gave a title to the Black Assizes, Black
Monday.

Another penance undergone by schoolboys
of the last generation, that ought not to be
shirked by boys in this, was the great washing
of feet and heads upon Black Monday Eve,
the Saturday night previous. Sunday
intervened always as a day of quiet rest. We
were to go so clean to school, that our legs on
that last Saturday night were parboiled, and
our heads were scrubbed so that the skin felt
to be coming off about our ears. This penance
was the more acutely felt, as we knew well that
when we got to school on Black Monday
evening, our Leads would be again raked
severely with a small-toothed cornb. On the
Sunday before Black Monday was the Feast
of Uncles, when we would take care to go
and say good bye to any relative who had
not paid his nephew's tax for the half-year
then to commence. Before getting into bed
on Sunday night, we always counted up our
shillings and. half-crowns, and put the money
into a big purse made by a little sweetheart
with blue eyes and fairy feet; then put the
purse into a pocket of the new and strong
school trowsers that lay, neatly folded by a
mother's hand, ready for wear next morning
on a chair by the bedside. Then we got into
bed, and lay awake so long that we caught
the mother's face over our own attempting a
sly kiss at the grown people's bed-time; then
we fell asleep. We dressed next morning,
hurriedly roused by candle-light, in frost and
cold, were made to swallow eggs and toast,
and ham and boiling coffee, and rolled off
in a hackney coach through dark and snowy
streets to the Swan with Two Necks, Lad
Lane. From that place we were booked— or
I was booked, for it will be seen that I have
slipped insensibly from generalities into a recollection
of my individual experience— from
that place I was booked outside to Millstone.

Outside the coach on one Black Monday
morning, for example, two hours before
sunrise, I found Phipps and Buttons — a boy
whose real name was Woodcock -- Buttons in
a thin old-fashioned great-coat, and a worsted
comforter, behind the coachman, and Phipps
in a thick coat and heavy wrapper, with his
mouth lost behind his heavy folds of handker-
chief, upon the box seat. Phipps wore thick
hair gloves; Buttons old Berlins carefully
mended. " Hollo Tub! " they cried, as I
scrambled up to them, " Hollo Tub! " -- I was
called Tub from my shape at that time.
"Hollo Buttons!" I answered, "Hollo Phipps!"
and then we all said " Here's a go! " We
didn't say more just then, for Phipps's father
and mine were there to see us off, and Buttons's
mother -- Buttons had no father. Buttons's
mother—such a pale woman she was -- had
come out at that time in the morning to see
Buttons off, and when the ladder was put up
for some passengers to mount by, if she didn't
clamber up and put her arms round him and
kiss him! Buttons turned scarlet, and
looked aside at Phipps. Phipps looked at
me and laughed, but somehow I remembered
my mother's coming to my bedside overnight,
so that when Buttons made up a mouth and
kissed his mother back two or three times in
spite of us, I didn't sneer as Phipps did when
the coach drove off, but got out my dinner
and began to eat a sandwich.

At Putney, Pullet was in waiting, and
wanted to get up and make a third upon the
box. " There's only room for two you know,"
said Phipps. —  " There's room for three when
two are boys, especially with a thin coachee,"
said Pullet. Coachee was fat and liked the
notion. " Besides," cried Pullet, " Here's my
peashooter, and I've got such a jolly pocketful
of peas."—" Up with you," we all cried,
Phipps foremost. —" Well," said the coachman,
"you're a bold boy to carry a peashooter.
Black Monday. But you mustn't do that,
though." Pullet was firing into the flanks
of the horses, and making the coach go
awfully. .Railroads have abolished pea-
shooters by this time, I suppose, but in my
young days it was always considered part of
our equipment when we went home on the
coach top—eight or ten together— for the
holidays, to carry peashooters and blow split
peas at the passers-by, and into open windows,
or against closed windows at which any one
was sitting, as we rattled over the stones of
any country town. When we stopped to
change horses we attacked the ostlers, and
the landlord of the inn, and the more irascible
of the passengers who happened to get down
to drink a glass of ale or stretch their legs.
As for the coachman and guard, if they
scolded now and then, we got up a hailstorm
for their own exclusive service. On the way
home that was very well; but on Black
Monday, on the way to school, when a
word from a passenger as the coach stopped
at Millstone Hall would subject our own
flanks to savage peppering, a peashooter on
Black Monday was indeed a bold conception.
Nobody but Pullet would have thought of
bringing one; being brought, however, none
of us thought for a moment of resisting its
temptations.

When the sun was up and we had changed
horses two or three times, under the bright
blue sky, breatliing the crisp morning air as
the coach rolled up and down hill over the
white snow, we were all mad with joy, Black
Monday though it was. Buttons -- who got
terribly teazed and knocked about at school
because he was a queer fellow, though we all
liked him -- Buttons had his turn at the
peashooter, and after a successful combat with
a gipsy woman, his shot telling well ajbout
her nose and pipe, nothing further offered
itself. Suddenly Buttons looked mysterious
and bent over to us, whispering " Let's have
at the insiders! " Glorious because dangerous
game, we all rushed into enjoyment of the
bold suggestion. Buttons, at the end of