Ho! Ho! Ho! Santa Claus' Reading List

by A. A. Milne

  * * *

  Champion's affair with the Young Tutbury Pet, who was down here in training,--with Black the bargeman,--with the three head boys of Doctor Wapshot's academy, whom he caught maltreating an outlying day-boy of ours, &c.,--are known to all the Rodwell Regis men. He was always victorious. He is modest and kind, like all great men. He has a good, brave, honest understanding. He cannot make verses like young Pinder, or read Greek like Wells the Prefect, who is a perfect young abyss of learning, and knows enough, Prince says, to furnish any six first-class men; but he does his work in a sound downright way, and he is made to be the bravest of soldiers, the best of country parsons, an honest English gentleman wherever he may go.

  * * *

  Old Champion's chief friend and attendant is Young Jack Hall, whom he saved, when drowning, out of the Miller's Pool. The attachment of the two is curious to witness. The smaller lad gambolling, playing tricks round the bigger one, and perpetually making fun of his protector. They are never far apart, and of holidays you may meet them miles away from the school,--George sauntering heavily down the lanes with his big stick, and little Jack larking with the pretty girls in the cottage-windows.

  * * *

  George has a boat on the river, in which, however, he commonly lies smoking, whilst Jack sculls him. He does not play at cricket, except when the school plays the county, or at Lord's in the holidays. The boys can't stand his bowling, and when he hits, it is like trying to catch a cannon-ball. I have seen him at tennis. It is a splendid sight to behold the young fellow bounding over the court with streaming yellow hair, like young Apollo in a flannel jacket.

  * * *

  The other head boys are Lawrence the captain, Bunce, famous chiefly for his magnificent appetite, and Pitman, surnamed Roscius, for his love of the drama. Add to these Swanky, called Macassar, from his partiality to that condiment, and who has varnished boots, wears white gloves on Sundays, and looks out for Miss Pinkerton's school (transferred from Chiswick to Rodwell Regis, and conducted by the nieces of the late Miss Barbara Pinkerton, the friend of our great lexicographer, upon the principles approved by him, and practised by that admirable woman,) as it passes into church.

  * * *

  Representations have been made concerning Mr. Horace Swanky's behavior; rumors have been uttered about notes in verse, conveyed in three-cornered puffs, by Mrs. Ruggles, who serves Miss Pinkerton's young ladies on Fridays,--and how Miss Didow, to whom the tart and enclosure were addressed, tried to make away with herself by swallowing a ball of cotton. But I pass over these absurd reports, as likely to affect the reputation of an admirable seminary conducted by irreproachable females. As they go into church Miss P. driving in her flock of lambkins with the crook of her parasol, how can it be helped if her forces and ours sometimes collide, as the boys are on their way up to the organ-loft? And I don't believe a word about the three-cornered puff, but rather that it was the invention of that jealous Miss Birch, who is jealous of Miss Raby, jealous of everybody who is good and handsome, and who has her own ends in view, or I am very much in error.

  * * *

  THE DEAR BROTHERS.

  * * *

  A MELODRAMA IN SEVERAL ROUNDS.

  * * *

  THE DOCTOR.

  * * *

  MR. TIPPER, Uncle to the Masters Boxall.

  * * *

  BOXALL MAJOR, BOXALL MINOR, BROWN, JONES, SMITH, ROBINSON, TIFFIN MINIMUS.

  * * *

  B. Go it, old Boxall!

  * * *

  J. Give it him, young Boxall!

  * * *

  R. Pitch into him, old Boxall!

  * * *

  S. Two to one on young Boxall!

  * * *

  [Enter TIFFIN MINIMUS, running.

  * * *

  Tiffin Minimus.--Boxalls! you're wanted. (The Doctor to Mr. Tipper.)--Every boy in the school loves them, my dear sir; your nephews are a credit to my establishment. They are orderly, well-conducted, gentlemanlike boys. Let us enter and find them at their studies.

  * * *

  [Enter The DOCTOR and Mr. TIPPER.

  * * *

  GRAND TABLEAU.

  * * *

  THE LITTLE SCHOOL-ROOM.

  * * *

  What they call the little school-room is a small room at the other end of the great school; through which you go to the Doctor's private house, and where Miss Raby sits with her pupils. She has a half-dozen very small ones over whom she presides and teaches them in her simple way, until they are big or learned enough to face the great school-room. Many of them are in a hurry for promotion, the graceless little simpletons, and know no more than their elders when they are well off.

  * * *

  She keeps the accounts, writes out the bills, superintends the linen, and sews on the general shirt-buttons. Think of having such a woman at home to sew on one's shirt-buttons! But peace, peace, thou foolish heart!

  * * *

  Miss Raby is the Doctor's niece. Her mother was a beauty (quite unlike old Zoe therefore); and she married a pupil in the old Doctor's time who was killed afterwards, a captain in the East India service, at the siege of Bhurtpore. Hence a number of Indian children come to the Doctor's; for Raby was very much liked, and the uncle's kind reception of the orphan has been a good speculation for the school-keeper.

  * * *

  It is wonderful how brightly and gayly that little quick creature does her duty. She is the first to rise, and the last to sleep, if any business is to be done. She sees the other two women go off to parties in the town without even so much as wishing to join them. It is Cinderella, only contented to stay at home--content to bear Zoe's scorn and to admit Rosa's superior charms,--and to do her utmost to repay her uncle for his great kindness in housing her.

  * * *

  So you see she works as much as three maid-servants for the wages of one. She is as thankful when the Doctor gives her a new gown, as if he had presented her with a fortune; laughs at his stories most good-humoredly, listens to Zoe's scolding most meekly, admires Rosa with all her heart, and only goes out of the way when Jack Birch shows his sallow face: for she can't bear him, and always finds work when he comes near.

  * * *

  How different she is when some folks approach her! I won't be presumptuous; but I think, I think, I have made a not unfavorable impression in some quarters. However, let us be mum on this subject. I like to see her, because she always looks good-humored; because she is always kind, because she is always modest, because she is fond of those poor little brats,--orphans some of them--because she is rather pretty, I dare say, or because I think so, which comes to the same thing.

  * * *

  Though she is kind to all, it must be owned she shows the most gross favoritism towards the amiable children. She brings them cakes from dessert, and regales them with Zoe's preserves; spends many of her little shillings in presents for her favorites, and will tell them stories by the hour. She has one very sad story about a little boy, who died long ago: the younger children are never weary of hearing about him; and Miss Raby has shown to one of them a lock of the little chap's hair, which she keeps in her work-box to this day.

  * * *

  A HOPELESS CASE.

  * * *

  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.

  * * *

  A WORD ABOUT MISS BIRCH.

  * * *

  "The gentlemen, and especially the younger and more tender of these pupils, will have the advantage of the constant superintendence and affectionate care of Miss Zoe Birch, sister of the principal: whose clearest aim will be to supply (as far as may be) the absent maternal friend."--Prospectus of Rodwell Regis School.

  * * *

  This is all very well in the Doctor's prospectus, and Miss Zoe Birch--(a pretty blossom it is, fifty-five years old, during two score of which she has dosed herself with pills; with a nose as red and a face as sour as a crab-apple)--this is all mighty well in a prospectus. But I should like to know who would take Miss Zoe for a mother, or would have her for one?

  * * *

  The only persons in the house who are not afraid of her are Miss Rosa and I--no, I am afraid of her, though I do know the story about the French usher in 1830--but all the rest tremble before the woman, from the Doctor down to poor Francis the knife-boy, whom she bullies into his miserable blacking-hole.

  * * *

  The Doctor is a pompous and outwardly severe man--but inwardly weak and easy; loving a joke and a glass of port-wine. I get on with him, therefore, much better than Mr. Prince, who scorns him for an ass, and under whose keen eyes the worthy Doctor writhes like a convicted impostor; and many a sunshiny afternoon would he have said, "Mr. T., sir, shall we try another glass of that yellow sealed wine which you seem to like?" (and which he likes even better than I do,) had not the old harridan of a Zoe been down upon us, and insisted on turning me out with her abominable weak coffee. She a mother indeed! A sour-milk generation she would have nursed. She is always croaking, scolding, bullying--yowling at the housemaids, snarling at Miss Raby, bowwowing after the little boys, barking after the big ones. She knows how much every boy eats to an ounce; and her delight is to ply with fat the little ones who can't bear it, and with raw meat those who hate underdone. It was she who caused the Doctor to be eaten out three times; and nearly created a rebellion in the school because she insisted on his flogging Goliath Longman.

  * * *

  The only time that woman is happy is when she comes in of a morning to the little boys' dormitories with a cup of hot Epsom salts, and a sippet of bread. Boo!--the very notion makes me quiver. She stands over them. I saw her do it to young Byles only a few days since; and her presence makes the abomination doubly abominable.

  * * *

  As for attending them in real illness, do you suppose that she would watch a single night for any one of them? Not she. When poor little Charley Davison (that child a lock of whose soft hair I have said how Miss Raby still keeps) lay ill of scarlet fever in the holidays--for the Colonel, the father of these boys, was in India--it was Anne Raby who tended the child, who watched him all through the fever, who never left him while it lasted, or until she had closed the little eyes that were never to brighten or moisten more. Anny watched and deplored him; but it was Miss Birch who wrote the letter announcing his demise, and got the gold chain and locket which the Colonel ordered as a memento of his gratitude. It was through a row with Miss Birch that Frank Davison ran away. I promise you that after he joined his regiment in India, the Ahmednuggur Irregulars, which his gallant father commands, there came over no more annual shawls and presents to Dr. and Miss Birch; and that if she fancied the Colonel was coming home to marry her (on account of her tenderness to his motherless children, which he was always writing about), that notion was very soon given up. But these affairs are of early date, seven years back, and I only heard of them in a very confused manner from Miss Raby, who was a girl, and had just come to Rodwell Regis. She is always very much moved when she speaks about those boys; which is but seldom. I take it the death of the little one still grieves her tender heart.

  * * *

  Yes, it is Miss Birch, who has turned away seventeen ushers and second-masters in eleven years, and half as many French masters, I suppose, since the departure of her favorite, M. Grinche, with her gold watch, &c.; but this is only surmise--that is, from hearsay, and from Miss Rosa taunting her aunt, as she does sometimes, in her graceful way: but besides this, I have another way of keeping her in order.

  * * *

  Whenever she is particularly odious or insolent to Miss Raby, I have but to introduce raspberry jam into the conversation, and the woman holds her tongue. She will understand me. I need not say more.

  * * *

  NOTE: 12th December. I may speak now. I have left the place and don't mind. I say then at once, and without caring twopence for the consequences, that I saw this woman, this mother of the boys, eating jam with a spoon out of Master Wiggins's trunk in the box room: and of this I am ready to take an affidavit any day.

  * * *

  A TRAGEDY.

  * * *

  THE DRAMA OUGHT TO BE REPRESENTED IN ABOUT SIX ACTS.

  * * *

  [The school is hushed. LAWRENCE the Prefect, and Custos of the rods, is marching after the DOCTOR into the operating-room. MASTER BACKHOUSE is about to follow.]

  * * *

  Master Backhouse.--It's all very well, but you see if I don't pay you out after school--you sneak you!

  * * *

  Master Lurcher.--If you do I'll tell again. [Exit
BACKHOUSE.

  * * *

  [The rod is heard from the adjoining apartment. Hwish--hwish--hwish--hwish--hwish--hwish--hwish! [Re-enter BACKHOUSE.

  * * *