Reprinted Pieces

by Dickens, Charles

  punch the point of the sharpest blade in his knife into his desk

  all over it, he too disappeared, and his place knew him no more.

  There was another boy, a fair, meek boy, with a delicate complexion

  and rich curling hair, who, we found out, or thought we found out

  (we have no idea now, and probably had none then, on what grounds,

  but it was confidentially revealed from mouth to mouth), was the

  son of a Viscount who had deserted his lovely mother. It was

  understood that if he had his rights, he would be worth twenty

  thousand a year. And that if his mother ever met his father, she

  would shoot him with a silver pistol, which she carried, always

  loaded to the muzzle, for that purpose. He was a very suggestive

  topic. So was a young Mulatto, who was always believed (though

  very amiable) to have a dagger about him somewhere. But, we think

  they were both outshone, upon the whole, by another boy who claimed

  to have been born on the twenty-ninth of February, and to have only

  one birthday in five years. We suspect this to have been a fiction

  - but he lived upon it all the time he was at Our School.

  The principal currency of Our School was slate pencil. It had some

  inexplicable value, that was never ascertained, never reduced to a

  standard. To have a great hoard of it was somehow to be rich. We

  used to bestow it in charity, and confer it as a precious boon upon

  our chosen friends. When the holidays were coming, contributions

  were solicited for certain boys whose relatives were in India, and

  who were appealed for under the generic name of 'Holiday-stoppers,'

  - appropriate marks of remembrance that should enliven and cheer

  them in their homeless state. Personally, we always contributed

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  these tokens of sympathy in the form of slate pencil, and always

  felt that it would be a comfort and a treasure to them.

  Our School was remarkable for white mice. Red-polls, linnets, and

  even canaries, were kept in desks, drawers, hat-boxes, and other

  strange refuges for birds; but white mice were the favourite stock.

  The boys trained the mice, much better than the masters trained the

  boys. We recall one white mouse, who lived in the cover of a Latin

  dictionary, who ran up ladders, drew Roman chariots, shouldered

  muskets, turned wheels, and even made a very creditable appearance

  on the stage as the Dog of Montargis. He might have achieved

  greater things, but for having the misfortune to mistake his way in

  a triumphal procession to the Capitol, when he fell into a deep

  inkstand, and was dyed black and drowned. The mice were the

  occasion of some most ingenious engineering, in the construction of

  their houses and instruments of performance. The famous one

  belonged to a company of proprietors, some of whom have since made

  Railroads, Engines, and Telegraphs; the chairman has erected mills

  and bridges in New Zealand.

  The usher at Our School, who was considered to know everything as

  opposed to the Chief, who was considered to know nothing, was a

  bony, gentle-faced, clerical-looking young man in rusty black. It

  was whispered that he was sweet upon one of Maxby's sisters (Maxby

  lived close by, and was a day pupil), and further that he 'favoured

  Maxby.' As we remember, he taught Italian to Maxby's sisters on

  half-holidays. He once went to the play with them, and wore a

  white waistcoat and a rose: which was considered among us

  equivalent to a declaration. We were of opinion on that occasion,

  that to the last moment he expected Maxby's father to ask him to

  dinner at five o'clock, and therefore neglected his own dinner at

  half-past one, and finally got none. We exaggerated in our

  imaginations the extent to which he punished Maxby's father's cold

  meat at supper; and we agreed to believe that he was elevated with

  wine and water when he came home. But, we all liked him; for he

  had a good knowledge of boys, and would have made it a much better

  school if he had had more power. He was writing master,

  mathematical master, English master, made out the bills, mended the

  pens, and did all sorts of things. He divided the little boys with

  the Latin master (they were smuggled through their rudimentary

  books, at odd times when there was nothing else to do), and he

  always called at parents' houses to inquire after sick boys,

  because he had gentlemanly manners. He was rather musical, and on

  some remote quarter-day had bought an old trombone; but a bit of it

  was lost, and it made the most extraordinary sounds when he

  sometimes tried to play it of an evening. His holidays never began

  (on account of the bills) until long after ours; but, in the summer

  vacations he used to take pedestrian excursions with a knapsack;

  and at Christmas time, he went to see his father at Chipping

  Norton, who we all said (on no authority) was a dairy-fed porkbutcher.

  Poor fellow! He was very low all day on Maxby's sister's

  wedding-day, and afterwards was thought to favour Maxby more than

  ever, though he had been expected to spite him. He has been dead

  these twenty years. Poor fellow!

  Our remembrance of Our School, presents the Latin master as a

  colourless doubled-up near-sighted man with a crutch, who was

  always cold, and always putting onions into his ears for deafness,

  and always disclosing ends of flannel under all his garments, and

  almost always applying a ball of pocket-handkerchief to some part

  of his face with a screwing action round and round. He was a very

  good scholar, and took great pains where he saw intelligence and a

  desire to learn: otherwise, perhaps not. Our memory presents him

  (unless teased into a passion) with as little energy as colour - as

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  having been worried and tormented into monotonous feebleness - as

  having had the best part of his life ground out of him in a Mill of

  boys. We remember with terror how he fell asleep one sultry

  afternoon with the little smuggled class before him, and awoke not

  when the footstep of the Chief fell heavy on the floor; how the

  Chief aroused him, in the midst of a dread silence, and said, 'Mr.

  Blinkins, are you ill, sir?' how he blushingly replied, 'Sir,

  rather so;' how the Chief retorted with severity, 'Mr. Blinkins,

  this is no place to be ill in' (which was very, very true), and

  walked back solemn as the ghost in Hamlet, until, catching a

  wandering eye, he called that boy for inattention, and happily

  expressed his feelings towards the Latin master through the medium

  of a substitute.

  There was a fat little dancing-master who used to come in a gig,

  and taught the more advanced among us hornpipes (as an

  accomplishment in great social demand in after life); and there was

  a brisk little French master who used to come in the sunniest

  weather, with a handleless umbrella, and to whom the Chief was

  always polite, because (as we believed), if the Chief offended him,

  he would instantly address the Chief in French, a
nd for ever

  confound him before the boys with his inability to understand or

  reply.

  There was besides, a serving man, whose name was Phil. Our

  retrospective glance presents Phil as a shipwrecked carpenter, cast

  away upon the desert island of a school, and carrying into practice

  an ingenious inkling of many trades. He mended whatever was

  broken, and made whatever was wanted. He was general glazier,

  among other things, and mended all the broken windows - at the

  prime cost (as was darkly rumoured among us) of ninepence, for

  every square charged three-and-six to parents. We had a high

  opinion of his mechanical genius, and generally held that the Chief

  'knew something bad of him,' and on pain of divulgence enforced

  Phil to be his bondsman. We particularly remember that Phil had a

  sovereign contempt for learning: which engenders in us a respect

  for his sagacity, as it implies his accurate observation of the

  relative positions of the Chief and the ushers. He was an

  impenetrable man, who waited at table between whiles, and

  throughout 'the half' kept the boxes in severe custody. He was

  morose, even to the Chief, and never smiled, except at breaking-up,

  when, in acknowledgment of the toast, 'Success to Phil! Hooray!'

  he would slowly carve a grin out of his wooden face, where it would

  remain until we were all gone. Nevertheless, one time when we had

  the scarlet fever in the school, Phil nursed all the sick boys of

  his own accord, and was like a mother to them.

  There was another school not far off, and of course Our School

  could have nothing to say to that school. It is mostly the way

  with schools, whether of boys or men. Well! the railway has

  swallowed up ours, and the locomotives now run smoothly over its

  ashes.

  So fades and languishes, grows dim and dies,

  All that this world is proud of,

  - and is not proud of, too. It had little reason to be proud of

  Our School, and has done much better since in that way, and will do

  far better yet.

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  OUR VESTRY

  WE have the glorious privilege of being always in hot water if we

  like. We are a shareholder in a Great Parochial British Joint

  Stock Bank of Balderdash. We have a Vestry in our borough, and can

  vote for a vestryman - might even BE a vestryman, mayhap, if we

  were inspired by a lofty and noble ambition. Which we are not.

  Our Vestry is a deliberative assembly of the utmost dignity and

  importance. Like the Senate of ancient Rome, its awful gravity

  overpowers (or ought to overpower) barbarian visitors. It sits in

  the Capitol (we mean in the capital building erected for it),

  chiefly on Saturdays, and shakes the earth to its centre with the

  echoes of its thundering eloquence, in a Sunday paper.

  To get into this Vestry in the eminent capacity of Vestryman,

  gigantic efforts are made, and Herculean exertions used. It is

  made manifest to the dullest capacity at every election, that if we

  reject Snozzle we are done for, and that if we fail to bring in

  Blunderbooze at the top of the poll, we are unworthy of the dearest

  rights of Britons. Flaming placards are rife on all the dead walls

  in the borough, public-houses hang out banners, hackney-cabs burst

  into full-grown flowers of type, and everybody is, or should be, in

  a paroxysm of anxiety.

  At these momentous crises of the national fate, we are much

  assisted in our deliberations by two eminent volunteers; one of

  whom subscribes himself A Fellow Parishioner, the other, A Rate-

  Payer. Who they are, or what they are, or where they are, nobody

  knows; but, whatever one asserts, the other contradicts. They are

  both voluminous writers, indicting more epistles than Lord

  Chesterfield in a single week; and the greater part of their

  feelings are too big for utterance in anything less than capital

  letters. They require the additional aid of whole rows of notes of

  admiration, like balloons, to point their generous indignation; and

  they sometimes communicate a crushing severity to stars. As thus:

  MEN OF MOONEYMOUNT.

  Is it, or is it not, a * * * to saddle the parish with a debt of

  2,745 pounds 6S. 9D., yet claim to be a RIGID ECONOMIST?

  Is it, or is it not, a * * * to state as a fact what is proved to

  be BOTH A MORAL AND A PHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITY?

  Is it, or is it not, a * * * to call 2,745 pounds 6S. 9D. nothing;

  and nothing, something?

  Do you, or do you NOT want a * * * TO REPRESENT YOU IN THE VESTRY?

  Your consideration of these questions is recommended to you by

  A FELLOW PARISHIONER.

  It was to this important public document that one of our first

  orators, MR. MAGG (of Little Winkling Street), adverted, when he

  opened the great debate of the fourteenth of November by saying,

  'Sir, I hold in my hand an anonymous slander' - and when the

  interruption, with which he was at that point assailed by the

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  opposite faction, gave rise to that memorable discussion on a point

  of order which will ever be remembered with interest by

  constitutional assemblies. In the animated debate to which we

  refer, no fewer than thirty-seven gentlemen, many of them of great

  eminence, including MR. WIGSBY (of Chumbledon Square), were seen

  upon their legs at one time; and it was on the same great occasion

  that DOGGINSON - regarded in our Vestry as 'a regular John Bull:'

  we believe, in consequence of his having always made up his mind on

  every subject without knowing anything about it - informed another

  gentleman of similar principles on the opposite side, that if he

  'cheek'd him,' he would resort to the extreme measure of knocking

  his blessed head off.

  This was a great occasion. But, our Vestry shines habitually. In

  asserting its own pre-eminence, for instance, it is very strong.

  On the least provocation, or on none, it will be clamorous to know

  whether it is to be 'dictated to,' or 'trampled on,' or 'ridden

  over rough-shod.' Its great watchword is Self-government. That is

  to say, supposing our Vestry to favour any little harmless disorder

  like Typhus Fever, and supposing the Government of the country to

  be, by any accident, in such ridiculous hands, as that any of its

  authorities should consider it a duty to object to Typhus Fever -

  obviously an unconstitutional objection - then, our Vestry cuts in

  with a terrible manifesto about Self-government, and claims its

  independent right to have as much Typhus Fever as pleases itself.

  Some absurd and dangerous persons have represented, on the other

  hand, that though our Vestry may be able to 'beat the bounds' of

  its own parish, it may not be able to beat the bounds of its own

  diseases; which (say they) spread over the whole land, in an ever

  expanding circle of waste, and misery, and death, and widowhood,

  and orphanage, and desolation. But, our Vestry makes short work of

  any such fellows as these.

  It
was our Vestry - pink of Vestries as it is - that in support of

  its favourite principle took the celebrated ground of denying the

  existence of the last pestilence that raged in England, when the

  pestilence was raging at the Vestry doors. Dogginson said it was

  plums; Mr. Wigsby (of Chumbledon Square) said it was oysters; Mr.

  Magg (of Little Winkling Street) said, amid great cheering, it was

  the newspapers. The noble indignation of our Vestry with that un-

  English institution the Board of Health, under those circumstances,

  yields one of the finest passages in its history. It wouldn't hear

  of rescue. Like Mr. Joseph Miller's Frenchman, it would be drowned

  and nobody should save it. Transported beyond grammar by its

  kindled ire, it spoke in unknown tongues, and vented unintelligible

  bellowings, more like an ancient oracle than the modern oracle it

  is admitted on all hands to be. Rare exigencies produce rare

  things; and even our Vestry, new hatched to the woful time, came

  forth a greater goose than ever.

  But this, again, was a special occasion. Our Vestry, at more

  ordinary periods, demands its meed of praise.

  Our Vestry is eminently parliamentary. Playing at Parliament is

  its favourite game. It is even regarded by some of its members as

  a chapel of ease to the House of Commons: a Little Go to be passed

  first. It has its strangers' gallery, and its reported debates

  (see the Sunday paper before mentioned), and our Vestrymen are in

  and out of order, and on and off their legs, and above all are

  transcendently quarrelsome, after the pattern of the real original.

  Our Vestry being assembled, Mr. Magg never begs to trouble Mr.

  Wigsby with a simple inquiry. He knows better than that. Seeing

  the honourable gentleman, associated in their minds with Chumbledon

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  Square, in his place, he wishes to ask that honourable gentleman

  what the intentions of himself, and those with whom he acts, may

  be, on the subject of the paving of the district known as Piggleum

  Buildings? Mr. Wigsby replies (with his eye on next Sunday's

  paper) that in reference to the question which has been put to him

  by the honourable gentleman opposite, he must take leave to say,

  that if that honourable gentleman had had the courtesy to give him

  notice of that question, he (Mr. Wigsby) would have consulted with