some shipwreck of fortune upon the
Sackem quicksands, was his public and
notorious butt. He would cease his own
bellowings for a minute or two, to listen to
Mr. Vernon's measured tones, as he instructed
his class laboriously and with patience, and
would break in upon him suddenly thus:

"Now, Mr. Vernon, that milky sort of way
of yours may be all very well at Dublin, but
it don't pay here. Set them their lesson, and
hear them their lesson; and, if they don't
know their lesson, send them up to me, and
I've got a persuader here (the cane) that
will teach it them. You come up, you boy,
that seem to be Mr. Vernon's pet, come
here! I'll see whether you've got your work
up well or not! " And the pestilent creature
never failed, by badgering the unhappy scholar
in a vile Old Bailey sort of manner, to
obtain a pretext for using the cane.

Layton was another kind-hearted usher
whom Sackem used to treat most
superciliously. How this gentleman ever came
to fill his position amongst us was one of the
usher mysteries. It was just as though the
scamp of his family, the cigar-in-doors-and-
latch-key hobbadehoy, the Bell's Life-reading
go-to-the-Derby-at-any-price black sheep of
his domestic flock had been pitched upon to
form an assistant instructor of youth. His
imposition book was half full of bets; his
arithmetical examples were founded upon
horse-racing or the chances of rouge-et-noir;
his clothes smelt of tobacco terribly; and
while he taught, he sat upon the hind legs of
his tilted stool, with his feet in the air and
both his hands in his trousers pockets.

There was also a jolly mathematician from
the north, very fat and lazy, who was my
especial admiration. He knew more when he
was asleep, than Sackem was ever master of
in his widest wakefulness; and he habitually
transacted business with his eyes closed.
Sackem, whose speciality it was to appear
very busy rather than to be so, used to be
greatly annoyed by this. He would steal
round from his own class and appear
suddenly in the middle of Persey's, while
that gentleman was sitting in silence
with his mouth resembling an enormous
fly-catcher on active service; but, before
the storm could well begin, the canny
Yorkshireman was always ready with his
"Now, boys, I've thowte of a problem for
you, better than yon or any other that
you'll find in the books." Dear old
Persey! And yet to behave gratefully towards
him, or civilly towards any master, was, in
the public opinion, to sponge and to cotton,
and to do all manner of slang things expressive
of flattery and fawning baseness. The
best art that an usher could practise as far
as his own comfort was concerned, seemed to
be the making himself independent of all
sympathy and pleasant social relations; to
offer an equal indifference to the opinion of
the head-master or of the boys, and to take the
duty which he was paid to do without being
swayed by any nice considerations. Such a
course took Smilax, our great professor of the
classics, and such took Grimshaw, our
sometime instructor in Euclid.

Grimshaw was the worst usher of my
acquaintance; the only thoroughly wicked
person of that class I ever met with. He
seemed to have been born for Sackem, as
Sackem was created for him; yet they were not
friends by any means. A sympathetic smile
—peculiar as one would have thought to
demons — used to pass between them when
the one sent up an unhappy victim to the
other to be beaten (so far Moloch and his
high priest seemed to have a mutual
understanding); but, as soon as the sacrifice was
over, the cruel bond seemed to be dissolved.
Sackem took a delight in contrasting himself
with his still more ruffianly assistant. "I
fancy if Mr. Grimshaw had the caning of
you, you would not get off, sir, so easily; " or,
"Mr. Grimshaw tells me I am too lenient by
half." And perhaps this was the solitary
instance where our respected head-master
could have hazarded a personal comparison
without getting the worst of it. Grimshaw
used to aver that he liked a rogue, but
detested a hypocrite; by which he was
supposed to indicate that slight and
innocent veil with which Mr. Sackem was
wont to cover, without at all concealing, his
more particularly unjust actions. The
immediate cause of Grimshaw's being taken
from us, was a policeman. What he had
really done we never knew for certain, but I
don't think his crime could have lost any of
its aggravation through misplaced tenderness.
He had the care of our cricket
and foot-ball money, and we never saw
any of it. Ten years ago, when an
unfortunate person of this name had been
convicted for burglary and murder at York, I
met on the Great Northern a fellow-sufferer
in those schoolboy days, who was actually
bound for that metropolis on the express
mission of seeing the end of Grimshaw, if
the felon should happen, fortunately, to be
he. But, he was not, I regret to say, the
man.

How Smilax ever got among us was the
mystery of mysteries; he was an
admirable Greek and Latin scholar, and was
scarcely ever seen out of school-hours without
one of his favourite ancient authors. He
used to mutter Greek verses to himself when
out of humour — as also, I am sorry to say,
during the whole of church-time. He drew
parallels in the dead languages between
Sackem and the most awful villains of antiquity;
his favourite antitype of that gentleman
was Thersites. " Thersites," he used to
mumble, while Sackem was bawling at some
irregularity in Smilax's class, " Thersites was
the basest Greek that ever came to Troy."

Smilax was the worst dresser, and
wore the nearest things akin to rags,