ind Mr. Punch, a happy change has come over the character of our Public Schools. The chief of them, I have been told, of what is called mediæval foundation, were originally intended to educate the sons of poor gentlemen. But now, Sir, the purpose they have come to serve is just the reverse of that. A correspondent of the Morning Post, signing himself Pavidus—evidently a mean, shabby, needy sprig of gentility, afraid, as his signature means, if I am not misinformed, which, by the tenor of his letter, he plainly confesses himself to be, of having to fork out more than he is able—writes to complain, forsooth, of "the growing abuse of 'tips' and pocket-money allowance." This contemptible indigent fellow says:—
"It is within my knowledge that at one of the chief public schools—and I am told that the same rule holds good at the other schools of this class—a boy who does not bring back £5 each half is set down by 'the house' as a 'duffer' and as of 'no use.' In other words, he is under the cold shade of his fellow-boarders, and is subject to constant and galling humiliation."
Very well. Let him be off, then. A first-class Public School is no place for him any more than a first-class carriage. Let the beggar who doesn't like it, leave it—go second or third class, and be taught the three R's under Forster's Education Act. But now read what Pavidus has the insolence to say further:—
"It is not every lad that can bear lightly the gibes and jeers of the young cotton lords whose home ethics teach them to measure the quality of a gentleman by the amount of money he can spend. The result is inevitable. The 'soc' shop gives credit. A loan is soon and easily contracted, and the boy, smarting under the results of his comparative poverty, begins his career of debt and deceit in order to hold his own among his more pecunious fellows."
Mr. Pavidus, in his pride and poverty, seems very indignant at the idea of wealthy young cotton lords treating poor young pedigree lords with contempt. I dare say he is some poor nobleman's relation himself, the Honourable Pavidus, perhaps, or Right Honourable Pavidus.
When he wrote the above sneer at cotton lords probably he turned up his nose. That is, I mean, he tried to, for it is a nose that don't turn up by nature, I'm sure. I'll be bound it's one of those aquiline hook-noses which your bloated aristocrats are so vain of, none of your jolly button-mushroom snub. I fancy I see Pavidus—Lord Pavidus, perhaps—looking down upon myself and sniffing at me, like a footman with too strong a bouquet in his buttonhole. He and his, and such as they, had best keep themselves to themselves. If our boys are too well-off at school for theirs, and yet theirs are above being sent to regular pauper schools, why don't your Nobs and Swells get up poor's schools of their own, poor gentlemen's schools, if they like to call them so? At such schools the rule might be that no boy was to come from home to school with more than five shillings in his pocket, nor be allowed above sixpence a week.
Dress and board could be cut down to the same plain, poverty-stricken scale. Such regulations would keep the high-bred paupers what they call select enough without any necessity, which they that pride themselves so on their pronunciation might perhaps imagine, for an entrance examination to try if new-comers could pronounce their h's. And so, poor nobility and gentry, being brought up in that frugal sort of way, would continue in it, because able to afford no better, and by-and-by, I dare say, get to pride themselves upon it, and make a merit and a boast of their despicable economy; so that plain living and dressing and eating and drinking will some day perhaps be considered the particular tokens of high birth and breeding, and of class-distinction between Plantagenet Mowbray Fitz-Montague Norfolk Howard and
Shoddy.