You will also give up all the fire-works that you may have in your
play-boxes, for the same laudable purpose. The servant will go round
and collect them after dinner. I say, by the servant after dinner they
shall all be collected. Moreover, young gentlemen, I have to tell you,
that the churchwardens, and the authorities in the town, are determined
to put down Guy Faux, and he shall be put down accordingly. So now,
young gentlemen, you'd better take your amusements before dinner, for
you will have no holiday in the afternoon, and I shall not suffer anyone
to go out after tea, for fear of mischief." Having thus spoken, he
dismissed the school, and strode forth majestically.

Oh, reader! can you conceive the dismay, the indignation, and the rage
that the Court of Aldermen would display, if, when sitting down hungrily
to a civic feast, they were informed that all the eatables and
potatories were carried off by a party headed by Mr Scales? Can you
conceive the fury that would burn in the countenances of a whole family
of lordly sinecurists, at being informed, upon official authority, that
henceforth their salaries would be equal to their services? No, all
this you cannot conceive; nor turtle-desiring aldermen, nor cate-fed
sinecurists, could, under these their supposed tribulations, have
approached, in fury and hate, the meekest-spirited boys of Mr Root's
school, when they became fully aware of the extent of the tyrannous
robbery about to be perpetrated. Had they not been led on by hope? Had
they not trustingly eschewed Banbury-cakes--sidled by longingly the
pastrycook's--and piously withstood the temptation of hard-bake, in
order that they might save up their pocket-money for this one grand
occasion? and even after this, their hopes and their exertions to end in
smoke? Would that it were even that; but it was decided that there
should be neither fire nor smoke. Infatuated pedagogue! Unhappy
decision!

The boys did not make use of the permission to go out to play. They
gathered together unanimously, in earnest knots--rebellion stalked on
tip-toe from party to party: the little boys looked big, and the big
boys looked bigger, and the young men looked magnificent. The
half-boarders whispered their fears to the ushers, the ushers spoke
under their breaths to the under-masters, the under-masters had cautious
conversation with the head Latin, French, and mathematical tutors, and
these poured their misgivings into t