Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850.Various
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850.
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
all; and masters, as well as boys, have escaped the chance of many
bitter reflections, since a wiser and more generous intercourse has come
up between them.
I have some stories of Boyer, that will completely show his character,
and at the same time relieve the reader's indignation by something
ludicrous in their excess. We had a few boarders at the school; boys,
whose parents were too rich to let them go on the foundation. Among
them, in my time, was Carlton, a son of Lord Dorchester; Macdonald, one
of the Lord Chief Baron's sons; and R----, the son of a rich merchant.
Carlton, who was a fine fellow, manly, and fall of good sense, took his
new master and his caresses very coolly, and did not want them. Little
Macdonald also could dispense with them, and would put on his delicate
gloves after lesson, with an air as if he resumed his patrician plumage.
R---- was meeker, and willing to be encouraged; and there would the
master sit, with his arm round his tall waist, helping him to his Greek
verbs, as a nurse does bread and milk to an infant; and repeating them,
when he missed, with a fond patience, that astonished us criminals in
drugget.
Very different was the treatment of a boy on the foundation, whose
friends, by some means or other, had prevailed on the master to pay him
an extra attention, and try to get him on. He had come into the school
at an age later than usual, and could hardly read. There was a book used
by the learners in reading, called "Dialogues between a Missionary and
an Indian." It was a poor performance, full of inconclusive arguments
and other commonplaces. The boy in question used to appear with this
book in his hand in the middle of the school, the master standing behind
him. The lesson was to begin. Poor ----, whose great fault lay in a
deep-toned drawl of his syllables and the omission of his stops, stood
half-looking at the book, and half-casting his eye toward the right of
him, whence the blows were to proceed. The master looked over him; and
his hand was ready. I am not exact in my quotation at this distance of
time; but the _spirit_ of one of the passages that I recollect was to
the following purport, and thus did the teacher and his pupil proceed:
_Master._ "Now, young man, have a care; or I'll set you a _swinging_
task." (A common phrase of his.)
_Pupil._ (Making a sort of heavy bolt at his calamity, and never
remembering his stop at the word Missionary.) "_Missionary_ Can you see
the wind?"
(Master gives him a slap on the cheek.)
_Pupil._ (Raising his voice to a cry, and still forgetting his stop.)
"_Indian_ No!"
_Master._ "God's-my-life, young man! have a care how you provoke me."
_Pupil._ (Always forgetting the stop.) "_Missionary_ How then do you
know that there is such a thing?"
(Here a terrible thump.)
_Pupil._ (With a shout of agony.) "_Indian_ Because I feel it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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