Kenelm Chillingly — CompleteLytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
Kenelm Chillingly — Complete
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
English fiction -- 19th century
The address was found,--Bloomsbury Square; and Kenelm directed his
letter accordingly. In due course he received this answer,--
You are an insolent little fool, and I’ll thrash you within an inch of
your life.
ROBERT BUTT.
After the receipt of that polite epistle, Kenelm Chillingly’s scruples
vanished, and he took daily lessons in muscular Christianity.
Kenelm returned to school with a brow cleared from care, and three days
after his return he wrote to the Reverend John,--
DEAR SIR,--I have licked Butt. Knowledge is power.
Your affectionate KENELM.
P. S.--Now that I have licked Butt, I have made it up with him.
From that time Kenelm prospered. Eulogistic letters from the illustrious
head-master showered in upon Sir Peter. At the age of sixteen Kenelm
Chillingly was the head of the school, and, quitting it finally,
brought home the following letter from his Orbilius to Sir Peter, marked
“confidential”:--
DEAR SIR PETER CHILLINGLY,--I have never felt more anxious for the
future career of any of my pupils than I do for that of your son. He is
so clever that, with ease to himself, he may become a great man. He is
so peculiar that it is quite as likely that he may only make himself
known to the world as a great oddity. That distinguished teacher Dr.
Arnold said that the difference between one boy and another was not so
much talent as energy. Your son has talent, has energy: yet he wants
something for success in life; he wants the faculty of amalgamation. He
is of a melancholic and therefore unsocial temperament. He will not act
in concert with others. He is lovable enough: the other boys like him,
especially the smaller ones, with whom he is a sort of hero; but he
has not one intimate friend. So far as school learning is concerned,
he might go to college at once, and with the certainty of distinction
provided he chose to exert himself. But if I may venture to offer an
advice, I should say employ the next two years in letting him see
a little more of real life and acquire a due sense of its practical
objects. Send him to a private tutor who is not a pedant, but a man
of letters or a man of the world, and if in the metropolis so much the
better. In a word, my young friend is unlike other people; and, with
qualities that might do anything in life, I fear, unless you can get
him to be like other people, that he will do nothing. Excuse the freedom
with which I write, and ascribe it to the singular interest with which
your son has inspired me. I have the honour to be, dear Sir Peter,
Yours truly, WILLIAM HORTON.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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