d in a word your
cherished pencil-case an utterly unreliable time-keeper. Nor was this
a matter of wonder. Consider the position of a pencil-case in a boy's
pocket. You had hardbake in it; marbles, kept in your purse when the
money was all gone; your mother's purse, knitted so fondly and
supplied with a little bit of gold, long since--prodigal little
son!--scattered amongst the swine--I mean amongst brandy-balls, open
tarts, three-cornered puffs, and similar abominations. You had a top
and string; a knife; a piece of cobbler's wax; two or three bullets; a
"Little Warbler"; and I, for my part, remember, for a considerable
period, a brass-barrelled pocket-pistol (which would fire beautifully,
for with it I shot off a button from Butt Major's jacket);--with all
these things, and ever so many more, clinking and rattling in your
pockets, and your hands, of course, keeping them in perpetual
movement, how could you expect your movable almanac not to be twisted
out of its place now and again--your pencil-case to be bent--your
liquorice water not to leak out of your bottle over the cobbler's wax,
your bull's eyes not to ram up the lock and barrel of your pistol, and
so forth?

In the month of June, thirty-seven years ago, I bought one of those
pencil-cases from a boy whom I shall call Hawker, and who was in my
form. Is he dead? Is he a millionaire? Is he a bankrupt now? He was an
immense screw at school, and I believe to this day that the value of
the thing for which I owed and eventually paid three-and-sixpence, was
in reality not one-and-nine.

I certainly enjoyed the case at first a good deal, and amused myself
with twiddling round the movable calendar. But this pleasure wore off.
The jewel, as I said, was not paid for, and Hawker, a large and
violent boy, was exceedingly unpleasant as a creditor. His constant
remark was, "When are you going to pay me that three-and-sixpence?
What sneaks your relations must be! They come to see you. You go out
to them on Saturdays and Sundays, and they never give you anything!
Don't tell _me_, you little humbug!" and so forth. The truth is that
my relations were respectable; but my parents were making a tour in
Scotland; and my friends in London, whom I used to go and see, were
most kind to me, certainly, but somehow never tipped me. That term, of
May to August 1823, passed in agonies, then, in consequence of my debt
to Hawker. What was the pleasure of a calendar pencil-case in
comparison