Such implicit confidence had Old Bob in birch, that he imagined he could absolutely whip us up Parnassus, and he very often flogged a boy for not being able to do his verses. ‘I’ll make thee a poet, my boy,’ he used to say, ‘or the rod shall.’ Flagellation formed so essential a part of his system, that he had a large quantity of birch-broom kept constantly at hand in an old cabinet, which may have belonged to the Monastery of Rood itself. The rod-boy—one of the scholars appointed to the office—not only ‘hoisted’ the sufferer, and had the custody of the birch, but also manufactured the rods: and soundly was he drubbed by us, if he did not carefully knock the buds out of them. I think James—who shared the power of the scourge—insisted that his rods should not be tampered with. At any rate, the skin upon which he operated looked afterwards as if it had received a charge of small shot. Such correction, it is obvious, might be repeated a little too often; and it was a rule of Old Bob’s that no boy should be flogged more than once a week. Some, however, were flogged regularly as the week came round. I recollect one boy with whom this was the case for a long time: owing, I believe, to his sheer inability to construe Virgil. I heard of him in after-life; oh, Heaven! such a stupid man! A minor species of correction was inflicted with the cane, generally on the hands. Old Bob confined himself to two ‘spats’ on the tips of the fingers; or, as he called them, ‘summits of the digits.’ In spite of the sufferer’s attempts to dodge him, he generally hit these sensitive points exactly, to his manifest delight. James struck from four to six blows across the palm with all his strength. I have seen a little boy cast himself on the floor and writhe in the agony of this torture.