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I know it gave added terrors to the canings, and, too, I thought it gave added zest to Sister Agatha's use of that instrument in my case. Unfortunately for me Sister Agatha, and not the mild-eyed Sister Mary, was the schoolmistress.
I imbibed a certain amount of classical and elementary knowledge of a somewhat miscellaneous description, and received not a few canings, generally for laughing in my class at something which tickled my fancy, when I ought not to have allowed my fancy to be tickled; but altogether my conduct was such that I believe I was considered to have brought no discredit on the Merry name or fame.
The rest of the half-year is a jumble in my recollection of the daily strife and struggle of our lives; of the waning summer and the changing season; of the frosty mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the dark nights when we were rung into bed again; of the evening schoolroom dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which was nothing but a great shivering-machine; of the alternation of boiled beef with roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mutton; of clods of bread-and-butter, dog's-eared lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy Sundays, suet-puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink, surrounding all.
Nothing was omitted which could testify to their glee at the new emancipation, or their hatred of the old regime. They held a mock school outside the Henniker's door, and gave one another bad marks and canings with infinite laughter, by way of cheering up their prisoner. Finally the calls of hunger put an end to this strange demonstration, and with a mighty stampede we made for the kitchen.
Charles Arnold's, at Tinwell, near Stamford. "What I chiefly remember about the place is being punished all one day, with several canings, because I either could not or would not learn the Fifth Declension of the Greek Nouns." So much for the curriculum of Tinwell; but it only lasted for one year, and then, after two years with a private tutor at home, Charles Wood went to Eton in January, 1853.
Shrewd as he was, however, his logic failed him at one point. When his first child, Cotton Mather Thayer, was a tiny boy, the youngster was allowed and even invited to toddle about the wharves, clinging to the paternal thumb. On the other hand, when the boy Cotton was fourteen, he received a round dozen of canings for lounging about among the shipping. The thirteenth caning was one too many.
In the year 1789 one simple-hearted old school-master solemnly reported that during the fifty years of his experience as teacher he administered nine hundred thousand canings, twenty thousand beatings, one hundred thousand slaps, and twenty thousand switchings. Among smaller items he mentions ten thousand fillips and a million and a quarter raps and hits.
Cape by inattention or inaccuracy, so he incurred such perpetual canings that his hands were pitiable to see, and must have been extremely painful. Our head-master was no doubt laudably, or selfishly, anxious that we should get on with our work so as to do him credit at Cambridge, where most of us were expected to go; but he seemed almost incapable of pity.
So the boys were insulted in their homes by sympathetic inquiries as to when they had their last interview with the tawse and whether the canings were as nippy as ever, for Muirtown was proud to think that its favourite master was an expert in every branch of his calling and dealt with the grandchildren as thoroughly as he had done with the grandfathers.
Again I thought over my past life my childhood's days the time I spent at school my various companions my chums and enemies the tricks I had played the canings and floggings I had received for instruction at that period was imparted with a much larger proportion of the fortiter in re than of the suaviter in modo.
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