Our School Page #2

"Our School" is a short, semi-autobiographical piece by Charles Dickens that reflects on his own experiences as a young boy at a boarding school. Through a blend of humor and critique, Dickens explores the harsh realities of educational institutions in the 19th century, highlighting the strict discipline, inadequate teaching methods, and the impact of such an environment on young minds. The narrative captures both the camaraderie among students and the frustrations they face, offering a poignant commentary on the education system of Dickens's time.

• Short story

								

with whom he held familiar converse.  He lived in the parlour, and went
out for his walks, and never took the least notice of us—even of us, the
first boy—unless to give us a deprecatory kick, or grimly to take our hat
off and throw it away, when he encountered us out of doors, which
unpleasant ceremony he always performed as he passed—not even
condescending to stop for the purpose.  Some of us believed that the
classical attainments of this phenomenon were terrific, but that his
penmanship and arithmetic were defective, and he had come there to mend
them; others, that he was going to set up a school, and had paid the
Chief ‘twenty-five pound down,’ for leave to see Our School at work.  The
gloomier spirits even said that he was going to buy us; against which
contingency, conspiracies were set on foot for a general defection and
running away.  However, he never did that.  After staying for a quarter,
during which period, though closely observed, he was never seen to do
anything but make pens out of quills, write small hand in a secret
portfolio, and punch the point of the sharpest blade in his knife into
his desk all over it, he too disappeared, and his place knew him no more.

There was another boy, a fair, meek boy, with a delicate complexion and
rich curling hair, who, we found out, or thought we found out (we have no
idea now, and probably had none then, on what grounds, but it was
confidentially revealed from mouth to mouth), was the son of a Viscount
who had deserted his lovely mother.  It was understood that if he had his
rights, he would be worth twenty thousand a year.  And that if his mother
ever met his father, she would shoot him with a silver pistol, which she
carried, always loaded to the muzzle, for that purpose.  He was a very
suggestive topic.  So was a young Mulatto, who was always believed
(though very amiable) to have a dagger about him somewhere.  But, we
think they were both outshone, upon the whole, by another boy who claimed
to have been born on the twenty-ninth of February, and to have only one
birthday in five years.  We suspect this to have been a fiction—but he
lived upon it all the time he was at Our School.

The principal currency of Our School was slate pencil.  It had some
inexplicable value, that was never ascertained, never reduced to a
standard.  To have a great hoard of it was somehow to be rich.  We used
to bestow it in charity, and confer it as a precious boon upon our chosen
friends.  When the holidays were coming, contributions were solicited for
certain boys whose relatives were in India, and who were appealed for
under the generic name of ‘Holiday-stoppers,’—appropriate marks of
remembrance that should enliven and cheer them in their homeless state.
Personally, we always contributed these tokens of sympathy in the form of
slate pencil, and always felt that it would be a comfort and a treasure
to them.

Our School was remarkable for white mice.  Red-polls, linnets, and even
canaries, were kept in desks, drawers, hat-boxes, and other strange
refuges for birds; but white mice were the favourite stock.  The boys
trained the mice, much better than the masters trained the boys.  We
recall one white mouse, who lived in the cover of a Latin dictionary, who
ran up ladders, drew Roman chariots, shouldered muskets, turned wheels,
and even made a very creditable appearance on the stage as the Dog of
Montargis.  He might have achieved greater things, but for having the
misfortune to mistake his way in a triumphal procession to the Capitol,
when he fell into a deep inkstand, and was dyed black and drowned.  The
mice were the occasion of some most ingenious engineering, in the
construction of their houses and instruments of performance.  The famous
one belonged to a company of proprietors, some of whom have since made
Railroads, Engines, and Telegraphs; the chairman has erected mills and
bridges in New Zealand.

The usher at Our School, who was considered to know everything as opposed
to the Chief, who was considered to know nothing, was a bony,
gentle-faced, clerical-looking young man in rusty black.  It was
whispered that he was sweet upon one of Maxby’s sisters (Maxby lived
close by, and was a day pupil), and further that he ‘favoured Maxby.’  As
we remember, he taught Italian to Maxby’s sisters on half-holidays.  He
once went to the play with them, and wore a white waistcoat and a rose:
which was considered among us equivalent to a declaration.  We were of
opinion on that occasion, that to the last moment he expected Maxby’s
father to ask him to dinner at five o’clock, and therefore neglected his
own dinner at half-past one, and finally got none.  We exaggerated in our
imaginations the extent to which he punished Maxby’s father’s cold meat
at supper; and we agreed to believe that he was elevated with wine and
water when he came home.  But, we all liked him; for he had a good
knowledge of boys, and would have made it a much better school if he had
had more power.  He was writing master, mathematical master, English
master, made out the bills, mended the pens, and did all sorts of things.
He divided the little boys with the Latin master (they were smuggled
through their rudimentary books, at odd times when there was nothing else
to do), and he always called at parents’ houses to inquire after sick
boys, because he had gentlemanly manners.  He was rather musical, and on
some remote quarter-day had bought an old trombone; but a bit of it was
lost, and it made the most extraordinary sounds when he sometimes tried
to play it of an evening.  His holidays never began (on account of the
bills) until long after ours; but, in the summer vacations he used to
take pedestrian excursions with a knapsack; and at Christmas time, he
went to see his father at Chipping Norton, who we all said (on no
authority) was a dairy-fed pork-butcher.  Poor fellow!  He was very low
all day on Maxby’s sister’s wedding-day, and afterwards was thought to
favour Maxby more than ever, though he had been expected to spite him.
He has been dead these twenty years.  Poor fellow!

Our remembrance of Our School, presents the Latin master as a colourless
doubled-up near-sighted man with a crutch, who was always cold, and
always putting onions into his ears for deafness, and always disclosing
ends of flannel under all his garments, and almost always applying a ball
of pocket-handkerchief to some part of his face with a screwing action
round and round.  He was a very good scholar, and took great pains where
he saw intelligence and a desire to learn: otherwise, perhaps not.  Our
memory presents him (unless teased into a passion) with as little energy
as colour—as having been worried and tormented into monotonous
feebleness—as having had the best part of his life ground out of him in a
Mill of boys.  We remember with terror how he fell asleep one sultry
afternoon with the little smuggled class before him, and awoke not when
the footstep of the Chief fell heavy on the floor; how the Chief aroused
								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes