Much vexed by this reflection, Mr. Squeers looked at the little boy to see whether he was doing anything he could beat him for. As he happened not to be doing anything at all, he merely boxed his ears, and told him not to do it again. 66 At midsummer," muttered Mr. Squeers, resuming his complaint, "I took down ten boys; ten twentys is two hundred pound. I go back at eight o'clock to-morrow morning, and have got only three-three oughts is an ought—three twos is six-sixty pound. What's come of all the boys? what's parents got in their heads? what does it all mean?" Here the little boy on the top of the trunk gave a violent sneeze. "Halloa, sir!" growled the schoolmaster, turning round. "What's that, sir? 66 66 Nothing, please, sir," said the little boy. Nothing, sir?" exclaimed Mr. Squeers. "Please, sir, I sneezed,” rejoined the boy, trembling till the little trunk shook under him. "Oh! sneezed, did you? retorted Mr. Squeers. "Then what did you say nothing' for, sir?" In default of a better answer to this question, the little boy screwed a couple of knuckles into each of his eyes and began to cry, wherefore Mr. Squeers knocked him off the trunk with a blow on one side of his face, and knocked him on again with a blow on the other. 66 'Wait till I get you down into Yorkshire, my young gentleman," said Mr. Squeers, "and then I'll give you the rest. Will you hold that noise, sir?" 66 'Ye-ye-yes," sobbed the little boy, rubbing his face very hard with the Beggar's Petition in printed calico. "Then do so at once, sir," said Squeers. Do hear? 66 you The waiter at this juncture announced a gentleman who wished to interview Mr. Squeers, and the schoolmaster, in an undertone, said to the poor boy: Put your handkerchief in your pocket, you little scoundrel, or I'll murder you when the gentleman goes." Affecting not to see the gentleman when he entered, Mr. Squeers feigned to be mending a pen and trying to comfort the boy he had so grossly abused. 66 "My dear child," said Squeers, "all people have their trials. This early trial of yours, that is fit to make your little heart burst and your very eyes come out of your head with crying, what is it? Nothing less than nothing. You are leaving your friends, but you will have a father in me, my dear, and a mother in Mrs. Squeers." Our indignation is still further aroused when we hear the conversation between Mr. Squeers and his visitor, who is named Snawley, and who was a sleek, flat-nosed man, bearing in his countenance an expression of much mortification and sanctity." He had brought with him two little boys, whose stepfather he was. Their mother had a little money in her own right and he was afraid she might squander it on her boys, so he wished to dispose of them. Our blood runs cold as we hear the two scoundrels plotting against the unfortunate boys. They are to be kept by Squeers till grown up. No questions are to be asked "so long as the payments are regular." They are to be supplied with razors when grown up, and never allowed home for holidays, and not permitted to write home, except a circular at Christmas to say they never were so happy and hope they may never be sent for, and no questions are to be asked in case anything happens to them." 66 We learn the unutterable selfishness of Squeers as he sits eating a sumptuous breakfast, while the five wretched and hungry little boys, who are to accompany him to Yorkshire to Dotheboys Hall, look at him. He had ordered bread and butter for three, which he cut into five portions, and two-penn'orth of milk" for the five boys. While waiting for the bread to come he said, as he took a large mouthful of beef and toast, "Conquer your passions, boys, and don't be eager after vittles. Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human natur." Nicholas Nickleby had been engaged to teach under Squeers in Dotheboys Hall. He was shocked at many things he heard and saw the night he arrived in Yorkshire. But the school itself and the appearance of the wretched pupils completed his discomfiture. The pupils the young noblemen! How the last faint traces of hope, the remotest glimmering of any good to be derived from his efforts in this den, faded from the mind of Nicholas as he looked in dismay around! Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, children with the countenances of old men, deformities with irons upon their limbs, boys of stunted growth, and others whose long meagre legs would hardly bear their stooping bodies, all crowded on the view together; there were the bleared eye, the harelip, the crooked foot, and every ugliness or distortion that told of unnatural aversion conceived by parents for their offspring, or of young lives which, from the earliest dawn of infancy, had been one horrible endurance of cruelty and neglect. There were little faces which should have been handsome, darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged suffering; there was childhood with the light of its eye quenched, its beauty gone, and its helplessness alone remaining; there were vicious-faced boys, with leaden eyes, like malefactors in a jail; and there were young creatures on whom the sins of their frail parents had descended, weeping even for the mercenary nurses they had known, and lonesome even in their loneliness. With every kindly sympathy and affection blasted in its birth, with every young and healthy feeling flogged and starved down, with every revengeful passion that can fester in swollen hearts, eating its evil way to their core in silence, what an incipient hell was breeding here! It was Mr. Squeers's custom on the first afternoon after his return from London to call the school together to make announcements, and read letters written by himself, which he pretended had been written by the relatives of the boys. Accordingly, the first afternoon after the arrival of Nicholas, Squeers entered the schoolroom "with a small bundle of papers in his hand, and Mrs. S. followed with a pair of canes." "Let any boy speak a word without leave," said Mr. Squeers," and I'll take the skin off his back." Two letters will serve as samples of the rest: Graymarsh stood up, while Squeers read his letter: 66 Graymarsh's maternal aunt is very glad to hear he's so well and happy, and sends her respectful compliments to Mrs. Squeers, and thinks she must be an angel. She likewise thinks Mr. Squeers is too good for this world; but hopes he may long be spared to carry on the business. Would have sent the two pair of stockings as desired, but is short of money, so forwards a tract instead, and hopes Graymarsh will put his trust in Providence. Hopes, above all, that he will study in every thing to please Mr. and Mrs. Squeers, and look upon them as his only friends; and that he will love Master Squeers; and not object to sleeping five in a bed, which no Christian should. Ah! " said Squeers, folding it up, a delightful letter. affecting indeed." 66 66 Very "" Mobbs was next called, and his letter was read to him: 66 'Mobbs's stepmother," said Squeers, "took to her bed on hearing that he wouldn't eat fat, and has been very ill ever since. She wishes to know, by an early post, where he expects to go to, if he quarrels with his vittles; and with what feelings he could turn up his nose at the cow'sliver broth, after his good master had asked a blessing on it. This was told her in the London newspapers-not by Mr. Squeers, for he is too kind and too good to set anybody against anybody-and it has vexed her so much, Mobbs can't think. She is sorry to find he is discontented, which is sinful and horrid, and hopes Mr. Squeers will flog him into a happier state of mind; with this view, she has also stopped his halfpenny a week pocket-money, and given a double-bladed knife with a corkscrew in it to the missionaries, which she had bought on purpose for him." 66 A sulky state of feeling,” said Squeers, after a terrible pause, during which he had moistened the palm of his right hand again, "won't do. Cheerfulness and contentment must be kept up. Mobbs, come to me!" Mobbs moved slowly toward the desk, rubbing his eyes in anticipation of good cause for doing so; and he soon afterward retired by the side door, with as good a cause as a boy need have. There are still school tyrants who talk with philosophic air of flogging children to make them happier, and others who say with hard tones and clenched hands that "the one thing they will not allow in their schools is a sulky boy or girl," and they mean, when they say so, that if a boy is sulky they take no steps to find out the cause of his disease or the natural remedy for it, but they apply the universal remedy of the old-fashioned quack trainer and whip the poor boy, who is already suffering from some physical or nervous derangement. Squeers and such teachers are brother tyrants. They practise the Squeers's doctrine-" A sulky state of feeling won't do. Cheerfulness and contentment must be kept up. Mobbs, come to me "-to make children cheerful and contented. One of the most heart-stirring cases in Dotheboys Hall was that of poor Smike. He had been sent to Squeers when an infant. He was a young man now, but he had been starved so that he wore still around his long neck the frill of the collar that loving hands had placed there when he was a little child. Ill treatment and lack of proper food had made him almost an imbecile, and he was the drudge of the institution. Nicholas was attracted by the anxious, longing looks of the boy, as his eyes followed Squeers from place to place on their arrival from London. He was lame; and as he feigned to be busy in arranging the table, glanced at the letters with a look so keen, and yet so dispirited and hopeless, that Nicholas could hardly bear to watch him. "What are you bothering about there, Smike?" cried Mrs. Squeers; "let the things alone, can't you." 66 "Eh!" said Squeers, looking up. "Oh! it's you, is it?" "Yes, sir," replied the youth, pressing his hands together, as though to control, by force, the nervous wandering of his fingers; "is there "Well!" said Squeers. “Have you-did anybody-has nothing been heard -about me?" "Devil a bit," replied Squeers testily. The lad withdrew his eyes, and, putting his hand to his face, moved toward the door. "Not a word," resumed Squeers, “and never will be." |