"`Get crammed,' brother!"--said Miss Pimpernell, aghast at the term, of which she clearly did not understand the slang sense. "Get crammed! Why, what do you mean? Frank is thin, certainly, and he might be a little stouter to advantage; but, has he got to be of a particular weight, the same as the height of recruits is measured for the army?" The vicar laughed, and held his sides in hearty merriment.--"Sally, Sally!"--he exclaimed after a while.--"You will be the death of me some day! I did not allude to physical cramming, such as the Strasbourg geese undergo; but, mental stuffing. A `crammer' is a `coach,' you know." "I'm sure I don't,"--said little Miss Pimpernell, energetically;--"for, what with your crammers and coaches, I really do not know what you are speaking about!" "Well, my dear, I'll now enlighten you,"--said the vicar, still laughing at the old lady's very natural mistake.--"Crammers and coaches, are certain high-pressure machines, in the form of man, for forcing any amount of superficial knowledge into uneducated youths within a fixed time. It is an unnatural process, resulting pretty much in the same way as does the artificial mode of fattening geese:--the latter have diseased livers; while, the subjects of high-pressure cram are usually afterwards subject to unmitigated ignorance--of the worst kind, because it pretends to learning--in addition to an insufferable pedantry, which can never convince judges acquainted with the genuine article! Ah, my dear, as Pope wisely wrote, `a little learning is a dangerous thing!'" "Then you mean tutors,"--said Miss Pimpernell.--"Why could you not call them by their proper name?" "I could, my dear,"--said the vicar, good-humouredly,--"but, the term I used, is an old relic of college jargon; you see how hard it is to cure oneself of bad habits!" "And you think Frank will want to be `crammed,' then?"--asked Miss Pimpernell, making use of the very word she had just abused, because she thought her brother might feel hurt at her implied reproach. The dear old lady would have talked slang all day if she had believed it would have given the vicar any satisfaction! "Yes, my dear,"--he replied.--"You see, he might have to compete for his appointment with a dozen others; and, as the examination for the civil service is now pretty stiff in its way, it would not do for him to fail. Frank has received a good sound public school education; but, they ask so many purely-routine questions of candidates, that he had better have a tutor who makes these subjects his speciality, to put him up in the little details of the machinery." "I never thought of that,"--said I.--"It is so long since I left school, that I fear I may be plucked!"