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The boys then wore a long gray skirt and girdle, something similar to the Christ's Hospital uniform, and the girls a dress of gray. The hospital originated in the charity of the parishioners. Various additions have since been made to the building, and class-rooms have been added. The older class-rooms and board-room are wainscoted.
It extends through the entire depth of the house, and at its farther extremity an open door afforded us a glimpse of the garden. We were ushered into the little salon at the left of the passage, the one often mentioned in "Villette," and here we made known our wish to see the garden and class-rooms, and met with a prompt refusal from the neat portresse.
In the quiet churchyard on the slope of his beloved Mountain, in a simple grave, over which the green hills of Maryland keep guard, not far from the class-rooms and the chapel he loved, rest the mortal remains of the author of "The Truce of God." It is not necessary to describe him.
George nodded. This was the familiar talk of college class-rooms. "As it is," pursued the prince, "your people do perfectly understand lifting a square and placing it upon a square, or a triangle upon a triangle. But you do not know anything about placing a cube upon a cube, or a pyramid upon a pyramid so that both occupy the same space at the same time.
The hall for the dancing was created by taking down the board partitions that separated three of the class-rooms; and hanging the walls with cheese-cloth to hide the old stains and paint-marks, and with pictures by the instructors. There was a piano for the music, and around the wall rough benches were put, with rugs over them to save the ladies' dresses.
Nearly two thousand children are crowded into class-rooms having a total seating capacity of scarcely one thousand. Narrow doorways, intricate hallways and antiquated stairways, dark and precipitous, keep ever alive the danger of disaster from fire or panic. Only the eternal vigilance of exceptional supervision has served to lessen the fear of such a catastrophe.
The Sixth only were heard apart, retiring into the library with the Doctor. His seat, when in school, was at a table in the centre of the hall, near the upper end. Thus Westminster differed widely from the great modern schools, with their separate class-rooms and lecture-rooms. Discipline was not very strict.
We can readily imagine, with the aid of the striking picture which Fabre has drawn for us, what life was in these surroundings, and what the teaching was: "Between four high walls I see the court, a sort of bear-pit where the scholars quarrelled for the space beneath the boughs of a plane-tree; all around opened the class-rooms, oozing with damp and melancholy, like so many wild beasts' cages, deficient in light and air...for seats, a plank fixed to the wall...in the middle a chair, the rushes of the seat departed, a blackboard, and a stick of chalk."
How and why he came to be so named will appear soon enough. Yes! it was the same old Narcissus, and he was wielding just the same old magic, I could see, as in our class-rooms and playgrounds five years before. What is it in him that made all men take him so on his own terms, made his talk hold one so, though it so often stumbled in the dark, and fell dumb on many a verbal cul-de-sac?
Its very negative character impregnates the class-rooms with an irreligious feeling which the impressionable mind of the child cannot but notice. How is the child to grow up with the feeling of Religion's importance in life if the ban is placed upon Religion the moment he passes the threshold of the school-room?