Let us, people who are so uncommonly clever and learned, have a great
tenderness and pity for the poor folks who are not endowed with the
prodigious talents which we have. I have always had a regard for
dunces;--those of my own school-days were amongst the pleasantest of the
fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest in life; whereas
many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by the yard, and
construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble prig now, with
not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before his beard
grew.
Those poor dunces! Talk of being the last man, ah! what a pang it must
be to be the last boy--huge, misshapen, fourteen years of age, and
"taken up" by a chap who is but six years old, and can't speak quite
plain yet!
Master Hulker is in that condition at Birch's. He is the most honest,
kind, active, plucky, generous creature. He can do many things better
than most boys. He can go up a tree, pump, play at cricket, dive and
swim perfectly--he can eat twice as much as almost any lady (as Miss
Birch well knows), he has a pretty talent at carving figures with his
hack-knife, he makes and paints little coaches, he can take a watch to
pieces and put it together again. He can do everything but learn his
lesson; and then he sticks at the bottom of the school hopeless. As the
little boys are drafted in from Miss Raby's class, (it is true she is
one of the best instructresses in the world,) they enter and hop over
poor Hulker. He would be handed over to the governess, only he is too
big. Sometimes, I used to think that this desperate stupidity was a
stratagem of the poor rascal's, and that he shammed dulness, so that he
might be degraded into Miss Raby's class--if she would teach ME, I know,
before George, I would put on a pinafore and a little jacket--but no, it
is a natural incapacity for the Latin Grammar.
If you could see his grammar, it is a perfect curiosity of dog's ears.
The leaves and cover are all curled and ragged. Many of the pages are
worn away with the rubbing of his elbows as he sits poring over the
hopeless volume, with the blows of his fists as he thumps it madly, or
with the poor fellow's tears. You see him wiping them away with the back
of his hand, as he tries and tries, and can't do it.
When I think of that Latin Grammar, and that infernal As in praesenti,
and of other things which I was made to learn in my youth; upon my
conscience, I am surprised that we ever survived it. When one thinks
of the boys who have been caned because they could not master that
intolerable jargon! Good Lord, what a pitiful chorus these poor little
creatures send up! Be gentle with them, ye schoolmasters, and only whop
those who WON'T learn.
The Doctor has operated 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.