“I've no pin, sir.”
“Well down with you to the tail——now, boys.” *
* At the spelling lesson the children were obliged to
put down each a pin, he who held the first place got
them all with the exception of the queen—that is the
boy who held the second place! who got two; and the
prince, the third who got one. The last boy in the
class was called Bobtail.
Having gone through the spelling-task, it was Mat's custom to give out six hard words selected according to his judgment—as a final test; but he did not always confine himself to that. Sometimes he would put a number of syllables arbitrarily together, forming a most heterogeneous combination of articulate sounds.
“Now, boys, here's a deep word, that'll thry yez: come Larry spell me-mo-man-dran-san-ti-fi-can-du-ban-dan-li-al-i-ty, or mis-an-thro-po-mor-phi-ta-ni-a-nus-mi-ca-li-a-lioy;—that's too hard for you, is it? Well, then, spell phthisic. Oh, that's physic you're spellin'. Now, Larry, do you know the difference between physic and phthisic?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, I'll expound it: phthisic, you see, manes—whisht, boys: will yez hould yer tongues there—phthisic, Larry, signifies—that is, phthisic—mind, it's not physic I'm expounding, but phthisic—boys, will yez stop yer noise there—signifies——but, Larry, it's so deep a word in larnin' that I should draw it out on a slate for you. And now I remimber, man alive, you're not far enough on yet to understand it: but what's physic, Larry?”
“Isn't that sir, what my father tuck the day he got sick, sir?”
“That's the very thing, Larry: it has what larned men call a medical property, and resembles little ricketty Dan Reilly there—it retrogrades. Och! Och! I'm the boy that knows things—you see now how I expounded them two hard words for yez, boys—don't yez?”
“Yes, sir,” etc., etc.