of cleverness about him;
and observing that I was of potent influence among my school-fellows, he
set himself to determine the grounds on which my authority rested. Copy
and arithmetic books, in schools in which there was liberty, used in
those ancient times to be charged with curious revelations. In the
parish school, for instance, which excelled, as I have said, every other
school in the world in its knowledge of barques and carvels, it was not
uncommon to find a book which, when opened at the right end, presented
only copy-lines or arithmetical questions, that, when opened at the
wrong one, presented only ships and boats. And there were cases on
record in which, on the grand annual examination-day that heralded the
vacation, the worthy parish minister, by beginning to turn over the
leaves of some exhibited book at the reverse end, found himself engaged,
when expecting only the questions of Cocker, or the slip-lines of
Butterworth, amid whole fleets of smacks, frigates, and brigantines. My
new master, professionally acquainted with this secret property of
arithmetic and copy-books, laid hold of mine, and, bringing them to his
desk, found them charged with very extraordinary revelations indeed. The
blank spaces were occupied with deplorably scrabbled couplets and
stanzas, blent with occasional remarks in rude prose, that dealt chiefly
with natural phenomena. One note, for instance, which the master took
the trouble of deciphering, referred to the supposed _fact_, familiar as
a matter of sensation to boys located on the sea-coast, that during the
bathing season the water is warmer in windy days, when the waves break
high, than during dead calms; and accounted for it (I fear not very
philosophically) on the hypothesis that the "waves, by slapping against
each other, engender heat, as heat may be engendered by clapping the
hands." The master read on, evidently with much difficulty, and
apparently with considerable scepticism: he inferred that I had been
borrowing, not inventing: though where such prose and such verse could
have been borrowed, and, in especial, such grammar and such spelling,
even cleverer men than he might well have despaired of ever finding out.
And in order to test my powers, he proposed furnishing me with a theme
on which to write. "Let us see," he said, "let us see: the
dancing-school ball comes on here next week--bring me a poem on the
dancing-school ball." The subject did not promise a great deal; but