the care of a friend of my father's, Mynheer
Trunkenbooms, a dealer in petticoats and
other woollen articles,—a most prudent and
respectable man.

Arrived in London, I was placed under the
care of Mynheer Trunkenboom's agent's
aunt, from whom I received the first
rudiments of instruction, till one day the good
lady's eye was attracted by the advertisement
of a country schoolmaster who undertook to
board and educate young gentlemen at the
sum of six and twenty pounds a year, feeding
them upon the best of diet, and teaching them
everything requisite to be known. This
seemed so excellent a thing that she
represented the case in the most eloquent manner
to Mynheer Trunkenbooms on his next visit
to London, who thought it would be just
what my father wished. Accordingly I was
sent to the school of Mr. Simon Spiphlicate,
of Minerva House, Ponderwell, Hertfordshire.

I shall say nothing about my general education.
I shall speak only of the writing
department of this academy. Oh, it was very
different in its method to that of my father.
There were two classes; the big boys' class,
and the little boys' class. I was in the latter.
At twelve o'clock every day we were called to
writing, and placed at the same desk as the
upper class had used before us, and on the
same forms. These forms, to save the
expense of two sets suited to the different
heights and sizes of the two classes, were so
contrived as to suit neither, being too high for
the big boys, and too low for us little ones.
Thus, the upper class always presented a long
row of hunched backs, and boys' noses pointing
perpendicularly down their quills; while
the lower class presented a long row of stiff
necks, and small noses pointing up their
quills. This arrangement was well enough
for a few intermediate sized boys; but the
great majority were in the position I have
described. We wrote with quills; steel-
pens had not then come into use. Our
pens seldom suited us; we could not mend
them ourselves, and we dared not ask to
have them mended, because when this favour
was granted by Mr. Spiphlicate, the
acquiescence was almost always accompanied by
a slap on the cheek directly the pen was
returned, or a crack on the crown by one hard
knuckle as the boy received it. A crack on
the tender crown of a little boy from the bony
knuckle of a man's hand who does not
measure the respective powers of giving and
receiving, is not only something to feel at the
time, but never to forget afterwards. I always
had a singing in my head, and a mist over
my eyes, for a quarter of an hour after it.
The same knuckle-crack was also administered
for a bad method of holding the pen, or for
thick up-strokes, crooked down-strokes, and
blots and smears. The sudden blow generally
caused a large drop of ink to start out from
the pen, and then you had a second crack on
the nob for this new blot, the crack coming,
perhaps, exactly in the same place, all sore
and dinging as it was; and this made me sick
to death, or else it was a mad pain.

Mr. Simon Spiphlicate was a preacher, and
had a subscription meeting-house. He stood
six feet two, out of his shoes. He was very
thin, but had large bones. His face was
an unhealthy pale, with a mouldy tint in
each cheek, and his great nose was swollen,
and red at the end. He had weak eyes,
and wore silver spectacles with immense
round glasses. The upper parts of his legs
were thin, but from the knees downwards they
were extremely large, and always cased in
long black gaiters, strapped under the shoe,
and buttoned all the way up to the bend of
the knee. This dreadful figure, (which, to the
apprehensions of a little boy, under my
circumstances, was not so much like that of a
being of his own species, as of some gigantic
foreign bird,) stalked up and down behind our
backs all the time we were writing. The
suddenness with which a blow would fall—or
the horrible expectation of it, as he stood
breathing down through his nostrils upon the
back of my head—made the whole time of this
lesson a torture of the mind. We all wrote
as in fear of our lives.

When the lesson was over—oh, what a
moment this was! True, it was over; but
then we all had to show up our copies to him
in succession. He now stood twirling a short
ruler in his fingers. When the writing was
very bad, or blotty, he seized one of the
culprit's hands—often the right hand—and,
bending the fingers down, beat it over the
knuckles; so that in a few minutes afterwards
they were swollen as large as marbles, and all
of a red and purple hue. This it was often my
fate to receive. I was four years at Minerva
House Academy. Of the methods of instruction
in English grammar, in Latin and Greek
rudiments, in arithmetic, and in geography
and the abuse of the globes, I will say nothing;
but as for writing, I came away with no
epistolary " hand " of any kind, no notion of
how it was to be acquired, and with a mortal
hatred of the fine art of penmanship in which
all our family excelled.

Mr. Spiphlicate gave me cake and wine on
the morning I left; and, all smiles, shook
hands with me at parting; but my heart
shuddered within me at his touch. The recollection
of his smiles, and the subdued and tender
sound of his voice in saying " Good-bye, van
Ploos," puzzled my conceptions of human
nature for years afterwards. " Good " with
a soft tone, and a rising inflection " Good
bye! "—and the sallow smile of the griffin!—
when I think of it now, though twenty-
seven years have elapsed, I sometimes feel
as if I should like to smash his spectacles
upon his face, and assault him with a new
pen.

At the age of about thirteen I left the
academy of Mr. Simon Spiphlicate, and after