Puslapio vaizdai
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Daniel thought the experiment had failed because it had not been repeated sufficiently often, nor perhaps continued long enough. But the Schoolmaster was of opinion that the cause of failure was in the basin: for that silver being the lunar metal would by affinity assist the influential virtues of the moonlight, which finding no such affinity in a mixed metal of baser compounds, might contrariwise have its potential qualities weakened, or even destroyed when received in a brasen vessel, and reflected from it. Flossofer Daniel assented to this theory. Nevertheless as the child got rid of his troublesome excrescences in the course of three or four months, all parties disregarding the lapse of time at first, and afterwards fairly forgetting it, agreed that the remedy had been effectual, and Sir Kenelm if he had been living, might have procured the solemn attestation of men more veracious than himself that moonshine was an infallible cure for warts.

CHAPTER VIII. P. I.

A KIND SCHOOLMASTER AND A HAPPY SCHOOL BOY.

Though happily thou wilt say that wands be to be wrought when they are green, lest they rather break than bend when they be dry, yet know also that he that bendeth a twig because he would see if it would bow by strength may chance to have a crooked tree when he would have a straight.

EUPHUES.

FROM this time the two Flossofers were friends. Daniel seldom went to Ingleton without looking in upon Guy, if it were between school hours. Guy on his part would walk as far with him on the way back, as the tether of his own time allowed, and frequently on Saturdays and Sundays he strolled out and took a seat by Daniel's fire side. Even the wearying occupation of hearing one generation of urchins after another repeat a-b-ab, hammering the first rules

of arithmetic into leaden heads, and pacing like a horse in a mill the same dull dragging round day after day, had neither diminished Guy's good-nature, nor lessened his love for children. He had from the first conceived a liking for young Daniel, both because of the right principle which was evinced by the manner in which he proposed the question concerning stealing the beans, and of the profound gravity (worthy of a Flossofer's son) with which he behaved in the affair of the moonshine. All that he saw and heard of him tended to confirm this favourable prepossession; and the boy, who had been taught to read in the Bible and in Stowe's Chronicle, was committed to his tuition at seven years of age.

Five days in the week (for in the North of England Saturday as well as Sunday is a Sabbath to the Schoolmaster) did young Daniel after supping his porringer of oat-meal pottage, set off to school, with a little basket containing his dinner in his hand. This provision usually consisted of oat-cake and cheese, the latter in goodly proportion, but of the most frugal qua

lity, whatever cream the milk afforded having been consigned to the butter tub. Sometimes it was a piece of cold bacon or of cold pork ; and in winter there was the luxury of a shred pie, which is a coarse north country edition of the pie abhorred by puritans. The distance was in those days called two miles; but miles of such long measure that they were for him a good hour's walk at a cheerful pace. He never loitered on the way, being at all times brisk in his movements, and going to school with a spirit as light as when he returned from it, like one whose blessed lot it was never to have experienced, and therefore never to stand in fear of severity or unkindness. For he was not more a favourite with Guy for his docility and regularity and diligence, than he was with his school-fellows for his thorough good nature and a certain original oddity of humour.

There are some boys who take as much pleasure in exercising their intellectual faculties, as others do when putting forth the power of arms and legs in boisterous exertion. Young Daniel was from his childhood fond of books. William

Dove used to say he was a chip of the old block; and this hereditary disposition was regarded with much satisfaction by both parents, Dinah having no higher ambition nor better wish for her son, than that he might prove like his father in all things. This being the bent of his nature, the boy having a kind master as well as a happy home, never tasted of what old Lily calls (and well might call) the wearisome bitterness of the scholar's learning. He was never subject to the brutal discipline of the Udals and Busbys and Bowyers, and Parrs and other less notorious tyrants who have trodden in their steps; nor was any of that inhuman injustice ever exercised upon him to break his spirit, for which it is to be hoped Dean Colet has paid in Purgatory ;-to be hoped, I say, because if there be no Purgatory, the Dean may have gone farther and fared worse. Being the only Latiner in the school his lessons were heard with more interest and less formality. Guy observed his progress with almost as much delight and as much hope as Daniel himself. A schoolmaster who

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