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'I am afraid, said Squeers, perplexed with such an application from a youth of Nicholas's figure, 'I am afraid the young man won't suit me. 'Yes, he will, said Ralph; 'I know better. Don't be cast down, sir; you will be teaching all the young noblemen in Dotheboys Hall in less than a week's time, unless this gentleman is more obstinate than I take him to be.
Here have I been, a matter of how many weeks hard upon six a follering up this here blessed old dowager petty larcenerer, Mr Squeers delivered himself of this epithet with great difficulty and effort, 'and Dotheboys Hall a-running itself regularly to seed the while! That's the worst of ever being in with a owdacious chap like that old Nickleby.
This pugnacious atmosphere of parry and riposte must first of all be allowed for and understood in all the satiric excursus of Martin in America. Dickens is arguing all the time; and, to do him justice, arguing very well. These chapters are full not merely of exuberant satire on America in the sense that Dotheboys Hall or Mr. Bumble's Workhouse are exuberant satires on England.
"Noo then," said John, "let's have yan more to end wi', and then coot off as quick as you loike. Tak' a good breath noo Squeers be in jail the school's brokken oop it's all ower past and gane think o' thot, and let it be a hearty 'un! Hurrah!" Such a cheer arose as the walls of Dotheboys Hall had never echoed before, and were destined never to respond to again.
"Is it much farther to Dotheboys Hall, sir?" asked Nicholas, when they had started off, the little boys in one vehicle, he and Mr. Squeers in another. "About three mile from here," replied Squeers. "But you needn't call it a Hall down here. The fact is, it ain't a Hall," observed Squeers, drily. "Oh, indeed!" said Nicholas, whom this piece of intelligence much astonished. "No," replied Squeers.
They were taken back, and some other stragglers were recovered, but by degrees they were all claimed, and, in course of time, Dotheboys Hall and its last breaking up began to be forgotten by the neighbours, or to be only spoken of as among things that had been.
It is not Dickens the reformer, as we get him when he satirizes Dotheboys hall, or the Circumlocution Office or the Chancery Court: but Dickens as Mr. Greatheart, one with all that is good, tender, sweet and true. Tiny Tim's thousand-times quoted saying is the quintessence, the motto for it all and the writer speaks in and through the lad when he says: "God bless us, every one."
Oh, shades of those who have suffered in boarding-houses that dining room! It must have been patterned after the dining room at Dotheboys' hall. It was bare, and cheerless, and fearfully undressed looking.
The two words were had apart; in a couple of minutes Mr Wackford Squeers announced that Mr Nicholas Nickleby was, from that moment, thoroughly nominated to, and installed in, the office of first assistant master at Dotheboys Hall. 'Your uncle's recommendation has done it, Mr Nickleby, said Wackford Squeers.
Squeers' famous advertisement of Dotheboys Hall, announced that the programme of the Academy would include "reading, taught as an art and upon the most approved principles of elocution, writing, arithmetic, euclid, algebra, mensuration, trigonometry, book-keeping, geography, grammar, spelling and dictation, composition, logic and debate, French, Latin, shorthand, history, music, and general lectures on astronomy, natural philosophy, geology, and other subjects."
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