“Now mind—don’t you fall and break that pitcher, Tribby, as you always do,” was the pursuing admonition to our child of wo, as he entered upon the labyrinthine convolutions of the dark stairway—but just then—did you not expect it?—cr-a-a-sh!—bimble—bumble—rub-dub!—Tribby has achieved his descent by a short hand process, and lies vociferously prone upon his back at the landing-place, environed by the fragments of the ware. We are not satisfied that it mended the matter at all, and we are quite sure it did not mend the pitcher; but we presume it was a satisfaction, if not to both, at least to one of the parties involved; and a satisfaction is something in this unsatisfactory state of existence; and so Tribulation Trepid received his promised reward—“I’ll teach you,” and so forth—causing his auricular appendages to reverberate for an hour or two, and likewise to be comfortably warm for at least the same space of time, affording him both his music and his caloric at the lowest possible rate; though it can scarcely be said that his hope underwent any considerable degree of augmentation by the process. * * * * * “Tribby Trepid doesn’t know his lesson, I am tolerably well assured of that,” said the teacher, glancing significantly at his rattan—for Tribulation Trepid underwent his share of schooling when rattan was lord paramount in the academic groves, and served, as it made the schoolboy “smart” in more senses than one, to counteract, on the part of preceptors, the baneful influences of sedentary life, by affording wholesome exercise in the “dusting of jackets.” Now Tribby’s hope not being strong in the faith that he would prove thoroughly conversant with his lesson, when brought up to the test of actual experiment, though he was acquainted with it passing well when he left home, the announcement of this foregone conclusion in the teacher’s mind, coupled with certain tingling remembrances connected with rattan, drove all other lessons from his desponding brain; and he was executed accordingly, to the infinite relief of Mr. Switchem’s dyspeptic symptoms, and to the marvelous increase of the aforesaid Switchem’s appetite for dinner. And so, reproof, condemnation and rattan being inevitable, why should Tribulation Trepid annoy himself by the previous pain of toilsome study? He did so no more. “I shan’t know ’em if I do; and I shall be whipped whether I do or not,” said Tribby, and he forthwith bowed himself down to that which appeared to be the inevitable, allowing hope to be crushed beneath the lumbering wheels of a Juggernaut of fear. * * * * *