with the enlarged notions and refined
reflections consequent on an early acquaintance
with "winkles," hop-scotch, and Ethiopian
serenaders, was wonderful. The freedom
from vulgar prejudices in favour of clean faces,
combs, and the church catechism, was balanced
by the ability displayed in bird's-nesting,
occasionally getting run over, and more
frequently appearing at the petty sessions.

The parish school-house was situated near
the pump;—the grand rendezvous for the
horse-holding, organ-blowing, go-of-errands
class of unfortunates, who seem always out of
regular employment, and yet always looking
out for something to do. This happy and
contented race, who would not barter the
luxury of a chance half-pint of porter for
the contents of the Bank of England, look
upon the pump as the lares and penates of
their out-door life. The pump is the centre
of gravity, upon which, and round which their
thoughts, feelings, bodies, joys and sorrows
ever congregate.

The pump near which our school-house was
situated, was fraught with boyish interests. It
was oftentimes the tribunal where disputes
between rival bantams and boys were settled.
Moreover, the parish undertaker, the parish
nurse, the parish doctor, the parish sexton, and
we cannot say how many other functionaries
possessing equal claims upon the sympathies
of Broad-Bumble, were all located near the
pump. The pump was universally popular.

Our school-house was a sturdy red-brick,
stone-cornered and corniced affair, belonging
to that age when mortar had time to dry before
people thought of hanging up the window
curtains, and when cheap contracts were
unknown. It was quaint, substantial, and
respectable. Its tall arched windows, with
their many panes and bold rusticated
keystones to every arch; its great oak door, with
bars and bolts that would have stood a siege,
(now painted black by the unaccountable bad
taste of some modern-antique churchwarden)
and its couple of grotesque figures of a boy
and girl, each dressed in a picturesque fashion,
of which some traces remained even in the pre-
sent livery all told its meaning and purpose
with unmistakeable distinctness. Altogether
it was what a young lady, with that pretty
and expressive indefiniteness known only to
young ladies, would call "a nice old place."

Inside it was rough and almost destitute of
adornment, unless one or two pictures, in
unprepossessing wigs, which hung up in the
"board" room, might be considered
decorative. But people who thought how those
quizzical personages had built hospitals,
endowed churches, and—last, but not least—
established the parish school of Broad-bumble,
pardoned the wigs, the mouldy-looking visages,
and the heavy gilt frames.

Two great, heavy staircases, one of them
terminating at the door of the "board" room,
looked as if their stanch oaken banisters had
never known such things as leaves. The blank,
whitewashed, or "coloured" walls (save only
the sitting-rooms of the master and mistress,
where a little of the decorative spirit displayed
itself in fuchsias and birds well known at
Painter's, the paper hanger's) presented a
tempting surface to the juvenile artist, and
many were the names of urchins and
urchinesses, many the unsteady, distraught initials,
and manifold the representations of the master
—unfortunately, for the most part,
undergoing the extreme penalty of the law—which
decked the plaster walls of Broad-Bumble
school. Nor did even the hard oak banisters
resist that dangerous, but popular graving
tool, the clasp knife. As to the girls, their
tastes were less artistic; and the staircase
and passage presented comparatively few
female memorials.

The great school-rooms were large and
lofty, for they had been built when Broad-
bumble had grown too large to be trifled
with. We have at present nothing to do
with the girls' school; but we will proceed
at once to the condition of the boys' department,
at the time when the advertisement
above mentioned appeared.

The late master, who had just departed
from the troubles of this world, had been an
inveterate champion of the physical force
principle. He believed in "cakes" light
stripes of cane across the expanded palm—
and held that they were the only species of
confectionary likely to promote honesty, truth,
or learning. The sound of the cane was heard
from morning till night; the boys absolutely
missed it, if it had five minutes' rest. If
stupidity were at fault, the cane was the
prescription; if stupidity were persisted in, it was
simply repeated as before; never mind what
was the offence, the only distinction, moral or
physical, was as to the quantity of medicine
to be administered. A few fine cases of water
on the brain certainly took place now and
then, from this over stimulating of the mental
capabilities, but what of that? The best
physicians are sometimes deceived.

A grand caning day—when any small public
out-of-school or in-school offence had involved
the treatment of a large number of patients
was as great a treat to the late master, as an
auto da fé to a Spanish inquisitor. The energy
he displayed in singling out the most tender
parts, and in hardening them by a judicious
application of cane more or less thick, was the
ne plus ultra of refinement. His collection of
canes at the end of the day's practice, split,
snapped, and cracked, was as interesting as
the charred stake from which the calcined
bones, the last works of man's blasphemy
against his Maker, had dropped. He was a
good inquisitor lost to the world.

Now, it did happen, that, despite the uniform
system of discipline pursued in Broad-Bumble
school, the intellectual and moral condition of
Broad-Bumble was particularly low. A few
philanthropic people, who looked at mankind