FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170  
171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   191   192   193   194   195   >>   >|  
ee's big fat head. I say, won't it do him good and make him civil? Look here," he continued, making a bound and pointing to a knot on the rough floor boards, "that's the exact spot where his head came down whop." CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. We boys used to think the days at old Browne's very long and tedious, and often enough feel a mortal hatred of Euclid as a tyrant who had invented geometry for the sake of driving boys mad. What distaste, too, we had for all the old Romans who had bequeathed their language to us; just as if English wasn't ten times better, Mercer used to say. "Bother their old declensions and conjugations!" he would cry. "What's the good of them all? I call it a stupid language to have no proper prepositions and articles and the rest of it: tucking i's, a's, and e's at the end of words instead." But what days they were after all--days that never more return! The Doctor was pretty stern at times, and gave us little rest. Mr Rebble seemed to be always lying in wait to puzzle us with questions, and Mr Hasnip appeared to think that we never had enough to learn; while the German and French masters, who came over twice a week from Hastings, both seemed to have been born with the idea that there was nothing of the slightest consequence in the way of our studies but the tongues they taught. And oh, the scoldings we received for what they called our neglect and stupidity! "_Ach, dumkopf_!" the German master would cry wrathfully; while the French master had a way of screwing up his eyes, wrinkling his face, and grinding his teeth at our pronunciation. I'm afraid we hated them all, in complete ignorance of the other side of the case, and the constant unwearying application they gave to a set of reckless young rascals, who construed Latin with their lips and the game that was to be played that afternoon with their brains. I confess it. I must have been very stupid in some things, sharp as I was in others, and I have often thought since that Mr Rebble's irritability was due to the constant trouble we gave him; that Mr Hasnip was at heart a thorough gentleman; and as for "Old Browne," as we called him, he was a ripe scholar and a genuine loveable old Englishman, with the health and welfare of his boys thoroughly at heart. We thought nothing of it. A boy's nature does not grasp all these things. To us it was a matter of course that, if we were ill, Mrs Doctor should have us shut up in another
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170  
171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   191   192   193   194   195   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Hasnip
 

called

 

thought

 
things
 
French
 
German
 

Doctor

 

master

 

Rebble

 

stupid


constant
 
language
 

Browne

 

dumkopf

 

screwing

 

grinding

 

wrinkling

 

nature

 

wrathfully

 

tongues


taught
 

studies

 

slightest

 
consequence
 

neglect

 
stupidity
 
welfare
 

scoldings

 

received

 

matter


afraid

 

played

 
afternoon
 
gentleman
 

rascals

 
construed
 

brains

 

trouble

 

irritability

 

confess


reckless

 

complete

 
ignorance
 

Englishman

 
pronunciation
 
application
 

scholar

 

unwearying

 
loveable
 

genuine