demeanour. " I hope, sir, that you have enjoyed
a refreshing sleep," was the sort of salutation
which he returned to the blunt " Good morning"
of his superior. The way in which he
took off his hat to Mrs. Dumplin and those
three princesses, her offspring, was the
happiest mixture of George the Fourth and Sir
Charles Grandison, that a polished mind can
conceive. On those few festive occasions,
when the great gulf between Pedagogue and
Usher was temporarily bridged over, and all
sat down together before a cold collation—
after some experiments in the doctor's lecture-
room, in electricity and chemistry, calculated
to exhilarate us to the utmost limit—Janty's
general carriage and gracefulness in assisting
the ladies to chicken and sherry, was
considered unimpeachable. His best waistcoat
(which I remember, poor fellow, to have been
the same for a long course of years) retained
to the last a brilliancy, of which words can
give but a feeble idea; it represented, by
sprigs and threads formed of the precious
metals, upon a satin ground, the firmament—
sun, moon, and stars competing upon it together
with an equal fervency; and this celestial
waistcoat was Mr. Janty's pride. One of
the few ushers whom I ever saw assert
his personal dignity was this gentleman, on
the occasion of an insult being offered to
his favourite garment. A boy of the name
of Jones pointed out this miracle of art,
one Sunday, with his finger to the rest of
us, as not being altogether the sort of pattern
that is worn for morning costume; and Mr.
Janty knocked him down with a box upon
his right ear; picking him up with a box
upon his left immediately, observing, that
he hoped he (Mr. Janty) knew how to dress
himself like a gentleman.

Kind-hearted pleasant fellows both he and
Midas were! and they had a great mutual
attachment (a rare event among dependants
of any kind, and especially among ushers,
who step into one another's shoes, and have
to keep in favour with a common master);
but they both broke down, I am sorry to say,
under pressure, and sacrificed truth and
justice at the Dumplin shrine. That cheap
expedient for dispensing with many assistant
masters, which is called the monitorial
system, prevailed at Doctor D.'s, and a little
boy of eight years old had, on one occasion,
been beaten with a toasting-fork by a
monitor of seventeen, for not browning his
bread sufficiently; so that his little back
was striped like a zebra's, and his jacket
cut to rags. Moreover, a small bone of
his right arm was broken. With the left,
however, he managed to indite an epistle
home, setting forth the circumstances.
Whether he was too small to be made a man of
in that particular manner, and to feel a
becoming pride in being punished unjustly,
as Fluffkins may opine,—or too young " to
look upon all chastisement whatever,
inflicted under school authority, as justifiable
and beneficial," as some great educationalists
of the present day may believe,—I do not
venture to determine; certain it is, that he
wrote complainingly; and, amongst other
things in his simple, tear-blotted, round-text,
he said, " I am very miserable, dear father,
and have been crying for pain, through the
entire school-time "—meaning, from ten
o'clock to one. His father arrived in a few
hours after the receipt of this; and there
was a row. There was the cut jacket and
the zebra back, eloquent enough; but all
the witnesses were subpœnaed upon the
other side; and, as it was desirable to prove
the little boy to be a liar, it was arranged
that the case should rest upon that statement
of his about his tears.

The monitor, the victim, and the two
ushers, had been sent for into the drawing-
room; and presently (to my intense discomfort)
I was summoned also. The father had
expressed a wish to see the boy who had sat
next to his son during the particular school-
time. The father, a fine military-looking man,
not having at all the appearance of one who
would desire his son to be brought up a
milksop, was standing by the door, with his
little boy's hand clasped in his own;
opposite, stood the young monitor, shifting
his legs and frowning, disconcerted and
malevolent; next to him, Messrs. Midas and
Janty—the former very grave and deferential,
the latter with an airy politeness about
him, as though he should say, " There is a
strange gentleman in the room, and it shall
be my province to set him thoroughly at his
ease." The doctor alone was seated; he had
taken an arm-chair, as if he had nothing to
do with the matter except judicially, and was
endeavouring to represent, by the expression
of his countenance, the union of justice and
mercy.

"With regard, sir," he was observing as
I entered, " to Walpole minor (for we have
another Walpole here, Colonel, of the great
Northumberland family: Wynkyn de Walpole
we are familiar with so early as Doomsday
Book); with regard to the question of
his having cried the entire school-time (if I
am incorrect in the exact words, pray set
me right), it is a mere matter of evidence,
and I fear there must have been some gross
exaggeration. From my seat in the place
appropriated for general study, I survey the
whole school, and there was no boy crying,
certainly—stay, let me be accurate yes, there
was one boy. Strafford (son of Sir Dudley
Strafford, of the west country, Colonel) was
in tears from an honourable feeling of
incapacity with regard to the meaning of a
chapter in Tacitus. Mr. Midas, you remember
our scholarly argument upon that subject,
wherein I fear you obtained a slight advantage?
and, by the bye, sir, you must know
that Walpole minor was not crying."

"Sir," replied the usher, " I was in another
part of the schoolroom from that in which