“Hark! don’t you hear, my little man, it’s really striking three?—
An hour when boys should be at school to learn their A B C.
The School Board man will take you up but only for your good,
And make you go to school.” Says he, “I only wish he would.
“If there’s a school for such as me will teach me how to write,
And read and spell and do a sum, I should be then all right,
I should be jolly glad, for then I might find some employ;
But Walker as to that!” says he—he was a vulgar boy.
I gave that boy a sixpence. Passing on I heard him cry,
“Ain’t that old buffer werry kind!—oh, ain’t he? Oh, my eye!”