[Illustration: K]IND _Mr. Punch_, a happy change has come over the
character of our Public Schools. The chief of them, I have been told, of
what is called mediaeval foundation, were originally intended to educate
the sons of poor gentlemen. But now, Sir, the purpose they have come to
serve is just the reverse of that. A correspondent of the _Morning
Post_, signing himself PAVIDUS--evidently a mean, shabby, needy sprig of
gentility, afraid, as his signature means, if I am not misinformed,
which, by the tenor of his letter, he plainly confesses himself to be,
of having to fork out more than he is able--writes to complain,
forsooth, of "the growing abuse of 'tips' and pocket-money allowance."
This contemptible indigent fellow says:--
"It is within my knowledge that at one of the chief public
schools--and I am told that the same rule holds good at the
other schools of this class--a boy who does not bring back L5
each half is set down by 'the house' as a 'duffer' and as of 'no
use.' In other words, he is under the cold shade of his
fellow-boarders, and is subject to constant and galling
humiliation."
Very well. Let him be off, then. A first-class Public School is no place
for him any more than a first-class carriage. Let the beggar who doesn't
like it, leave it--go second or third class, and be taught the three R's
under FORSTER'S Education Act. But now read what PAVIDUS has the
insolence to say further:--
"It is not every lad that can bear lightly the gibes and jeers
of the young cotton lords whose home ethics teach them to
measure the quality of a gentleman by the amount of money he can
spend. The result is inevitable. The 'soc' shop gives credit. A
loan is soon and easily contracted, and the boy, smarting under
the results of his comparative poverty, begins his career of
debt and deceit in order to hold his own among his more
pecunious fellows."
MR. PAVIDUS, in his pride and poverty, seems very indignant at the idea
of wealthy young cotton lords treating poor young pedigree lords with
contempt. I dare say he is some poor nobleman's relation himself, the
HONOURABLE PAVIDUS, perhaps, or RIGHT HONOURABLE PAVIDUS.
When he wrote the above sneer at cotton lords probably he turned up
his nose. That is, I mean, he tried to, for it is a nose that don't
turn up by nature, I'm sure. I'll be bound it's one of those aquiline
hook-noses which your bloated aristocrats are so vain of, none of your
jolly button-mushroom snub. I fancy I see PAVIDUS--LORD PAVIDUS,
perhaps--looking down upon myself and sniffing at me, like a footman
with too strong a bouquet in his buttonhole. He and his, and such as
they, had best keep themselves to themselves. If our boys are too
well-off at school for theirs, and yet theirs are above being sent to
regular pauper schools, why don't your Nobs and Swells get up poor's
schools of their own, poor gentlemen's schools, if they like to call
them so? At such schools the rule might be that no boy was to come from
home to school with more than five shillings in his pocket, nor be
allowed above sixpence a week.
Dress and board could be cut down to the same plain, poverty-stricken
scale. Such regulations would keep the high-bred paupers what they
call select enough without any necessity, which they that pride
themselves so on their pronunciation might perhaps imagine, for an
entrance examination to try if new-comers could pronounce their h's. And
so, poor nobility and gentry, being brought up in that frugal sort of
way, would continue in it, because able to afford no better, and
by-and-by, I dare say, get to pride themselves upon it, and make a merit
and a boast of their despicable economy; so that plain living and
dressing and eating and drinking will some day perhaps be considered the
particular tokens of high birth and breeding, and of class-distinction
between PLANTAGENET MOWBRAY FITZ-MONTAGUE NORFOLK HOWARD and