Who will care to appear
In the Fiend’s Souvenir,
Is a question to mortals most vital;
But the very first leaf,
It’s the public belief,
Will be fill’d by a Lady of Title!
THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD.
I ONCE, for a very short time indeed, had the honour of being a schoolmaster, and was invested with the important office of “rearing the tender thought,” and “teaching the young idea how to shoot;” of educating in the principles of the Established Church, and bestowing the strictest attention to morals. The case was this; my young friend G——, a graduate of Oxford, and an ingenious and worthy man, thought proper, some months back, to establish, or endeavour to establish, an academy for young gentlemen, in my immediate vicinity. He had already procured nine day-pupils to begin with, whom he himself taught,—prudence as yet prohibiting the employment of ushers,—when he was summoned hastily to attend upon a dying relative in Hampshire, from whom he had some expectations. This was a dilemma to poor G——, who had no one to leave in charge of his three classes; and he could not bear the idea of playing truant himself so soon after commencing business. In his extremity he applied to me as his forlorn hope, and one forlorn enough; for it is well-known among my friends that I have little Latin, and less Greek, and am, on every account, a worse accountant. I urged these objections to G——, but in vain, for he had no “friend in need,” learned or unlearned, within any reasonable distance, and, as he said to comfort me, “in three or four days merely the boys could not unlearn much of anything.”
