“Come along, youngster. You are like a young bear, I see; all your trouble’s to come. You’ve a lot before you, I can tell you.”
I followed Mr Hostler out of the room, down about half-a-dozen steps, and into a courtyard, where I heard a noise of voices making so great a din that it was impossible to distinguish the words. These sounds came from a long building on the left, to which Mr Hostler led me. He opened a door and pushed me in before him, when I saw one of the most extraordinary sights that I had ever witnessed.
In the room were a number of tables, at which were sitting about fifty boys in about five rows. The majority of these boys were swinging backwards and forwards, like pendulums the wrong end uppermost; others had their hands pressed over their ears, and their heads bent down over a book; the whole of them were repeating words or sentences, portions of which only were audible amidst the deafening din.
In after years, when I have stood at night near a tropical swamp, and have listened to the deafening noise of a thousand bull-frogs, I have always had recalled to me my first visit to the schoolroom of Mr Hostler’s cram-school at Woolwich.
Upon our entering the schoolroom several boys looked up from their books, and the noise for an instant decreased; then, from the far end of the room, a shrill voice exclaimed, “Because the triangle ABC is similar to the triangle DEF, therefore the side AB is to the side DE.” Then a chorus of voices drowned the first voice, and again the uproar proceeded.
“Stop a minute, boys!” said Mr Hostler in a loud voice. “Here’s a new boy—Shepard’s his name. He’s going into the Royal Engineers. I say, Beck, you look out, or he’ll beat you!”
As this speech was made to the whole school, I made a bow—such a one as my father had taught me to make to a lady. A titter ran round the various tables as I did so, and I distinctly saw one boy make a grimace at me.
“Here, Monk,” said Mr Hostler; “you take Shepard; set him his Euclid, and see what he knows in Swat.”
The person addressed was a hard-featured man, with a surly look about him, who, handing me a book, said,—
“What do you know?”