t of a stool in itself; on which he had taken up his
daily seat, year after year, during the whole period of his service.
They had grown older and shabbier in company. Pupils had served their
time; seasons had come and gone. Tom and the worn-out stool had held
together through it all. That part of the room was traditionally called
'Tom's Corner.' It had been assigned to him at first because of its
being situated in a strong draught, and a great way from the fire; and
he had occupied it ever since. There were portraits of him on the walls,
with all his weak points monstrously portrayed. Diabolical sentiments,
foreign to his character, were represented as issuing from his mouth in
fat balloons. Every pupil had added something, even unto fancy portraits
of his father with one eye, and of his mother with a disproportionate
nose, and especially of his sister; who always being presented as
extremely beautiful, made full amends to Tom for any other jokes. Under
less uncommon circumstances, it would have cut Tom to the heart to leave
these things and think that he saw them for the last time; but it didn't
now. There was no Pecksniff; there never had been a Pecksniff; and all
his other griefs were swallowed up in that.

So, when he returned into the bedroom, and, having fastened his box and
a carpet-bag, put on his walking gaiters, and his great-coat, and his
hat, and taken his stick in his hand, looked round it for the last time.
Early on summer mornings, and by the light of private candle-ends on
winter nights, he had read himself half blind in this same room. He had
tried in this same room to learn the fiddle under the bedclothes, but
yielding to objections from the other pupils, had reluctantly abandoned
the design. At any other time he would have parted from it with a pang,
thinking of all he had learned there, of the many hours he had passed
there; for the love of his very dreams. But there was no Pecksniff;
there never had been a Pecksniff, and the unreality of Pecksniff
extended itself to the chamber, in which, sitting on one particular
bed, the thing supposed to be that Great Abstraction had often preached
morality with such effect that Tom had felt a moisture in his eyes,
while hanging breathless on the words.

The man engaged to bear his box--Tom knew him well: a Dragon man--came
stamping up the stairs, and made a roughish bow to Tom (to whom in
common times he would have nodded with a grin) as though he were aware
o