In an instant my eyes were dried. I cast one glance at the speaker—he was a tall, slim, reckless looking fellow, named Prettyman—and from that day to this I have neither forgotten it, nor, I fear, forgiven him.
In the night, when we retired to our rooms, I found that my bed was in a room with two others, Prettyman and a country bumpkin, by the name of Muzzy. As usual on going to bed, I kneeled down to say my prayers, putting my hands up in the attitude of supplication. I had scarcely uttered to myself the first words, “Our Father,” but to the ear that heareth all things, when Prettyman exclaimed—
“He’s praying! ‘By the Apostle Paul!’ as Richard the Third says, that’s against rules. Suppose we cob him, Muzzy?” Muzzy laughed, and got into bed; and I am ashamed to say that I arose with the prayer dying away from my thoughts, and indignation and shame usurping them, and sneaked into bed, where I said my prayers in silence, and wept myself in silence to sleep. In the morning, with a heavy heart, and none but the kind Harriet to comfort me, I betook myself to the academy.
Parents little know what a sensitive child suffers at a public school. I verily believe that these schools engender often more treachery, falsehood and cruelty than exists in West India slavery; I was about saying even in the brains of an abolitionist. Most tenderly nurtured, under the care of an affectionate old aunt, who was always fixing my clothes to keep me warm, coddling up something nice to pamper me with, watching all my outgoings and incomings, and seeing that everything around me conduced to my convenience and comfort, the contrast was indeed great when I appeared at the Belle Air academy, one of the smallest boys there, and subjected to the taunts and buffetings of every larger boy than myself in the institution. My father little knew what agony it cost me to be made a man of.
I am not certain that the good produced by such academies is equal to their evils. I remember well for two or three nights after Prettyman laughed at me, that I crept into bed to say my prayers, and, at last, under his ridicule—for he practised his gift on me every night—I not only neglected to say them, but began to feel angry towards my aunt that she had ever learned them to me, as they brought so much contempt upon me. Yet, such is the power of conscience, at that tender age, that, when I awoke in the morning of the first night that I had not prayed, I felt myself guilty and unworthy, and went into the garden and wept aloud, tears of sincere contrition.
Too often, in public schools, the first thing a youth learns from his elders, is to laugh at parental authority, and to exhibit to the ridicule of his fellows the letter of advice which his parent or guardian feels it his duty to write to him, taking care, with a jest upon them, to pocket the money they send, with an air of incipient profligacy which, any one may see, will soon not only be rank but prurient—such a moral contagion should be avoided, and, I therefore am inclined to think that the Catholic mode of tuition, where some one of the teachers is with the scholars, not only by day but by night, is preferable. And, in fact, any one who has witnessed the respectful familiarity they teach their pupils to feel and act towards them, and the kindness with which they return it, cannot but be impressed with the truth of my remark.
There were nearly one hundred pupils at Belle Air, at the period of which I write, and the only assistant Mr. Sears had, was a gaunt fellow named Dogberry. Like his illustrious namesake in Shakspeare, from whom I believe he was a legitimate descendant, he might truly have been “written down an ass.”
The boys invented all sorts of annoyances to torture Dogberry withal. A favorite one was, when Mr. Sears was in the city, which was at periods not unfrequent, for them to assemble in the school before Dogberry came, and setting one by the door to give notice when the usher was within a few feet of it, to begin as soon as he appeared in sight, to shout, as with one voice—first Dog, and then, after a pause, by way of a chorus, berry.
As soon as notice was given by the watcher, he leaped to his seat, and every tongue was silent, and every eye upon the book before it. The rage of Dogberry knew no bounds on these occasions. He did not like to tell the principal, for the circumstance would have proved not only his want of authority over the boys, but the contempt in which they held him.
A trick which Prettyman played him, nearly caused his death, and, luckily for the delinquent, he was never discovered. Dogberry was very penurious, and he saved two-thirds of his salary; as it was not large, he had, of course, to live humbly. He dined at Halls and took breakfast and supper in his lodgings, if he ever took them, and the quality of the dinner of which he made himself the receptacle, caused it to be doubted. His lodgings were the dormant story of a log cabin, to which he had entrance by a rough flight of stairs without the house and against its side. Under the stairs there was a large mud-hole, and Prettyman contrived one gusty night to pull them down, with the intention of calling the usher in the tone of Mr. Sears, for he was a good mimic, and causing him to fall in the mud. Unluckily, the usher heard the racket without, and not dreaming it was the fall of the stairs, he leaped from his bed, and hurried out to see what it was. He fell on them, and though no bones were broken, he was laid up for several weeks. The wind always had the credit of the affair, and Prettyman won great applause for his speedy assistance and sympathy with Dogberry, whom he visited constantly during his confinement.