ness," and added with great wisdom, "they had better a-measured my stomach."

The folly of hoping that healthy infants can be nourished by mothers who are compelled to labour continuously through long hours without rest is shown in the description of the child whose mother was a waitress, in Somebody's Luggage. Incidentally, too, Dickens reveals in this case the facts that the power of assimilation of little children is usually impaired, and that, as a consequence, they become more peevish, and therefore get shaken and otherwise abused for the ignorance of the adults responsible for their care. Speaking of the treatment of the baby, he says:

You were conveyed-ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise developed than to harbour vacancy in your inside-you were conveyed by surreptitious means into a pantry adjoining the Admiral Nelson, Civic and General Dining-Rooms, there to receive by stealth that healthful sustenance which is the pride and boast of the British female constitution. Under the combined influence of the smells of roast and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you partook of your earliest nourishment; your unwilling grandmother sitting prepared to catch you when your mother was called and dropped you; your grandmother's shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings; your innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates, dish covers, and cold gravy; your mother calling down the pipe for veals and porks, instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes. Under these untoward circumstances you were early weaned. Your unwilling grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your food assimilated less, then contracted habits of shaking you till your system curdled, and your food would not assimilate at all.

The schoolmaster in Jemmy Lirriper's original story was captured and put into confinement for his treatment of the boys, and he was to have nothing to eat but the boys' dinners, and was to drink half a cask of their beer every day.

The schoolboy in The Schoolboy's Story describes the food given to the boys as one of the grievances they had against the institution.

As to the beef, it's shameful. It's not beef. Regular beef isn't veins. You can chew regular beef. Besides which, there's gravy to regular beef, and you never see a drop to ours. Another of our fellows went home ill, and heard the family doctor tell his father that he couldn't account for his complaint unless it was the beer. Of course it was the beer, and well it might be!

However, beef and Old Cheeseman are two different things. So is beer. It was Old Cheeseman I meant to tell about; not the manner in which our fellows get their constitutions destroyed for the sake of profit.

Why, look at the pie crust alone. There's no flakiness in it. It's solid-like damp lead. Then our fellows get nightmares, and are bolstered for calling out and waking other fellows. Who can wonder!

Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put his hat on over his nightcap, got hold of a fishing rod and a cricket bat, and went down into the parlour, where they naturally thought from his appearance he was a Ghost. Why, he never would have done that if his meals had been wholesome. When we all begin to walk in our sleeps, I suppose they'll be sorry for it.

At Doctor Blimber's school they used "to crib the boys' dinners." There is no more outrageous practice than that of depriving a child of food as a means of punishment.

Dickens ended his sketch entitled A Walk in a Workhouse with a plea on behalf of the inmates for "a little more liberty-and a little more bread," and even in his last book, Edwin Drood, he was still directing attention to the poor food supplied in boarding schools.

Mrs. Billickin was very plain in her hints about the poor board supplied to Rosa at Miss Twinkleton's when she received the schoolmistress in her own home. Referring to Rosa, who was now residing with Mrs. Billickin, she said:

"I did think it well to mention to my cook, which I 'ope you will agree with, Miss Twinkleton, was a right precaution, that the young lady being used to what we should consider here but poor diet, had better be brought forward by degrees. For a rush from scanty feeding to generous feeding, and from what you may call messing to what you

may call method, do require a power of constitution, which is not often found in youth, particularly when undermined by boarding school! I was put in youth to a very genteel boarding school, the mistress being no less a lady than yourself, of about your own age, or, it may be some years younger, and a poorness of blood flowed from the table which has run through my life."

CHAPTER XV.

MINOR SCHOOLS.

THE Schools of Squeers, Doctor Blimber, Mr. Creakle, Doctor Strong, and Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. M'Choakumchild are the most celebrated schools of Dickens, and they contain the greater part of his pedagogical teaching. His other schools are, however, worthy of very careful study.

One of the first of the Sketches by Boz described a man who had passed through many vicissitudes, and at length was reduced to such poverty that he applied to the parish board for charity. This led to his appointment as a schoolmaster. Dickens clearly intended to teach the lesson, afterward emphasized in Nicholas Nickleby and other books, that poverty should not establish a claim to the position of a school-teacher.

Minerva Hall, also in Sketches by Boz, reveals " one of those public nuisances, a spoiled child," spoiled because his papa was too busy with public duties and his mamma with society duties to train him properly. It also shows the reason Mrs. Cornelius Brook Dingwall had for sending her daughter to school. She said: "One of my principal reasons for parting with my daughter is that she has lately acquired some sentimental ideas, which it is most desirable to eradicate from her young mind.” Here the public nuisance fell out of a chair, and mamma and papa showed their usual mode of training him. Mamma called him " a naughty boy," and threatened "to send for James to take him away"-both name and threat being wrong. Papa merely excused the cherub on the ground of "his great flow of spirits." The school also shows the silly training of so-called "finishing schools,"

as chiefly intended to teach young ladies the small conventionalities of "society."

In The Old Curiosity Shop there are four schools: Mr. Marton's two schools, Mrs. Wackles's school, and Miss Monflathers's school. Mr. Marton's first school was introduced to reveal all the good qualities that Mr. Squeers lacked, especially sympathy. Mr. Marton was the immediate successor of Mr. Squeers, and they possessed directly opposite traits of character in their relationship to childhood. Mr. Squeers was coarse, unsympathetic, and coercive. Mr. Marton was kind, considerate, and a perfect type of true sympathy with the child. It is reasonable to believe that Mr. Marton and Mr. Squeers were drawn as companion pictures to illustrate and enforce the same truth-that sympathy with the child is the fundamental element in the character of a true teacher.

The old bachelor emphasized this when he said to Mr. Marton, "You are none the worse teacher for having learned humanity."

There is a great deal of food for psychological and pedagogical study in the introduction of the boys he was to teach in his second school, given by the bachelor to Mr. Marton. The bachelor was as full of genuine boyish spirit as it is possible for any adult to be, and was in some respects a more perfect type for an ideal teacher than Mr. Marton. Mr. Marton had the tender, spiritual sympathy of a true woman, the motherhood spirit that constitutes the atmosphere in which all right elements of childhood find their richest development; the bachelor had the perfect manly sympathy that enabled him to enter heartily into boy life. He had especially the power of recognising in the things for which boys are often rebuked the best evidences of their strength, and he could remember his own boyhood so well as to fully sympathize with the boys. Mr. Marton and the bachelor reveal the whole range of sympathetic possibilities.

When nothing more was left to be done he charged the boy to run off and bring his schoolmates to be marshalled before their new master and solemnly reviewed.

"As good a set of fellows, Marton, as you'd wish to