It will be inquired whether Old Bob’s arrangements included anything that could counteract, or modify, at least, the not very humanising influences of his general system. There was plenty of what is termed religious instruction—mingled always with infusion of birch. We had prayers morning and evening, and a collect in the middle of the day read by one of the senior boys; and as stripes would have been the penalty of a smile, if discovered, our devotions were characterised by great decorum. Before and after dinner we had a Latin grace, pronounced by a young gentleman standing on a form, but a senior boy was liable to be called upon to say it at his bodily peril. The essential difference between the two graces lay in the words ‘_sumus sumpturi_,’ ‘we are about to receive,’ and ‘_accepimus_,’ ‘we have received.’ As not all who could repeat these words attended precisely to their meaning, the distinction was occasionally disregarded, with what consequences may be imagined. Two boys, morning and evening, each elevated on a desk, read a chapter in the New Testament a-piece, as loud as they were able, whilst Old Bob generally kept bidding them to speak louder and slower. The rest had to follow them—the higher Parts, in the Latin and Greek Testament—and take up the text when called on, under the usual liability. It was sometimes a fearful thing to have to read from the desk. St. Paul, in the Second Epistle to Timothy, alludes to one Alexander the Coppersmith. There was a ragamuffin who used to hang about the field-palings, on whom we had conferred this appellation, which, consequently, to our mind had a most ludicrous association. When the fatal name was pronounced, every breath in the school was held to stifle a laugh. Imagine the agony of the unlucky boy obliged to read it in all gravity, deliberately, and, as Old Bob required, ‘loud and slow.’ The loud and slow style of delivery was especially insisted upon in our elocution. Old Bob made all his boys recite. He caused the speaker to mount a table at one end of the schoolroom, he, Old Bob, sitting at the other. The orator had first to perform a gymnastic feat, consisting in putting himself in the first position, and stooping till his fingers’ ends nearly touched his instep—this was the Rood Priory regulation-bow. He then made his speech, lifting his arms up and down alternately, which, if he failed to do with vigour, Old Bob bellowed for ‘Action! Action!’ The mounting on the table was intended to cure us of bashfulness. On my first appearance on that conspicuous altitude, my brain reeled, and I was near falling off for very giddiness.