From this specimen of discipline may be learned the entire Barkerian
system of training. I was about to say, "_ex uno disce omnes_," but, as
it's the only Latin I remember from the lot which got rubbed into--or
rather over--me at Barker's, I'm rather sparing of it, not knowing but I
can bring it in somewhere else with better effect. As with the Word of
God, so with that of man,--the grand Barkerian idea of how to fix it in
a boy's memory was to send him to bed, or excoriate his palm. If
religion and polite learning could have been communicated by sheets,
like chicken-pox, or blistered into one like the stern but curative
cantharides, Mr. Barker's boys would have become the envy of mankind and
the beloved of the gods; but not even Little Briggs died young from the
latter or any other cause, which speaks volumes for his constitution....
The two Misses Moodle came to establish a young ladies' seminary in the
village of Mungerville, on whose outskirts our own school was situated,
bringing along with them, as the county paper stated, "that charming
atmosphere of refinement and intellectuality in which they ever moved";
and, what was of more consequence, a capital of twenty girls to start
with. Professional politeness inspired Mr. Barker to make a call on the
fair strangers, which the personal fascinations of the younger Miss
Moodle induced him to repeat. The atmosphere of refinement and
intellectuality gradually acted on him in the nature of an intoxicating
gas, until at length, after twenty-five years of successfully intrenched
widowhood, he laid his heart in the mits of the younger Miss Moodle, and
the two became one Barker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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