There was one particular Sunday in the year in which the boys had to uphold their superiority over girls, and the next Sunday girls tried their best to prove themselves better than boys. Both boys and girls became excited about it, so much so that I have seen them fight over the matter. This was Catechism Sunday, for which boys and girls would train and practise for weeks beforehand, both at school and at home. If the boys did well, a half-day’s holiday at the Sunday-school was given them, with full marks and tickets. But if the girls did best, they got the tickets and the half-holiday. On the Sunday afternoon appointed the boys, with clean collars and tunics, would be arranged by the master along the aisles of the church--a double row--facing each other. The clergyman in the three-decker pulpit would be interrogator, and put the question of the Catechism, and each boy in his turn would answer the question put to him. The schoolmaster would arrange the boys, and from their lessons in the day-school would know how to place them so that the longer and harder answers would fall to boys who were good at repetition. Every mistake was noted down by the clergyman and schoolmaster, and by the girls, who were eager listeners. The girls had their turn the following Sunday, with the boys for listeners. The side that made the fewest mistakes were champions for the year. If any boy or girl made a comical mistake, or mispronounced a word, he or she would be known by the mispronounced word for many a day. We got a lot of fun and many quarrels out of the Catechism, and though it generally fell to me to tell the clergyman what was the duty I owed to my neighbour, and though my knowledge was perfect, I am much afraid that I never attained to its performance. So Sunday and week-day boys were under the watchful eye of the schoolmaster, and though in trying to get the better of him we sometimes dropped in for the worst (for he was a big man with a strong arm), we loved him, and he loved us, rascals though we were. In those days boys went to work at a very early age; many lads that I knew went to work in the pits before they were ten years old, and started from home before five o’clock in the morning in order to be at the pit’s mouth before six, that they might descend to earn sixpence by twelve hours’ labour plus a two-mile walk. Holidays were never heard of unless there was some accident to the engine or machinery. Times were hard and wages were low; food was very dear. Bread was a shilling per loaf, and bad at that, sugar sixpence per pound, dirty and adulterated. Tea was about six shillings per pound, and in those days much of it was not tea. So before I was twelve I found myself in the iron foundry, working fourteen hours a day, getting three shillings per week, and thinking I was a man.