Cuthbert Bede

“ For the first fourteen years of his life, the education of Mr. Verdant Green was conducted wholly under the shadow of his paternal roof, upon principles fondly imagined to be the soundest and purest for the formation of his character. Mrs. Green, who was as good and motherly a soul as ever lived, was yet (as we have shewn) one of the Sappeys of Sapcot, a family that were not renowned either for common sense or worldly wisdom, and her notions of a boy's education were of that kind laid down by her favourite poet, Cowper, in his "Tirocinium" that we are ”

“ But thus it is all through life; the new baby displaces the old; the second love supplants the first; we find fresh friends to shut out the memories of former ones; and in nearly everything we discover that there is a Number 2 which can put out of joint the nose of Number 1. ”

“ And then Master Charley would take a malicious pleasure in consoling him, by saying, "Of course, you know, you'll only have to fag for the first two or three years; then—if you get into the fourth form—you'll be able to have a fag for yourself. And it's awful fun, I can tell you, to see the way some of the fags get riled at cricket! You get a feller to give you a few balls, just for practice, and you hit the ball into another feller's ground; and then you tell your fag to go and pick it up. ”

“ So he goes to do it, when the other feller sings out, 'Don't touch that ball, or I'll lick you!' So you tell the fag to come to you, and you say, 'Why don't you do as I tell you?' And he says, 'Please, sir!' and then the little beggar blubbers. So you say to him, 'None of that, sir! Touch your toes!' We always make 'em wear straps on purpose. And then his trousers go tight and beautiful, and you take out your strap and warm him! And then he goes to get the ball, and the other feller sings out, 'I told you to let that ball alone! Come here, sir! Touch your toes!' So he warms him too ”

“ Toosypegs his nurse, when yet in the first crimson blush of his existence, to be "a perfect progidy, mum, which I ought to be able to pronounce, 'avin nuss'd a many parties through their trouble, and being aweer of what is doo to a Hinfant,"—yet we are not aware that his début on the stage of life, although thus applauded by such a clacqueur as the indiscriminating Toosypegs, was announced to the world at large by any other means than the notices in the county papers, and the six-shilling advertisement in the Times. ”

“ Green that these were indispensable to a boy's education. So, when Mr. Verdant Green was (in stable language) "rising" sixteen, he went thrice a week to the Rectory, where Mr. Larkyns bestowed upon him a couple of hours, and taught him to conjugate [tupto] , and get over the Pons Asinorum. Mr. Larkyns found his pupil not a particularly brilliant scholar, but he was a plodding one ”