The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Tale of a Lonely Parish, by F. Marion
Crawford

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: A Tale of a Lonely Parish

Author: F. Marion Crawford

Release Date: October 4, 2004 [eBook #13597]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH***

E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH

by

F. MARION CRAWFORD

1886

TO My MOTHER

I DEDICATE THIS TALE A MEAN TOKEN OF A LIFELONG AFFECTION

SORRENTO, Christmas Day, 1885

CHAPTER I.

The Reverend Augustin Ambrose would gladly have given up taking pupils.
He was growing old and his sight was beginning to trouble him; he was
very weary of Thucydides, of Homer, of the works of Mr. Todhunter of
which the green bindings expressed a hope still unrealised, of conic
sections--even of his beloved Horace. He was tired of the stupidities of
the dull young men who were sent to him because they could not "keep up",
and he had long ceased to be surprised or interested by the remarks of
the clever ones who were sent to him because their education had not
prepared them for an English University. The dull ones could never be
made to understand anything, though Mr. Ambrose generally succeeded in
making them remember enough to matriculate, by dint of ceaseless
repetition and a system of _memoria technica_ which embraced most things
necessary to the salvation of dull youth. The clever ones, on the other
hand, generally lacked altogether the solid foundation of learning; they
could construe fluently but did not know a long syllable from a short
one; they had vague notions of elemental algebra and no notion at all of
arithmetic, but did very well in conic sections; they knew nothing of
prosody, but dabbled perpetually in English blank verse; altogether they
knew most of those things which they need not have known and they knew
none of those things thoroughly which they ought to have known. After
twenty years of experience Mr. Ambrose ascertained that it was easier to
teach a stupid boy than a clever one, but that he