At the time I was in the school, the interference of politics had just begun to make itself felt in the schools, but the corporation had not the courage to introduce its system on a large scale by supplanting _en bloc_ the society schools, which might have made a political revolt; the Irish Catholic influence was still a feeble one, and the population at large was hardly aware of its tendency, but as the ward schools were gradually brought into active competition with the society schools the children were drawn off from the latter by various inducements and pressure on the parents. Each of our schools had four paid teachers--the principal, an assistant, and a junior and a senior monitor; and the elder pupils were employed in the instruction of the younger and in the preservation of order in school and in the school yard during the intermissions in which the gymnastics were enforced. My mental apathy must have been still very profound, for I remember that it often happened that when a question which had passed other pupils came to me in the class, the senior monitor used to address me, "Well, stupid, what do you say?" I evidently was the most stupid boy in the class--nothing seemed to penetrate my mental dullness, but, having grown tall and strong for my age, I was often made "yard monitor," to keep order during the physical training. There was a gang of young ruffians, street boys, who used to hang around the school gates and maltreat the stragglers and even the boys in the yard, if the gate was left open, and I remember one day three or four of them invading the school-yard after I had dismissed the boys to go upstairs at the end of the intermission, thinking that they would have a fine game with the monitor. One made a pretext to quarrel with me, and, gripping me round the body, called to his companions to go and get some stones to pound me on the head with, this being the approved manner of the young roughs of New York. Finding that I could not extricate myself from his grip, I dragged him to the wall, and, catching him by the ears, beat his head against the rough stones until he dropped insensible, when, to the astonishment of his comrades, instead of stamping on him and finishing him at once, I ran upstairs as fast as my legs could carry me, so that when they came with their stones they had only their champion to carry out.