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came home on excellent terms with himself; he imposed silence upon his good lady, his attentive masters and ushers, and then wiping the perspiration from his brow, proceeded to tell his admiring audience of his great, his very great exertions, and how manfully through the whole awful business he had done his duty. Alas! he soon found to his cost that he had done something more. In cockney language, he had done himself out of a good pupil. A fortnight after, I was again "wanted." There was a glass coach at the door. A very reserved sort of gentleman alighted, paid all demands up to the end of the ensuing half-year, answered no questions, but merely producing a document, handed me and all my worldly wealth into his vehicle, and off we drove.

In the midst of these agitations I again found myself in town; and I began to hope that I should once more see my foster-parents. I began to rally up my "little Latin and less Greek," in order to surprise the worthy sawyer and his wife; and I had fully determined to work out for him what the amount of his daily wages came to in a week, first by simple arithmetic, secondly by fractions, thirdly by decimals, and fourthly by duodecimals; and then to prove the whole correct by an algebraical equation. But all these triumphs of learning were not destined for me. I found, at length, that the glass coach drove up the inn-yard of some large coachmaster; but few words were said, and I was consigned to the coachman of one of the country stages, with as little remorse and as little ceremony as if I had been an ugly blear-eyed pug, forwarded in a basket, labelled "this side uppermost," to an old maiden aunt, or a superannuated grandmother.

This was certainly unhandsome treatment to one who had been lately seriously telling his companions that he was a disguised prince of the blood, forced, for state reasons, to keep a strict incognito. It is true, that I travelled with four horses, and was attended by a guard; nay, that a flourish of music preceded my arrival at various points of my journey; but all these little less than royal honours I shared with a plebeian butcher, a wheezing and attenuated plumber and glazier, and other of his lieges, all very useful, but hardly deemed ornamental members of the body politic.

My friends will perceive, that at the time of which I am speaking, the stage-coach contained, if not actually a bad character, I a person on the very verge of being one--that I was that graceless, yet tolerated being, a scamp, was very certain--yet my gentle demeanour, my smooth, bright countenance, and never-ceasing placid smile, would have given a very different impression of my qualities. I have been thus liberal in my confessions, in order that parents may see that their duties do not terminate where those of the schoolmaster begin; that the schoolmaster himself must be taken to task, and the watcher watched. I had been placed in one of the first boarding-schools near town; a most liberal stipend had been paid with me; I had every description of master; yet, after all this outlay of money, which is not dross--and waste of time, which is beyond price precious, what was I at leaving this academy? Let the good folks withinside of the Stickenham stage testify; by one trick or another I had contrived to make them all tolerably uncomfortable before the journey was half over.

But where am I going? Caesar and his fortunes are embarked in a stage-coach. An hour and a half had elapsed when I perceived that the horses were dragging the vehicle slowly up a steep hill. The full-leaved trees are arching for us, overhead, a verdant canopy; the air becomes more bracing and elastic: and even I feel its invigorating influence, and cease to drop slily the gravelly dirt I had collected from my shoes, down the neck and back of a very pretty girl, who sat blushing furiously on my left. Now the summit is gained and, in another moment, the coach thunders down the other side of the hill. But what a beautiful view is spread before my fascinated eyes! and then rose up in my young heart the long sleeping emotions of love, and kindred affection. Into whose arms was I to be received? whose were to be the beautiful lips that were now longing to kiss me with parental, perhaps fraternal rapture? Had I a sister? Could I doubt it at that ecstatic moment? How I would love her! The fatted calf was not only killed, but cooked, to welcome the long lost. Nor Latin, nor French, nor Greek, nor Mathematics, should embitter the passing moments. This young summer, that breathed such aromatic joy around me, had put on its best smile to welcome me to my paternal abode. "No doubt," said I to myself--"no doubt, but that some one of the strange stories that I told of myself at Root's, is going to be realised."

In the midst of these rapturous anticipations, each later one becoming more wild and more glorious than the previous one that begot it, it wanting still an hour of sundown, all at once the coach stopped before a house, upon a gentle elevation--stopped with a jerk, too, as if it were going to usher in some glorious event. I looked out, and behold! in hated gold letters, upon the hated blue board, the bitterly hated word "Academy" met my agonised sight.

I burst into tears. I needed no voice to tell me that I was the person to alight. I knew my doom. Farewell to all my glorious visions! I could have hurled back into the face of the laughing sun, my hate, and called him deceiver and traitor; for had he not, with other causes conspired to smile me, five minutes ago, into a fool's paradise?

"Master Rattlin, won't you please to alight?" said one of those under-toned, gerund-singing voices, that my instinct told me to be an usher's.

"No, thank'ee, sir," said I, amidst my sobbings, "I want to go home."

"But you are to get down here, however," said my evil-omened inviter. "Your boxes are all off the coach, and the coachman wants to go forward."

"It's excessively droll this--hi, hi, hi as sure as my name's Saltseller, it is excessively droll. So you want to get forward, Master Rattlin? why come to school then, that's the way--droll, isn't it? Why, you've been riding backwards all the way, too--time to change--droll that--hi, hi!"

"It's no change," said I, getting out, sulkily, "from one school to another--and do you call this a school?" I continued, looking round contemptuously, for I found about twenty little boys playing upon a green knoll before the house, and over which we were compelled to walk to reach it, as the road did not come near the habitation. "Do you call this a school? Well, if you catch me being flogged here, I'm a sop, that's all--a school! And I suppose you're the usher--I don't think those little boys bumped you last half-year."

"I don't think they did," said Mr Saltseller, which was actually the wretch's name, and with whom I fell desperately in hate at first sight. "Bump me!" he exclaimed soliloquising--and with that air of astonishment, as if he had heard the most monstrous impossibility spoken of imaginable. "Bump me? droll, isn't it--excessively? Where have you been brought up, Master Rattlin?"

"Then that's what I call very bad bringing up."

"Not so bad as being brought down here, anyhow."

His next "excessively droll, isn't it?" brought us to the door of the academy; but, in passing over the play-ground, I could see, at once, that I was with quite another class of beings than those who composed my late school-fellows. They were evidently more delicately nurtured; they had not the air of schoolboy daring to which I had been so much accustomed, and they called each other "Master." Everything, too, seemed to be upon a miniature scale. The house was much smaller, yet there was an air of comfort and of health around, that at first I did not appreciate, though I could not help remarking it.

No sooner was I conducted into the passage, than I heard a voice which I thought I remembered, exclaim, "Show Master Rattlin in here, and shut the door."

I entered; and the next moment I was in the arms of the mysterious and very beautiful lady that had called to see me the few times that I have recorded; and who, I conceived, was intimately connected with my existence. I think that I have before said that she never avowed herself, either to my nurse or to myself, as more than my godmother. She evinced a brief, but violent emotion; and then controlled her features to a very staid and matronly expression. For myself I wept most bitterly; from many mingled emotions; but, to the shame of human nature, and of my own, wounded pride was the most intolerable pang that I felt. In all my day-dreams, I had made this lady the presiding genius. I gave her, in my inmost heart, all the reverence and the filial affection of a son; but it was the implied understanding between my love and my vanity, that in joining herself to me as a mother, she was to bestow upon me a duchess at least; though I should not have thought myself over-well used had it been a princess. And here were all these glorious anticipations merged, sunk, destroyed, in the person of a boarding-school mistress of about twenty boys, myself the biggest. It was no use that I said to myself, over and over again, she is not less lovely--her voice less musical, her manner less endearing, or her apparel less rich. The startling truth was ever in my ear--she "keeps a school," and consequently, she cannot be my mother.

She could not know what was passing in my mind; but it was evident that my grief was of that intensity that nearly approached to misery. She took me by the hand, showed me my nice little bed, the large garden, the river that ran at the bottom of it, and placed before me fruit and cakes; I would not be consoled; what business had she to be a schoolmistress? I had a thousand times rather have had Mrs Brandon for a mother again--she had never deceived me. But I was soon aware that this lady, whom I now, for the first time, heard named, as Mrs Cherfeuil, was as little disposed to grant me the honour of calling her mother, as I was to bestow it. I was introduced to her husband as the son of a female friend of hers of early life; that she had stood godmother to me, that my parentage was respectable; and, as she before had sufficient references to satisfy him from the agent, who had called a week before my arrival, the good man thought there was nothing singular in the affair.

But let us describe this good man, my new pedagogue. In all things he was the antithesis of Mr Root. The latter was large, florid, and decidedly handsome--Mr Cherfeuil was little, sallow, and more than decidedly ugly. Mr Root was worldly wise, and very ignorant; Mr Cherfeuil, a fool in the world, and very learned. The mind of Mr Root was so empty, that he found no trouble in arranging his one idea and a half; Mr Cherfeuil's was so full that there was no room for any arrangement at all. Mr Root would have thought himself a fool if he condescended to write poetry; but he supposed he could, for he never tried. Mr Cherfeuil would have thought any man a fool that did not perceive at once that he, Cherfeuil, was born a great poet. Shall I carry, after the manner of Plutarch, the comparison any further? No; let us bring it to an abrupt conclusion, by saying, in a few words, that Mr Root was English, Mr Cherfeuil French; that the one had a large school, and the other a little one and that both were immeasurably great men in their own estimation--though not universally so in that of others.

At this school my progress was rapid. All the care and attention that the most maternal of hearts could bestow upon me were mine; yet there was no approach to anything like familiarity on the part of Mrs Cherfeuil. There lay a large wild common before the house; there was a noble collection of deep water in the vicinity, in which I perfected my natatory studies , and my body strengthened, my mind improved, and I began to taste of real happiness.

It would be amusing work to write a biography of some of the most remarkable ushers. They seem to be the bats of the social scale. Gentlemen will not own them, and the classes beneath reject them. They are generally self-sufficient; the dependency of their situation makes them mean, and the exercise of delegated power tyrannical. If they have either spirit or talent, they lift themselves above their situation; but when they cannot do this, they are, in my estimation, the most abject of all classes--gipsies and beggars not excepted. Mr Cherfeuil was, in himself, a mine of learning; but he delivered it out from the dark cavities of his mind, encumbered with so much ore, and in such misshaped masses, that it required another person to arrange for use what he was so lavish in producing. A good usher or assistant was therefore necessary; but I do not recollect more than one, out of the thirty or forty that came and went during the three years I was at the school.

Mr Saltseller, who found everything droll, and who used to paint his cheeks, lost his situation just at the precise moment that the housemaid lost her character. Two losses together were not of very great moment; then we had another, and another, and another; and more characters were lost--till at last there did come a man:--

"Take him for all in all, I ne'er shall look upon his like again."

The gentleman hung up his guitar, and for ever; and every fine day he was found, pipe in mouth and tankard in hand, presiding at the bowling-green of the Black Lion, the acknowledged and revered umpire-- cherished by mine host, and referred to by the players. I write this life for instruction. Gentlemen ushers, look to it--be ambitious--learn the guitar, and make your mouths water with ideas of prospective tankards of ale, and odoriferous pipes.

RALPH GROWETH EGREGIOUSLY MODEST, AND BOASTETH IMMODERATELY, UNTIL HE IS BEATEN BY ONE WITH ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE; WITH SOMETHING TOUCHING THE FEATS OF THE MAN WITHOUT FEET.

I now began to commit the sin of much verse, and, consequently, acquired in the neighbouring village much notice. No chastising blow, or even word of reproof fell upon me. My mind was fed upon praise, and my heart nourished with caresses. In the school I had no equal, and my vanity whispered that such was the case without. However, this vanity I did not show, for I was humble from excessive pride.

Many a time, both by ladies and gentlemen, he has been offered a cork leg--but he knew better; had he accepted the treacherous gift he would have appeared but as a lame man with two legs, now he was a perfect Adonis with one. I do believe, in my conscience, that Cupid often made use of this wooden appendage when he wished to befriend him, instead of one of his own arrows, for he was really a marvellous favourite with the ladies.

Well, no sooner had my friend with the peg made himself a fixture in the school, than he took me down, not a peg or two, but a good half-dozen. He ridiculed my poetry--he undervalued my drawing--he hit me through my most approved guards at my fencing--he beat me hollow at hopping, though it must be confessed that I had the advantage with two legs; but he was again my master at "all-fours." He out-talked me immeasurably, he out-bragged me most heroically, and out-lied me most inconceivably. Knowing nothing either of Latin or Greek, they were beneath a gentleman's notice, fit only for parsons and pedants; and he was too patriotic to cast a thought away upon French. As he was engaged for the arithmetical and mathematical departments, it would have been perhaps as well if he had known a little of algebra and Euclid; but, as from the first day he honoured me with a strict though patronising friendship, he made me soon understand that we were to share this department of knowledge in common. It was quite enough if one of the two knew anything about the matter; besides, he thought that it improved me so much to look over the problems and algebraical calculations of my schoolfellows.

With this man I was continually measuring my strength; and as I conceived that I found, myself woefully wanting, he proved an excellent moral sedative to my else too rampant vanity. Few, indeed, were the persons who could feel themselves at ease under the withering sarcasms of his intolerable insolence. Much more to their astonishment than to their instruction, he would very coolly, and the more especially when ladies were present, correct the divinity of the parson, the pharmacy of the doctor, and the law of the attorney; and with that placid air of infallibility that carried conviction to all but his opponents.

In the sequel, this very learned tutor had to instruct me in navigation. Nothing was too high or too low for him. Had any persons wished to have taken lessons in judicial astrology, Mr Riprapton would not have refused the pupil. Plausible ignorance will always beat awkward knowledge, when the ignorant, which is generally the case, make up the mass of the audience.

TREATETH OF THE AMATIVENESS OF WOODEN MEMBERS, AND THE FOLLY OF VIRGIN FRIGHTS--RALPH PUTTETH HIS THREAT OF VERSIFYING INTO ACTUAL EXECUTION, FOR WHICH HE MAY BE THOUGHT WORTHY OF BEING EXECUTED.

Notwithstanding the superciliousness of my friendly assistant, I still wrote verse, which was handed about the village as something wonderful. As Riprapton doubted, or rather denied my rhyming prowess, at length I was determined to try it upon himself, and he shortly gave me an excellent opportunity for so doing. Writers who pride themselves on going deeply into the mysteries of causes and effects will tell you that, in cold weather, people are apt to congregate about the fire. Our usher, and a circle of admiring pupils, were one day establishing the truth of this profound theory. The timbered man was standing in the apex of the semicircle, his back to the fireplace, and his coat-tails tucked up under his arms. He was enjoying himself, and we were enjoying him. He was the hero of the tale he was telling us--indeed, he never had any other hero than himself--and this tale was wonderful. In the energy of delivery, now the leg of wood would start up with an egotistical flourish, and describe, with the leg of flesh, a right-angled triangle, and then down would go the peg, and up the leg, with the toe well pointed, whilst he greeted the buckle on his foot with an admiring glance.

Let us walk upstairs--Mr Rip is in the midst of his narrative--speaking thus:--"And, young gentlemen, as I hate presumption, and can never tolerate a coxcomb, perceiving that his lordship was going to be insolent, up went thus my foot to chastise him, and down--" A crash! a cry of alarm, and behold the chastiser of insolence, or at least, that part of him that was built of wood, through the floor!

Ambitious usher! there are few Beyond you that can go, In double character, to woo The lovely nymph below. At once both god and man you ape To expedite your flame; And yet you find in either shape The failure just the same.

However, such as they are, they were thought in a secluded village as something extraordinary. The usher himself affected to enjoy them extremely. They added greatly to my reputation, and what was of more consequence to me, my invitations to dinner and to tea. Truly, my half-holidays were no longer my own. I had become an object of curiosity, and I hope and believe, in many instances, of affection. I was quite cured of my mendacious propensities, by the pain, the horror, and the disgust that they had inflicted upon me at my last school. I invented no more mysteries and improbabilities for myself but my good-natured friends did it amply for me.

Mrs Cherfeuil asserted she knew scarcely anything about me--indeed, before I came to her school, she had hardly seen me four times during the whole space of my existence. She only knew that I was the child of a lady that accident had thrown in her way, a lady whom she knew but shortly, but for whom she acquired a friendship as strong as it proved short; that, from mere sympathy she had been induced to stand godmother to me; that she had never felt authorised, nor did she inquire into the particulars of my birth. Of course, there was a mystery attached to it, but to which she had no clue; however, she knew, that at least on one side, I came of good, nay, very distinguished parentage. But this, her departed friend assured her, and that most solemnly, that whoever should stigmatise me as illegitimate, would do me a grievous wrong.

RALPH DESCRIBETH A RARE CHARACTER, A NOBLE AND A GOOD MAN--HE GOETH TO FISH WITHOUT A ROD, AND SUFFERETH MORE THAN FIFTY RODS COULD INFLICT, AND IS NOT RECONCILED TO THE HONOUR OF THE SUN RIDING HIM A PICK-A-BACK.

As a senator, he was heard in the assembled councils of his nation, and those who presided over her mighty resources and influenced her destinies, that involved those of the world, listened to his warning counsel, were convinced that his words were the dictates of wisdom, and obeyed. This is neither fiction nor fulsome panegyric. The facts that I narrate have become part of our history; and I would narrate them more explicitly, did I not fear to wound the susceptibilities of his still existing and distinguished family. How well he knew his own station, and preserved, with the blandest manners, the true dignity of it! Though renowned in parliament for his eloquence, at the palace for his patriotic loyalty, and in the city for his immense wealth, in the blessed circle, that he truly made social, there was a pleasing simplicity and joyousness of manner, that told at once the fascinated guest, that though he might earn honours and distinction abroad, it was at home that he looked for happiness--and, uncommon as such things are in this repining world--there, I verily believe, he found it. His was a happy lot: he possessed a lady in his wife, who at once shared his virtues and adorned them. The glory he won was reflected sweetly upon her, and she wore with dignity, and enhanced those honours, that his probity, his talents, and his eloquence had acquired. At the time of which I am speaking, he was blessed with daughters, that even in their childhood had made themselves conspicuous by their accomplishments, amiability of disposition, and gracefulness of manners, and plagued with sons who were full of wildness, waggishness, and worth.

This gentleman's two elder sons, at the time to which I allude, had already made their first step in the world. James was making a tour of the West Indies, the Continent being closed against him; and Frank had already begun his harvest of laurels in the navy under a distinguished officer. The younger sons, my juniors, were my school-fellows. Master Frank was two or three years my senior, and before he went to sea, not going to the same school as myself, we got together only during the vacations; when, notwithstanding my prowess, he would fag me desperately at cricket, outswim me on the lake and out-cap me at making Latin verses. However, I consoled myself by saying, "As I grow older all this superiority will cease." But when he returned, after his first cruise, glittering in his graceful uniform, my hopes and my ambition sank below zero. He was already a man, and an officer--I a schoolboy, and nothing else.

When I had fresh skinned myself--and it took me more than a week to do it--I found that my fellow-labourer had flown. I heard that he had suffered almost as severely as myself, but, as he looked upon himself as no vulgar hero, he was too manly to complain, and next Sunday he actually went to church, whilst I lay in bed smarting with pain--yet I strongly suspect that a new sword, that he had that day to hang by his side, made him regardless to the misery of his back.

"So, Master Rattlin," said the worthy gentleman, "you think that you and Frank proved yourselves excellent sportsmen?"

"Yes, sir," said I; "I will answer for the sports, if you will only be pleased to answer for the men."

"You see, sir, with all submission, I've gained the verdict of the lady; and that's a great deal."

"But I think you lost your hide. Was your back very sore?" said my host, encouragingly.

"O dear--very sore indeed, sir! Mrs Cherfeuil said that it looked quite like a newly-cut steak."

"O it did, did it? but Frank's was not much better," said the senator, turning to his lady.

"Indeed it was not," said she, compassionately.

REMINISCENCES--A FRIEND FOUND AND A LINE LOST--RALPH MAKES A NEW ACQUAINTANCE AND A HEARTY SUPPER, BOTH OF WHICH DO HIM MUCH GOOD.

I feel, also, that there are many other persons to whom I ought to pay a passing tribute of gratitude for much kindness shown to me; but as my first duty is to my readers, I must not run the risk of wearying them even by the performance of a virtue. But there was one, to omit the mention of whom would be, on my part, the height of ingratitude, and, as concerns the public, something very like approaching to a fraud; for by the implied contract between it and me, I am, in this my autobiography, bound to supply them with the very best materials, served up to them in my very best manner. The gentleman whom I am going to introduce to the notice of my readers was the purest personation of benevolence that perhaps ever existed. His countenance was a glowing index of peace with himself, good-will to man, and confidence in the love of God. There was within him that divine sympathy for all around him, that brings man, in what man can alone emulate the angels, so near to his Creator. But with all this goodness of soul there was nothing approaching to weakness, or even misjudging softness; he had seen, had known, and had struggled with the world. He left the sordid strife triumphantly, and bore away with him, if not a large fortune, a competence; and what also was of infinitely more value; that "peace of mind which passeth all understanding."

I first saw him as he was pretending to angle in the river that runs through the village. Immediately I had gazed upon his benignant countenance, I went and sat down by him. I could not help it. At once I understood the urbanity and the gentlemanliness that must have existed in the patriarchal times. There was no need of forms between us. He made room for me as a son, and I looked up to him as to a father. He smiled upon me so encouragingly, and so confidently, that I found myself resting my arm upon his knee, with all the loving familiarity of long-tried affection. From that first moment of meeting until his heart lay cold in the grave--and cold the grave alone could make it--a singular, unswerving, and, on my part, an absorbing love was between us. We remained for a space in this caressing position, in silence; my eyes now drinking in the rich hues of the evening, now the mental expression of the "good old man." "Oh! it is very beautiful," said I, thinking as much of his mild face as of the gorgeousness of the sky above me.

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