"MALMESBURY, your English is exceedingly bad, and your logic very
unsatisfactory. I understand that you are proud of your intimacy with a
French person, who at one time bore no good character. Take care, sir.
And be more guarded in your assertions as to what feats you have
accomplished, and of which I find few traces in the school records.
"LANSDOWNE, I give you much credit for having just exerted yourself to
put down the practice of smoking--the rather, as you have reached an age
at which you are entitled to all due indulgence. You are a very
excellent member of the school, and I wish you regarded as a model.
"MONTEAGLE, you talk a great deal too much in school hours, and are said
to busy yourself in matters with which you have no concern. You have
been a lucky boy--be an agreeable one.
"BOYS OF THE LOWER SCHOOL,
"I am sorry to have had to expel so many of your number this half, but I
hope it will be a warning. Once for all, I will not permit you, by gifts
of money or beer, to induce your inferiors to misconduct themselves for
your gratification. I can use no adequate word of contempt for the
meanness which sought to shift the guilt upon servants. In other
respects I am tolerably satisfied with most of you. A good deal of work
has been done, but there is far too much talking in the establishment,
and you keep people out of their beds looking after you at hours when
you ought to be asleep. I hope to have different reports next half.
"RUSSELL, I am glad to see you the leader of the school. I was pleased
with your conduct to the Jew boys, whom I still intend to place in the
school. I am sorry you have done next to nothing in the way of helping
the education of those under you. However, as you have given me a large
promise of reform for next half, I shall say no more.
"GLADSTONE, you deserve the highest praise for your proficiency in
arithmetic, and for your gentlemanly conduct. Some of your companions
hint that you talk rather too much. I do not impute this to you, but you
will consider for yourself whether the allegation is justified. The way
you have got through all duties is admirable.
"CARDWELL, I shall give you a well-deserved navigation prize, so you
need not be quite so solemn.
"STAFFORD, the painful exposure I was compelled to make of your conduct
would have prevented my referring to it again, but that I understand you
and some of your friends have been swaggering, and declaring that you
had escaped unpunished. Beware, Sir, that I never again hear your voice
in the school, in which I only permit you to remain because I believe
that you were made the tool of bigger and worse boys.
"FITZROY, I am sorry to see that you are not looking well. Take care of
yourself in the country, and be assured, my boy, that I shall not forget
the spirited way in which you protected those poor women from their
husbands' brutality, or the very proper chastisement you gave to the
insolent cabman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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