upon Hulker (between ourselves), but the boy was
so little affected you would have thought he had taken chloroform. Birch
is weary of whipping now, and leaves the boy to go his own gait. Prince,
when he hears the lesson, and who cannot help making fun of a fool,
adopts the sarcastic manner with Master Hulker, and says, "Mr. Hulker,
may I take the liberty to inquire if your brilliant intellect has
enabled you to perceive the difference between those words which
grammarians have defined as substantive and adjective nouns?--if not,
perhaps Mr. Ferdinand Timmins will instruct you." And Timmins hops over
Hulker's head.

I wish Prince would leave off girding at the poor lad. He is a boy, and
his mother is a widow woman, who loves him with all her might. There is
a famous sneer about the suckling of fools and the chronicling of small
beer; but remember it was a rascal who uttered it.

A WORD ABOUT MISS BIRCH.

"The gentlemen, and especially the younger and more tender of these
pupils, will have the advantage of the constant superintendence and
affectionate care of Miss Zoe Birch, sister of the principal: whose
clearest aim will be to supply (as far as may be) the absent maternal
friend."--Prospectus of Rodwell Regis School.

This is all very well in the Doctor's prospectus, and Miss Zoe Birch--(a
pretty blossom it is, fifty-five years old, during two score of which
she has dosed herself with pills; with a nose as red and a face as sour
as a crab-apple)--this is all mighty well in a prospectus. But I should
like to know who would take Miss Zoe for a mother, or would have her for
one?

The only persons in the house who are not afraid of her are Miss Rosa
and I--no, I am afraid of her, though I DO know the story about the
French usher in 1830--but all the rest tremble before the woman, from
the Doctor down to poor Francis the knife-boy, whom she bullies into his
miserable blacking-hole.

The Doctor is a pompous and outwardly severe man--but inwardly weak
and easy; loving a joke and a glass of port-wine. I get on with him,
therefore, much better than Mr. Prince, who scorns him for an ass,
and under whose keen eyes the worthy Doctor writhes like a convicted
impostor; and many a sunshiny afternoon would he have said, "Mr. T.,
sir, shall we try another glass of that yellow sealed wine which you
seem to like?" (and which he likes even better than I do,) had not the
old harridan of a Zoe been down upon us, and insisted on tu