[Sidenote: Boys
go back
in coaches.
Thrashing
time
approaches.
♃ ♒ ♈
Now
School-storms
reign;
☌ ☊ ⚹
Begins
again
the
Hurry—cane.]
The time of holiday is fled from little Master J.,
He's going to the school instead of going to the play;
His master is come _home_, his fate 'tis easy to forebode,
And heartily he wishes now the "schoolmaster _abroad_:"
He cannot love him, though he be sweet-temper'd, 'tis in vain,
Un_able_ is the boy to see the sugar in the _cane_!
A chaise is waiting at the door, in which he's doom'd to go,
He knows and feels its very wheels will bear him to his woe;
The thing he rides in he derides, and there, for joy, would dance
If master, chaise, and all, were safe at _Père la Chaise_, in France!
To force a young and chubby boy to school, away from home,
'S like taking a young Regulus to Carthage, back from Rome:
Upon his _bed_, more like a _board_, he cries and lies awake,
His _fruit_ is fruitless, and he feels he doesn't _need_ his cake!
His bat is chang'd into a _bawl_, the rod'll never stop,
It's always whipping _bottom_, now, instead of whipping _top_:
Book'd for a flogging, whether book proclaim him dunce, or clever,
Kept from the play_ground_, oftentimes upon no _ground_ whatever:
Penned in from good hard exercise, hard exercise to pen,
And told that slaving present boys is saving future men!
[Illustration:
School exercise.
]