We should go to school upon a different principle then; and probably it may not be a useless waste of imagination to reflect a little upon the novel scenes that would then be presented in the halls of the academy.
“My son Bob, Mr. Professor—this is Bob, sir, trying to hide himself behind the door—stand up, Bob, and behave like a man—Bob, Mr. Professor, hasn’t got any pride, and has the smallest quantity of dignity. He’s always letting himself down, and never tries to hyst himself up—likes the raggedest boys the best, Mr. Professor, and prefers the company of the sweeps to going to the nicest of tea-parties. Bob always feels flat in genteel society, does Bob.”
“Ah—I comprehend—a very common case, indeed; but curable—take Bob, Mr. Simpkins, and touch him up in the region of self-esteem. Don’t be afraid—we’ll make Bob—you’ll have to call him Master Robert then—as proud as Lucifer, in a week or two. When we send him home, he will hardly speak to his own father, and he wont own any of his relations.”
“And here is Peter, sir, and Sam—nice boys as ever was, only they don’t care nothing for nobody, and will have it all their own way, which is apt to be the wrong way, if not a bad way.”
“Ho! ho! knock up a bump in the region of approbativeness, so that they may quit thinking for themselves, and always want somebody to think for them.”
“Please, Mr. Professor, our Tom appropriates and conveys—sugar, sir, or pennies convertible to sugar—he bones, sir, and he filches, sir, whatever he can lay his blessed little hands upon, the darling; every thing is fish that comes to Tom’s net.”
“Just so—Tom has not yet got beyond the first principle of human nature, which impels us to help ourselves to whatever we want—the application must be made to Tom, sharply, just where his conscience ought to be. Bump up a conscience for Tommy.”
The disrespectful, who, in some way or other, are disposed to make faces at their superiors, would require to be rapped rather soundly in and about “veneration;” and we are not now to be told that a smart blow on the eye is sure to awaken vociferous displays of the faculty of “language.” For him who comes too late, which is bad—or stays too late, which is worse—what could be better than a forcible appeal to “time?” And if a boy—your boy, or any other body’s boy—cannot be easily made to see the essential difference between his own selfish will and your authoritative behest, you have only to perform for him a tune upon his slumbering organ of “comparison,” and you shall have music, you may depend upon it. If the same rebellious individual is slow to discern why he should obey, lend him a smart fillip upon his “casualty,” educive of the why, and provocative of the wherefore; and if you yourself cannot discover the point of a joke, taking the fact for granted that it is a joke which comes to a point—some jokes, like some people, come to nothings—depend upon it that your “wit” is beginning to lose its edge, and is getting to be somewhat rusty in the method of its operation.
No one, we presume, will venture to deny that “cautiousness,” well rubbed and roused, has a tendency to keep our fingers out of the fire; or that an inflammation of our “combativeness” will give us joy in the facing of our foe. But what, let us ask, what is to be done, if, like the peculiar one who now comes under our special notice—what is to be done, if in all the qualities which go to make up our mentality, we have not one scintilla of self reliance and expectation, and are like
TRIBULATION TREPID,