to be realised."

In the midst of these rapturous anticipations, each later one becoming
more wild and more glorious than the previous one that begot it, it
wanting still an hour of sundown, all at once the coach stopped before a
house, upon a gentle elevation--stopped with a jerk, too, as if it were
going to usher in some glorious event. I looked out, and behold! in
hated gold letters, upon the hated blue board, the bitterly hated word
"Academy" met my agonised sight.

I burst into tears. I needed no voice to tell me that I was the person
to alight. I knew my doom. Farewell to all my glorious visions! I
could have hurled back into the face of the laughing sun, my hate, and
called him deceiver and traitor; for had he not, with other causes
conspired to smile me, five minutes ago, into a fool's paradise?

"Master Rattlin, won't you please to alight?" said one of those
under-toned, gerund-singing voices, that my instinct told me to be an
usher's.

"No, thank'ee, sir," said I, amidst my sobbings, "I want to go home."

"But you are to get down here, however," said my evil-omened inviter.
"Your boxes are all off the coach, and the coachman wants to go
forward."

"So do I."

"It's excessively droll this--hi, hi, hi as sure as my name's
Saltseller, it is excessively droll. So you want to get forward, Master
Rattlin? why come to school then, that's the way--droll, isn't it? Why,
you've been riding backwards all the way, too--time to change--droll
that--hi, hi!"

"It's no change," said I, getting out, sulkily, "from one school to
another--and do you call this a school?" I continued, looking round
contemptuously, for I found about twenty little boys playing upon a
green knoll before the house, and over which we were compelled to walk
to reach it, as the road did not come near the habitation. "Do you call
this a school? Well, if you catch me being flogged here, I'm a sop,
that's all--a school! And I suppose you're the usher--I don't think
those little boys bumped you last half-year."

"I don't think they did," said Mr Saltseller, which was actually the
wretch's name, and with whom I fell desperately in hate at first sight.
"Bump me!" he exclaimed soliloquising--and with that air of
astonishment, as if he had heard the most monstrous impossibility spoken
of imaginable. "Bump me? droll, isn't it--excessively? Where have you
been brought up, Master Rattlin?"

"Where they bar out tyrannical masters, and bump