tired
and even rebellious under their new teacher.

They found him a bad scholar, a dull fellow, and ill-bred to boot.
George knew much more Latin and Greek than his master, and caught him
in perpetual blunders and false quantities. Harry, who could take much
greater liberties than were allowed to his elder brother, mimicked
Ward's manner of eating and talking, so that Mrs. Mountain and even
Madam Esmond were forced to laugh, and little Fanny Mountain would crow
with delight. Madam Esmond would have found the fellow out for a vulgar
quack but for her sons' opposition, which she, on her part, opposed with
her own indomitable will. "What matters whether he has more or less of
profane learning?" she asked; "in that which is most precious, Mr. W.
is able to be a teacher to all of us. What if his manners are a little
rough? Heaven does not choose its elect from among the great and
wealthy. I wish you knew one book, children, as well as Mr. Ward does.
It is your wicked pride--the pride of all the Esmonds--which prevents
you from listening to him. Go down on your knees in your chamber and
pray to be corrected of that dreadful fault." Ward's discourse that
evening was about Naaman the Syrian, and the pride he had in his native
rivers of Abana and Pharpar, which he vainly imagined to be superior to
the healing waters of Jordan--the moral being, that he, Ward, was the
keeper and guardian of the undoubted waters of Jordan, and that the
unhappy, conceited boys must go to perdition unless they came to him.

George now began to give way to a wicked sarcastic method, which,
perhaps, he had inherited from his grandfather, and with which, when a
quiet, skilful young person chooses to employ it, he can make a whole
family uncomfortable. He took up Ward's pompous remarks and made jokes
of them, so that that young divine chafed and almost choked over his
great meals. He made Madam Esmond angry, and doubly so when he sent
off Harry into fits of laughter. Her authority was defied, her officer
scorned and insulted, her youngest child perverted, by the obstinate
elder brother. She made a desperate and unhappy attempt to maintain her
power.

The boys were fourteen years of age, Harry being taller and much more
advanced than his brother, who was delicate, and as yet almost childlike
in stature and appearance. The baculine method was a quite common mode
of argument in those days. Sergeants, schoolmasters, slave-overseers,
used the cane freely.