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Their names were Jakin and Lew Piggy Lew and they were bold, bad drummer-boys, both of them frequently birched by the Drum-Major of the Fore and Aft. Jakin was a stunted child of fourteen, and Lew was about the same age. When not looked after, they smoked and drank.
Thus do I no more believe that Mr. Bartholomew Pinchin was cousin to Lady Betty Heeltap, or in any manner connected with the family of my Lord Poddle (and he was only one of the Revolution Peers, that got his coronet for Ratting at the right moment to King William III.), than that he was the Great Mogul's Grandmother. His gentlemanly extraction was with him all a Vain Pretence and silly outward show. It did no very great Harm, however. When the French adventurer Poirier asked King Augustus the Strong to make him a Count, what said his Majesty of Warsaw and Luneville? "That I cannot do," quoth he; "but there is nothing under the sun to prevent thee from calling thyself a Count, if the humour so please thee." And Count Poirier, by Self-Creation, he straightway became, and as Count Poirier was knouted to Death at Moscow for Forging of Rubles Assignats. Pinchin was palpably a Plebeian; but it suited him to be called and to call himself an Esquire; and who should gainsay him? At the Three Archduchesses at Ostend, indeed, they had an exceeding sensible Plan regarding Titles and Precedence for Strangers, which was found to answer admirably well. He who took the Grand Suite, looking upon the courtyard, was always held to be an English Lord. The tenant of the floor above him was duly esteemed by the Drawers and Chamberlains to be a Count of the Holy Roman Empire; a quiet gentleman, who would pay a Louis a day for his charges, but was content to dine at the Public Table, was put down as a Baron or a Chevalier; those who occupied the rooms running round the galleries were saluted Merchants, or if they chose it, Captains; but, in the gardens behind the Inn, there stood a separate Building, called a Pavilion, most sumptuously appointed, and the Great Room hung with the Story of Susannah and the Elders in Arras Tapestry; and he who would pay enough for this Pavilion might have been hailed as an Ambassador Plenipotentiary, as a Duke and Peer of France, or even as a Sovereign Prince travelling incognito, had he been so minded. For what will not Money do? Take our English Army, for instance, which is surely the Bravest and the Worst Managed in the whole World. My Lord buys a pair of colours for the Valet that has married his Leman, and forthwith Mr. Jackanapes struts forth an Ensign. But for his own Son and Heir my Lord will purchase a whole troop of Horse: and a Beardless Boy, that a month agone was Birched at Eton for flaws in his Grammar, will Vapour it about on the Mall with a Queue
I suppose that for drilling, training, and pipe-claying the human mind all these things are necessary. I suppose, that, in our callow days, it is proper that we should be birched and wear fetters upon our little, bandy, sausage-like legs.
His fierce little glance was indubitably directed at little Sammy, as though, God save us! the lad had no right to be anything but well, and ought to be, and should be, birched on the instant if he had the temerity to admit the smallest ache or pain from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet.
We both needed to be somewhere near the heart of New England's wildest wilderness. We needed to see Katahdin, the distinctest mountain to be found on this side of the continent. Katahdin was known to Iglesias. He had scuffled up its eastern land-slides with a squad of lumbermen. He had birched it down to Lake Chesuncook in by-gone summers, to see Katahdin distant.
"I do not like to use bad words of a nobleman," says Westbury; "but if my Lord Mohun were a commoner, I would say, 'twas a pity he was not hanged. He was familiar with dice and women at a time other boys are at school being birched; he was as wicked as the oldest rake, years ere he had done growing; and handled a sword and a foil, and a bloody one, too, before he ever used a razor.
I retired after this, but ever afterwards the doctor was regularly birched before he could even copulate once. Sometimes he required to flog my aunt's glorious bum to excite his fading powers, declaring that it was almost as exciting as being flogged. He even gave it me gently, although I hardly ever required it, but I professed my surprise at its efficiency.
Wolsey who took delight in discharging scholastic functions from the days when he birched schoolboys at Magdalen College, Oxford, till the time when in the plenitude of his grandeur he framed regulations for Dean Colet's school of St.
After this she had had a vast variety of youths, fathers of families, and old worn-out patients, whom she birched into action. From one situation to another she had arrived at ours; since which time I knew all her doings. The Count's son and my daughter meanwhile grew up to puberty. We watched their progress with great interest.
"I may say I felt extremely uncomfortable during the process of introduction, and was glad when it all ended; for what with eyes, and the being called 'quite a hero, and 'a darling brave boy, and so on ad infinitum, I experienced as queer sensations, as if I had been birched by Price, or one of the under-masters.
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