as Greek and Latin are beyond a female’s provinces”--which was true enough; so I felt bound to beg her pardon, which was granted: and we had smooth water again till we neared the school-room. Now then, thought I, look out for squalls, for my mind was made up to stand no nonsense from the petty officers, that is to say, gentlemen ushers. So I ranged up alongside the most mathematical looking one I could pick out, by way of having a bout with him at trigonometry; but he chose to be as shy, and deaf and dumb, as a Gibraltar monkey just grabbed. “With submission, my good Sir,” says the Doctor, putting in his oar, “Mr. Huckin may consider it a work of supereror-something, and a going beyond ourselves, to re-examine him after the very satisfactory certificates that satisfied _me_ myself.”--“That’s to say,” says I, “in plain English, that I’m to get nothing but what I can screw out of my nevy?”--“My dear Sir,” says the Doctor, “you misconstruct me entirely--the whole of the juvenile pupils are open to candid scrutiny. Suppose we begin with the classics. Master Bush, Sir, you will English me _hic_, _hac_, _hoc_.”--“This, that, and t’other,” says Master Bush; no great shakes of an answer, I guess, but it seemed to serve for a come-off. Then came my turn, so I asked who was the discoverer of America? and may I never break biscuit again, if he didn’t say “Yankee Doodle!” Well, to cut off the end of a long yarn, this was as good as there was to be got out of the best of them. One told me that Guy Fox found out gunpowder; and another that a solar eclipse was along of the sun’s standing in its own light. What else I might have learned, that I never knew before, must be left over for a guess; for in the middle of the next ask, it was all hats aloft! and three cheers for a half holiday; but if I had any hand in begging it, may I die ashore in a dry ditch! However that was too much of a dog’s trick to be took quietly, so I prepared a broadside, with a volley of oaths to it, by way of small arms; but before I could well bring it to bear, the Doctor hauls out his watch, and says he, “It’s extremely bad luck, but there’s a voting this morning for a parish beadle, and I make a point not to let my private duties get to windward of my public ones.” So saying, with a half-and-half sort of a bow, to me, he cut and run; Madam getting athwart hawse so as to cover his getting off. In course it was no use to waste speech upon her; but I made bold to d--n the whole covey of undermasters, in the lump, as a set of the sharkingest, loggerheaded, flute-playing, skulking, lubberly sons of grinning weavers and tailors that ever broke bread. So the finish over all is, that I took my nevy away, traps and all; and not an hour too soon; and with Bob in tow I made Tom Pike’s, who was as glad to see his old messmate as I was to see him; and what’s more, when he heard the bit of a brush I had enjoyed, he informed me that Doctor Darby, LL.D., and what not, was all