Champion, and introduced him. "Come here, Sir," he called. "The
+young 'un wasn't here in your time, Davison."
+
+"Pat, Sir," said he, "this is Captain Davison, one of Birch's boys. Ask
+him who was among the first in the lines at Sobraon?"
+
+Pat's face kindled up as he looked Davison full in the face, and held
+out his hand. Old Champion and Davison both blushed. The infantry set up
+a "Hurray! hurray! hurray!" Champion leading, and waving his wide-awake.
+I protest that the scene did one good to witness. Here was the hero and
+cock of the school come back to see his old haunts and cronies. He had
+always remembered them. Since he had seen them last, he had faced death
+and achieved honour. But for my dignity I would have shied up my hat
+too.
+
+With a resolute step, and his arm still linked in Champion's, Captain
+Davison now advanced, followed by a wake of little boys, to that corner
+of the green where Mrs. Buggies has her tart-stand.
+
+"Hullo, Mother Buggies! don't you remember me?" he said, and shook her
+by the hand.
+
+"Lor, if it ain't Davison Major!" she said. "Well, Davison Major, you
+owe me fourpence for two sausage-rolls from when you went away."
+
+Davison laughed, and all the little crew of boys set up a similar
+chorus.
+
+"I buy the whole shop," he said. "Now, young 'uns--eat away!"
+
+Then there was such a "Hurray! hurray!" as surpassed the former cheer in
+loudness. Everybody engaged in it except Piggy Duff, who made an instant
+dash at the three-cornered puffs, but was stopped by Champion, who
+said there should be a fair distribution. And so there was, and no one
+lacked, neither of raspberry open-tarts, nor of mellifluous bull's-eyes,
+nor of polonies, beautiful to the sight and taste.
+
+The hurraying brought out the Doctor himself, who put his hand up to his
+spectacles and started when he saw the old pupil. Each blushed when
+he recognised the other; for seven years ago they had parted not good
+friends.
+
+"What--Davison?" the Doctor said, with a tremulous voice. "God bless
+you, my dear fellow!"--and they shook hands. "A half-holiday, of course,
+boys," he added, and there was another hurray: there was to be no end to
+the cheering that day.
+
+"How's--how's the family, Sir?" Captain Davison asked.
+
+"Come in and see. Flora's grown quite a lady. Dine with us, of course.
+Champion Major, come to dinner at five. Mr. Titmarsh, the pleasure of
+your company?" The Doctor swung open the garden-gate: the old master and
+pupil entered the house reconciled.
+
+I thought I would just peep into Miss Raby's room, and tell her of this
+event. She was working away at her linen there, as usual, quiet and
+cheerful.
+
+"You should put up," I said with a smile; "the Doctor has given us a
+half-holiday."
+
+"I never have holidays," Miss Raby replied.
+
+Then I told her of the scene I had just witnessed, of the arrival of the
+old pupil, the purchase of the tarts, the proclamation of the holiday,
+and the shouts of the boys of "Hurray, Davison."
+
+"_Who_ is it?" cried out Miss Raby, starting and turning as white as a
+sheet.
+
+I told her it was Captain Davison from India, and described the
+appearance and behaviour of the Captain. When I had finished speaking,
+she asked me to go and get her a glass of water; she felt unwell. But
+she was gone when I came back with the water.
+
+I know all now. After sitting for a quarter of an hour with the Doctor,
+who attributed his guest's uneasiness no doubt to his desire to see Miss
+Laura Birch, Davison started up and said he wanted to see Miss Raby.
+"You remember, Sir, how kind she was to my little brother," he said.
+Whereupon the Doctor, with a look of surprise that anybody should want
+to see Miss Raby, said she was in the little school-room, whither the
+Captain went, knowing the way from old times.
+
+A few minutes afterwards, Miss B. and Miss Z. returned from a drive
+with Plantagenet Gaunt in their one-horse fly, and being informed of
+Davison's arrival, and that he was closeted with Miss Raby in the little
+school-room, of course made for that apartment at once. I was coming
+into it from the other door. I wanted to know whether she had drunk the
+water.
+
+[Illustration: 0084]
+
+This is what both parties saw. The two were in this very attitude.
+"Well, upon my word!" cries out Miss Zoe, But Davison did not let go his
+hold; and Miss Raby's head only sank down on his hand.
+
+"You must get another governess, Sir, for the little boys," Frank
+Davison said to the Doctor. "Anny Raby has promised to come with me."
+
+You may suppose I shut to the door on my side. And when I returned to
+the little school-room, it was blank and empty. Everybody was gone. I
+could hear the boys shouting at play in the green, outside. The glass
+of water was on the table where I had placed it. I took it and drank
+it myself, to the health of Anny Raby and her husband. It was rather a
+choker.
+
+But of course I wasn't going to stop on at Birch's. When his young
+friends re-assemble on the 1st of February next, they will have two new
+masters. Prince resigned too, and is at present living with me at my
+old lodgings at Mrs. Cammysole's. If any nobleman or gentleman wants a
+private tutor for his son, a note to the Rev. F. Prince will find him
+there.
+
+Miss Clapperclaw says we are both a couple of old fools; and that she
+knew, when I set off last year to Rodwell Regis, after meeting the two
+young ladies at a party at General Champion's house in our street, that
+I was going on a goose's errand. Well, well, that journey is over now; I
+shall dine at the General's on Christmas-day, where I shall meet Captain
+and Mrs. Davison, and some of the old pupils of Birch's; and I wish a
+merry Christmas to them, and to all young and old boys.
+
+|The play is done; the curtain drops,
+
+Slow falling, to the prompter's bell:
+
+A moment yet the actor stops,
+
+               And looks around, to say farewell.
+
+               It is an irksome word and task;
+
+               And when he 's laughed and said his say,
+
+               He shows, as he removes the mask,
+
+               A face that's anything but gay.
+
+               One word, ere yet the evening ends,
+
+               Let's close it with a parting rhyme,
+
+               And pledge a hand to all young friends,
+
+               As fits the merry Christmas-time.
+
+               On life's wide scene you, too, have parts,
+
+               That Fate ere long shall bid you play;
+
+               Good night! with honest gentle hearts
+
+               A kindly greeting go alway!
+
+               Good night!--I'd say, the griefs, the joys,
+
+               Just hinted in this mimic page,
+
+               The triumphs and defeats of boys,
+
+               Are but repeated in our age.
+
+               I 'd say, your woes were not less keen,
+
+               Your hopes more vain, than those of men;
+
+               Your pangs or pleasures of fifteen,
+
+               At forty-five played o'er again.
+
+               I'd say, we suffer and we strive
+
+               Not less nor more as men than boys;
+
+               With grizzled beards at forty-five,
+
+               As erst at twelve, in corduroys.
+
+               And if, in time of sacred youth,
+
+               We learned at home to love and pray,
+
+               Pray Heaven, that early Love and Truth
+
+               May never wholly pass away.
+
+               And in the world, as in the school,
+
+               I 'd say, how fate may change and shift;
+
+               The prize be sometimes with the fool,
+
+               The race not always to the swift.
+
+               The strong may yield, the good may fall,
+
+               The great man he a vulgar clown,
+
+               The knave be lifted over all,
+
+               The kind cast pitilessly down.
+
+               Who knows the inscrutable design?
+
+               Blessed be He who took and gave!
+
+               Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,
+
+               Be weeping at her darling's grave? *
+
+               We bow to Heaven that will'd it so,
+
+               That darkly rules the fate of all,
+
+               That sends the respite or the blow,
+
+               That's free to give or to recall.
+
+               This crowns his feast with wine and wit:
+
+               Who brought him to that mirth aud state?
+
+               His betters, see, below him sit,
+
+               Or hunger hopeless at the gate.
+
+               Who bade the mud from Dives' wheel
+
+               To spurn the rags of Lazarus?
+
+               Come, brother, in that dust we '11 kneel,
+
+               Confessing Heaven that ruled it thus.
+
+                               * C. B., ob. 29 Nov. 1848, set. 42.
+
+               So each shall mourn, in life's advance,
+
+               Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed;
+
+               Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance,
+
+               And longing passion unfulfilled.
+
+               Amen! whatever fate be sent,--
+
+               Pray God the heart may kindly glow,
+
+               Although the heart with cares be bent,
+
+               And whitened with the winter-snow.
+
+               Come wealth or want, come good or ill,
+
+               Let young and old accept their part,
+
+               And bow before the Awful Will,
+
+               And bear it with an honest heart.
+
+               Who misses, or who wins the prize?
+
+               Go, lose or conquer as you can:
+
+               But if you fail, or if you rise,
+
+               Be each, pray God, a gentleman,
+
+               A gentleman, or old or young!
+
+               (Bear kindly with my humble lays);
+
+               The sacred chorus first was sung
+
+               Upon the first of Christmas-days:
+
+               The shepherds heard it overhead--
+
+               The joyful angels raised it then:
+
+               Glory to Heaven 011 high, it said,
+
+               And peace 011 earth to gentle men.
+
+               My song, save this, is little worth;
+
+               I lay the weary pen aside,
+
+               And wish you health, and love, and mirth,
+
+               As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.
+
+               As fits the holy Christmas birth,
+
+               Be this, good friends, our carol still--
+
+               Be peace on earth, be peace on earth,
+
+               To men of gentle will.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Doctor Birch and His Young Friends, by
+M. A. Titmarsh
+
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