Book II

_School-Time_



Chapter I

Tom's "First Half"


Tom Tulliver'S sufferings during the first quarter he was at King's
Lorton, under the distinguished care of the Rev. Walter Stelling, were
rather severe. At Mr. Jacob's academy life had not presented itself to
him as a difficult problem; there were plenty of fellows to play with,
and Tom being good at all active games,--fighting especially,--had
that precedence among them which appeared to him inseparable from the
personality of Tom Tulliver. Mr. Jacobs himself, familiarly known as
Old Goggles, from his habit of wearing spectacles, imposed no painful
awe; and if it was the property of snuffy old hypocrites like him to
write like copperplate and surround their signatures with arabesques,
to spell without forethought, and to spout "my name is Norval" without
bungling, Tom, for his part, was glad he was not in danger of those
mean accomplishments. He was not going to be a snuffy schoolmaster,
he, but a substantial man, like his father, who used to go hunting
when he was younger, and rode a capital black mare,--as pretty a bit
of horse-flesh as ever you saw; Tom had heard what her points were a
hundred times. _He_ meant to go hunting too, and to be generally
respected. When people were grown up, he considered, nobody inquired
about their writing and spelling; when he was a man, he should be
master of everything, and do just as he liked. It had been very
difficult for him to reconcile himself to the idea that his
school-time was to be prolonged and that he was not to be brought up
to his father's business, which he had always thought extremely
pleasant; for it was nothing but riding about, giving orders, and
going to market; and he thought that a clergyman would give him a
great many Scripture lessons, and probably make him learn the Gospel
and Epistle on a Sunday, as well as the Collect. But in the absence of
specific information, it was impossible for him to imagine that school
and a schoolmaster would be something entirely different from the
academy of Mr. Jacobs. So, not to be at a deficiency, in case of his
finding genial companions, he had taken care to carry with him a small
box of percussion-caps; not that there was anything particular to be
done with them, but they would serve to impress strange boys with a
sense of his familiarity with guns. Thus poor Tom, though he saw very
clearly through Maggie's illusions, was not without illusions of his
own, which were to be cruelly dissipated by his enlarged experience at
King's Lorton.

He had not been there a fortnight before it was evident to him that
life, complicated not only with the Latin grammar but with a new
standard of English pronunciation, was a very difficult business, made
all the more obscure by a thick mist of bash fulness. Tom, as you have
observed, was never an exception among boys for ease of address; but
the difficulty of enunciating a monosyllable in reply to Mr. or Mrs.
Stelling was so great, that he even dreaded to be asked at table
whether he would have more pudding. As to the percussion-caps, he had
almost resolved, in the bitterness of his heart, that he would throw
them into a neighboring pond; for not only was he the solitary pupil,
but he began even to have a certain scepticism about guns, and a
general sense that his theory of life was undermined. For Mr. Stelling
thought nothing of guns, or horses either, apparently; and yet it was
impossible for Tom to despise Mr. Stelling as he had despised Old
Goggles. If there were anything that was not thoroughly genuine about
Mr. Stelling, it lay quite beyond Tom's power to detect it; it is only
by a wide comparison of facts that the wisest full-grown man can
distinguish well-rolled barrels from mere supernal thunder.

Mr. Stelling was a well-sized, broad-chested man, not yet thirty, with
flaxen hair standing erect, and large lightish-gray eyes, which were
always very wide open; he had a sonorous bass voice, and an air of
defiant self-confidence inclining to brazenness. He had entered on his
career with great vigor, and intended to make a considerable
impression on his fellowmen. The Rev. Walter Stelling was not a man
who would remain among the "inferior clergy" all his life. He had a
true British determination to push his way in the world,--as a
schoolmaster, in the first place, for there were capital masterships
of grammar-schools to be had, and Mr. Stelling meant to have one of
them; but as a preacher also, for he meant always to preach in a
striking manner, so as to have his congregation swelled by admirers
from neighboring parishes, and to produce a great sensation whenever
he took occasional duty for a brother clergyman of minor gifts. The
style of preaching he had chosen was the extemporaneous, which was
held little short of the miraculous in rural parishes like King's
Lorton. Some passages of Massillon and Bourdaloue, which he knew by
heart, were really very effective when rolled out in Mr. Stelling's
deepest tones; but as comparatively feeble appeals of his own were
delivered in the same loud and impressive manner, they were often
thought quite as striking by his hearers. Mr. Stelling's doctrine was
of no particular school; if anything, it had a tinge of
evangelicalism, for that was "the telling thing" just then in the
diocese to which King's Lorton belonged. In short, Mr. Stelling was a
man who meant to rise in his profession, and to rise by merit,
clearly, since he had no interest beyond what might be promised by a
problematic relationship to a great lawyer who had not yet become Lord
Chancellor. A clergyman who has such vigorous intentions naturally
gets a little into debt at starting; it is not to be expected that he
will live in the meagre style of a man who means to be a poor curate
all his life; and if the few hundreds Mr. Timpson advanced toward his
daughter's fortune did not suffice for the purchase of handsome
furniture, together with a stock of wine, a grand piano, and the
laying out of a superior flower-garden, it followed in the most
rigorous manner, either that these things must be procured by some
other means, or else that the Rev. Mr. Stelling must go without them,
which last alternative would be an absurd procrastination of the
fruits of success, where success was certain. Mr. Stelling was so
broad-chested and resolute that he felt equal to anything; he would
become celebrated by shaking the consciences of his hearers, and he
would by and by edit a Greek play, and invent several new readings. He
had not yet selected the play, for having been married little more
than two years, his leisure time had been much occupied with
attentions to Mrs. Stelling; but he had told that fine woman what he
meant to do some day, and she felt great confidence in her husband, as
a man who understood everything of that sort.

But the immediate step to future success was to bring on Tom Tulliver
during this first half-year; for, by a singular coincidence, there had
been some negotiation concerning another pupil from the same
neighborhood and it might further a decision in Mr. Stelling's favor,
if it were understood that young Tulliver, who, Mr. Stelling observed
in conjugal privacy, was rather a rough cub, had made prodigious
progress in a short time. It was on this ground that he was severe
with Tom about his lessons; he was clearly a boy whose powers would
never be developed through the medium of the Latin grammar, without
the application of some sternness. Not that Mr. Stelling was a
harsh-tempered or unkind man; quite the contrary. He was jocose with
Tom at table, and corrected his provincialisms and his deportment in
the most playful manner; but poor Tom was only the more cowed and
confused by this double novelty, for he had never been used to jokes
at all like Mr. Stelling's; and for the first time in his life he had
a painful sense that he was all wrong somehow. When Mr. Stelling said,
as the roast-beef was being uncovered, "Now, Tulliver! which would you
rather decline, roast-beef or the Latin for it?" Tom, to whom in his
coolest moments a pun would have been a hard nut, was thrown into a
state of embarrassed alarm that made everything dim to him except the
feeling that he would rather not have anything to do with Latin; of
course he answered, "Roast-beef," whereupon there followed much
laughter and some practical joking with the plates, from which Tom
gathered that he had in some mysterious way refused beef, and, in
fact, made himself appear "a silly." If he could have seen a
fellow-pupil undergo these painful operations and survive them in good
spirits, he might sooner have taken them as a matter of course. But
there are two expensive forms of education, either of which a parent
may procure for his son by sending him as solitary pupil to a
clergyman: one is the enjoyment of the reverend gentleman's undivided
neglect; the other is the endurance of the reverend gentleman's
undivided attention. It was the latter privilege for which Mr.
Tulliver paid a high price in Tom's initiatory months at King's
Lorton.

That respectable miller and maltster had left Tom behind, and driven
homeward in a state of great mental satisfaction. He considered that
it was a happy moment for him when he had thought of asking Riley's
advice about a tutor for Tom. Mr. Stelling's eyes were so wide open,
and he talked in such an off-hand, matter-of-fact way, answering every
difficult, slow remark of Mr. Tulliver's with, "I see, my good sir, I
see"; "To be sure, to be sure"; "You want your son to be a man who
will make his way in the world,"--that Mr. Tulliver was delighted to
find in him a clergyman whose knowledge was so applicable to the
every-day affairs of this life. Except Counsellor Wylde, whom he had
heard at the last sessions, Mr. Tulliver thought the Rev. Mr Stelling
was the shrewdest fellow he had ever met with,--not unlike Wylde, in
fact; he had the same way of sticking his thumbs in the armholes of
his waistcoat. Mr. Tulliver was not by any means an exception in
mistaking brazenness for shrewdness; most laymen thought Stelling
shrewd, and a man of remarkable powers generally; it was chiefly by
his clerical brethren that he was considered rather a full fellow. But
he told Mr. Tulliver several stories about "Swing" and incendiarism,
and asked his advice about feeding pigs in so thoroughly secular and
judicious a manner, with so much polished glibness of tongue, that the
miller thought, here was the very thing he wanted for Tom. He had no
doubt this first-rate man was acquainted with every branch of
information, and knew exactly what Tom must learn in order to become a
match for the lawyers, which poor Mr. Tulliver himself did _not_ know,
and so was necessarily thrown for self-direction on this wide kind of
inference. It is hardly fair to laugh at him, for I have known much
more highly instructed persons than he make inferences quite as wide,
and not at all wiser.

As for Mrs. Tulliver, finding that Mrs. Stelling's views as to the
airing of linen and the frequent recurrence of hunger in a growing boy
entirely coincided with her own; moreover, that Mrs. Stelling, though
so young a woman, and only anticipating her second confinement, had
gone through very nearly the same experience as herself with regard to
the behavior and fundamental character of the monthly nurse,--she
expressed great contentment to her husband, when they drove away, at
leaving Tom with a woman who, in spite of her youth, seemed quite
sensible and motherly, and asked advice as prettily as could be.

"They must be very well off, though," said Mrs. Tulliver, "for
everything's as nice as can be all over the house, and that watered
silk she had on cost a pretty penny. Sister Pullet has got one like
it."

"Ah," said Mr. Tulliver, "he's got some income besides the curacy, I
reckon. Perhaps her father allows 'em something. There's Tom 'ull be
another hundred to him, and not much trouble either, by his own
account; he says teaching comes natural to him. That's wonderful,
now," added Mr. Tulliver, turning his head on one side, and giving his
horse a meditative tickling on the flank.

Perhaps it was because teaching came naturally to Mr. Stelling, that
he set about it with that uniformity of method and independence of
circumstances which distinguish the actions of animals understood to
be under the immediate teaching of nature. Mr. Broderip's amiable
beaver, as that charming naturalist tells us, busied himself as
earnestly in constructing a dam, in a room up three pair of stairs in
London, as if he had been laying his foundation in a stream or lake in
Upper Canada. It was "Binny's" function to build; the absence of water
or of possible progeny was an accident for which he was not
accountable. With the same unerring instinct Mr. Stelling set to work
at his natural method of instilling the Eton Grammar and Euclid into
the mind of Tom Tulliver. This, he considered, was the only basis of
solid instruction; all other means of education were mere
charlatanism, and could produce nothing better than smatterers. Fixed
on this firm basis, a man might observe the display of various or
special knowledge made by irregularly educated people with a pitying
smile; all that sort of thing was very well, but it was impossible
these people could form sound opinions. In holding this conviction Mr.
Stelling was not biassed, as some tutors have been, by the excessive
accuracy or extent of his own scholarship; and as to his views about
Euclid, no opinion could have been freer from personal partiality. Mr.
Stelling was very far from being led astray by enthusiasm, either
religious or intellectual; on the other hand, he had no secret belief
that everything was humbug. He thought religion was a very excellent
thing, and Aristotle a great authority, and deaneries and prebends
useful institutions, and Great Britain the providential bulwark of
Protestantism, and faith in the unseen a great support to afflicted
minds; he believed in all these things, as a Swiss hotel-keeper
believes in the beauty of the scenery around him, and in the pleasure
it gives to artistic visitors. And in the same way Mr. Stelling
believed in his method of education; he had no doubt that he was doing
the very best thing for Mr. Tulliver's boy. Of course, when the miller
talked of "mapping" and "summing" in a vague and diffident manner, Mr
Stelling had set his mind at rest by an assurance that he understood
what was wanted; for how was it possible the good man could form any
reasonable judgment about the matter? Mr Stelling's duty was to teach
the lad in the only right way,--indeed he knew no other; he had not
wasted his time in the acquirement of anything abnormal.

He very soon set down poor Tom as a thoroughly stupid lad; for though
by hard labor he could get particular declensions into his brain,
anything so abstract as the relation between cases and terminations
could by no means get such a lodgment there as to enable him to
recognize a chance genitive or dative. This struck Mr. Stelling as
something more than natural stupidity; he suspected obstinacy, or at
any rate indifference, and lectured Tom severely on his want of
thorough application. "You feel no interest in what you're doing,
sir," Mr. Stelling would say, and the reproach was painfully true. Tom
had never found any difficulty in discerning a pointer from a setter,
when once he had been told the distinction, and his perceptive powers
were not at all deficient. I fancy they were quite as strong as those
of the Rev. Mr. Stelling; for Tom could predict with accuracy what
number of horses were cantering behind him, he could throw a stone
right into the centre of a given ripple, he could guess to a fraction
how many lengths of his stick it would take to reach across the
playground, and could draw almost perfect squares on his slate without
any measurement. But Mr. Stelling took no note of these things; he
only observed that Tom's faculties failed him before the abstractions
hideously symbolized to him in the pages of the Eton Grammar, and that
he was in a state bordering on idiocy with regard to the demonstration
that two given triangles must be equal, though he could discern with
great promptitude and certainty the fact that they _were_ equal.
Whence Mr. Stelling concluded that Tom's brain, being peculiarly
impervious to etymology and demonstrations, was peculiarly in need of
being ploughed and harrowed by these patent implements; it was his
favorite metaphor, that the classics and geometry constituted that
culture of the mind which prepared it for the reception of any
subsequent crop. I say nothing against Mr. Stelling's theory; if we
are to have one regimen for all minds, his seems to me as good as any
other. I only know it turned out as uncomfortably for Tom Tulliver as
if he had been plied with cheese in order to remedy a gastric weakness
which prevented him from digesting it. It is astonishing what a
different result one gets by changing the metaphor! Once call the
brain an intellectual stomach, and one's ingenious conception of the
classics and geometry as ploughs and harrows seems to settle nothing.
But then it is open to some one else to follow great authorities, and
call the mind a sheet of white paper or a mirror, in which case one's
knowledge of the digestive process becomes quite irrelevant. It was
doubtless an ingenious idea to call the camel the ship of the desert,
but it would hardly lead one far in training that useful beast. O
Aristotle! if you had had the advantage of being "the freshest modern"
instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled your
praise of metaphorical speech, as a sign of high intelligence, with a
lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself in speech without
metaphor,--that we can so seldom declare what a thing is, except by
saying it is something else?

Tom Tulliver, being abundant in no form of speech, did not use any
metaphor to declare his views as to the nature of Latin; he never
called it an instrument of torture; and it was not until he had got on
some way in the next half-year, and in the Delectus, that he was
advanced enough to call it a "bore" and "beastly stuff." At present,
in relation to this demand that he should learn Latin declensions and
conjugations, Tom was in a state of as blank unimaginativeness
concerning the cause and tendency of his sufferings, as if he had been
an innocent shrewmouse imprisoned in the split trunk of an ash-tree in
order to cure lameness in cattle. It is doubtless almost incredible to
instructed minds of the present day that a boy of twelve, not
belonging strictly to "the masses," who are now understood to have the
monopoly of mental darkness, should have had no distinct idea how
there came to be such a thing as Latin on this earth; yet so it was
with Tom. It would have taken a long while to make conceivable to him
that there ever existed a people who bought and sold sheep and oxen,
and transacted the every-day affairs of life, through the medium of
this language; and still longer to make him understand why he should
be called upon to learn it, when its connection with those affairs had
become entirely latent. So far as Tom had gained any acquaintance with
the Romans at Mr. Jacob's academy, his knowledge was strictly correct,
but it went no farther than the fact that they were "in the New
Testament"; and Mr. Stelling was not the man to enfeeble and
emasculate his pupil's mind by simplifying and explaining, or to
reduce the tonic effect of etymology by mixing it with smattering,
extraneous information, such as is given to girls.

Yet, strange to say, under this vigorous treatment Tom became more
like a girl than he had ever been in his life before. He had a large
share of pride, which had hitherto found itself very comfortable in
the world, despising Old Goggles, and reposing in the sense of
unquestioned rights; but now this same pride met with nothing but
bruises and crushings. Tom was too clear-sighted not to be aware that
Mr. Stelling's standard of things was quite different, was certainly
something higher in the eyes of the world than that of the people he
had been living amongst, and that, brought in contact with it, he, Tom
Tulliver, appeared uncouth and stupid; he was by no means indifferent
to this, and his pride got into an uneasy condition which quite
nullified his boyish self-satisfaction, and gave him something of the
girl's susceptibility. He was a very firm, not to say obstinate,
disposition, but there was no brute-like rebellion and recklessness in
his nature; the human sensibilities predominated, and if it had
occurred to him that he could enable himself to show some quickness at
his lessons, and so acquire Mr. Stelling's approbation, by standing on
one leg for an inconvenient length of time, or rapping his head
moderately against the wall, or any voluntary action of that sort, he
would certainly have tried it. But no; Tom had never heard that these
measures would brighten the understanding, or strengthen the verbal
memory; and he was not given to hypothesis and experiment. It did
occur to him that he could perhaps get some help by praying for it;
but as the prayers he said every evening were forms learned by heart,
he rather shrank from the novelty and irregularity of introducing an
extempore passage on a topic of petition for which he was not aware of
any precedent. But one day, when he had broken down, for the fifth
time, in the supines of the third conjugation, and Mr. Stelling,
convinced that this must be carelessness, since it transcended the
bounds of possible stupidity, had lectured him very seriously,
pointing out that if he failed to seize the present golden opportunity
of learning supines, he would have to regret it when he became a
man,--Tom, more miserable than usual, determined to try his sole
resource; and that evening, after his usual form of prayer for his
parents and "little sister" (he had begun to pray for Maggie when she
was a baby), and that he might be able always to keep God's
commandments, he added, in the same low whisper, "and please to make
me always remember my Latin." He paused a little to consider how he
should pray about Euclid--whether he should ask to see what it meant,
or whether there was any other mental state which would be more
applicable to the case. But at last he added: "And make Mr. Stelling
say I sha'n't do Euclid any more. Amen."

The fact that he got through his supines without mistake the next day,
encouraged him to persevere in this appendix to his prayers, and
neutralized any scepticism that might have arisen from Mr. Stelling's
continued demand for Euclid. But his faith broke down under the
apparent absence of all help when he got into the irregular verbs. It
seemed clear that Tom's despair under the caprices of the present
tense did not constitute a _nodus_ worthy of interference, and since
this was the climax of his difficulties, where was the use of praying
for help any longer? He made up his mind to this conclusion in one of
his dull, lonely evenings, which he spent in the study, preparing his
lessons for the morrow. His eyes were apt to get dim over the page,
though he hated crying, and was ashamed of it; he couldn't help
thinking with some affection even of Spouncer, whom he used to fight
and quarrel with; he would have felt at home with Spouncer, and in a
condition of superiority. And then the mill, and the river, and Yap
pricking up his ears, ready to obey the least sign when Tom said,
"Hoigh!" would all come before him in a sort of calenture, when his
fingers played absently in his pocket with his great knife and his
coil of whipcord, and other relics of the past.

Tom, as I said, had never been so much like a girl in his life before,
and at that epoch of irregular verbs his spirit was further depressed
by a new means of mental development which had been thought of for him
out of school hours. Mrs. Stelling had lately had her second baby, and
as nothing could be more salutary for a boy than to feel himself
useful, Mrs. Stelling considered she was doing Tom a service by
setting him to watch the little cherub Laura while the nurse was
occupied with the sickly baby. It was quite a pretty employment for
Tom to take little Laura out in the sunniest hour of the autumn day;
it would help to make him feel that Lorton Parsonage was a home for
him, and that he was one of the family. The little cherub Laura, not
being an accomplished walker at present, had a ribbon fastened round
her waist, by which Tom held her as if she had been a little dog
during the minutes in which she chose to walk; but as these were rare,
he was for the most part carrying this fine child round and round the
garden, within sight of Mrs. Stelling's window, according to orders.
If any one considers this unfair and even oppressive toward Tom, I beg
him to consider that there are feminine virtues which are with
difficulty combined, even if they are not incompatible. When the wife
of a poor curate contrives, under all her disadvantages, to dress
extremely well, and to have a style of coiffure which requires that
her nurse shall occasionally officiate as lady's-maid; when, moreover,
her dinner-parties and her drawing-room show that effort at elegance
and completeness of appointment to which ordinary women might imagine
a large income necessary, it would be unreasonable to expect of her
that she should employ a second nurse, or even act as a nurse herself.
Mr. Stelling knew better; he saw that his wife did wonders already,
and was proud of her. It was certainly not the best thing in the world
for young Tulliver's gait to carry a heavy child, but he had plenty of
exercise in long walks with himself, and next half-year Mr. Stelling
would see about having a drilling-master. Among the many means whereby
Mr. Stelling intended to be more fortunate than the bulk of his
fellow-men, he had entirely given up that of having his own way in his
own house. What then? He had married "as kind a little soul as ever
breathed," according to Mr. Riley, who had been acquainted with Mrs.
Stelling's blond ringlets and smiling demeanor throughout her maiden
life, and on the strength of that knowledge would have been ready any
day to pronounce that whatever domestic differences might arise in her
married life must be entirely Mr. Stelling's fault.

If Tom had had a worse disposition, he would certainly have hated the
little cherub Laura, but he was too kind-hearted a lad for that; there
was too much in him of the fibre that turns to true manliness, and to
protecting pity for the weak. I am afraid he hated Mrs. Stelling, and
contracted a lasting dislike to pale blond ringlets and broad plaits,
as directly associated with haughtiness of manner, and a frequent
reference to other people's "duty." But he couldn't help playing with
little Laura, and liking to amuse her; he even sacrificed his
percussion-caps for her sake, in despair of their ever serving a
greater purpose,--thinking the small flash and bang would delight her,
and thereby drawing down on himself a rebuke from Mrs. Stelling for
teaching her child to play with fire. Laura was a sort of
playfellow--and oh, how Tom longed for playfellows! In his secret
heart he yearned to have Maggie with him, and was almost ready to dote
on her exasperating acts of forgetfulness; though, when he was at
home, he always represented it as a great favor on his part to let
Maggie trot by his side on his pleasure excursions.

And before this dreary half-year was ended, Maggie actually came. Mrs.
Stelling had given a general invitation for the little girl to come
and stay with her brother; so when Mr. Tulliver drove over to King's
Lorton late in October, Maggie came too, with the sense that she was
taking a great journey, and beginning to see the world. It was Mr.
Tulliver's first visit to see Tom, for the lad must learn not to think
too much about home.

"Well, my lad," he said to Tom, when Mr. Stelling had left the room to
announce the arrival to his wife, and Maggie had begun to kiss Tom
freely, "you look rarely! School agrees with you."

Tom wished he had looked rather ill.

"I don't think I _am_ well, father," said Tom; "I wish you'd ask Mr.
Stelling not to let me do Euclid; it brings on the toothache, I
think."

(The toothache was the only malady to which Tom had ever been
subject.)

"Euclid, my lad,--why, what's that?" said Mr. Tulliver.

"Oh, I don't know; it's definitions, and axioms, and triangles, and
things. It's a book I've got to learn in--there's no sense in it."

"Go, go!" said Mr. Tulliver, reprovingly; "you mustn't say so. You
must learn what your master tells you. He knows what it's right for
you to learn."

"_I'll_ help you now, Tom," said Maggie, with a little air of
patronizing consolation. "I'm come to stay ever so long, if Mrs.
Stelling asks me. I've brought my box and my pinafores, haven't I,
father?"

"_You_ help me, you silly little thing!" said Tom, in such high
spirits at this announcement that he quite enjoyed the idea of
confounding Maggie by showing her a page of Euclid. "I should like to
see you doing one of _my_ lessons! Why, I learn Latin too! Girls never
learn such things. They're too silly."

"I know what Latin is very well," said Maggie, confidently, "Latin's a
language. There are Latin words in the Dictionary. There's bonus, a
gift."

"Now, you're just wrong there, Miss Maggie!" said Tom, secretly
astonished. "You think you're very wise! But 'bonus' means 'good,' as
it happens,--bonus, bona, bonum."

"Well, that's no reason why it shouldn't mean 'gift,'" said Maggie,
stoutly. "It may mean several things; almost every word does. There's
'lawn,'--it means the grass-plot, as well as the stuff pocket-
handkerchiefs are made of."

"Well done, little 'un," said Mr. Tulliver, laughing, while Tom felt
rather disgusted with Maggie's knowingness, though beyond measure
cheerful at the thought that she was going to stay with him. Her
conceit would soon be overawed by the actual inspection of his books.

Mrs. Stelling, in her pressing invitation, did not mention a longer
time than a week for Maggie's stay; but Mr. Stelling, who took her
between his knees, and asked her where she stole her dark eyes from,
insisted that she must stay a fortnight. Maggie thought Mr. Stelling
was a charming man, and Mr. Tulliver was quite proud to leave his
little wench where she would have an opportunity of showing her
cleverness to appreciating strangers. So it was agreed that she should
not be fetched home till the end of the fortnight.

"Now, then, come with me into the study, Maggie," said Tom, as their
father drove away. "What do you shake and toss your head now for, you
silly?" he continued; for though her hair was now under a new
dispensation, and was brushed smoothly behind her ears, she seemed
still in imagination to be tossing it out of her eyes. "It makes you
look as if you were crazy."

"Oh, I can't help it," said Maggie, impatiently. "Don't tease me, Tom.
Oh, what books!" she exclaimed, as she saw the bookcases in the study.
"How I should like to have as many books as that!"

"Why, you couldn't read one of 'em," said Tom, triumphantly. "They're
all Latin."

"No, they aren't," said Maggie. "I can read the back of
this,--'History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'"

"Well, what does that mean? _You_ don't know," said Tom, wagging his
head.

"But I could soon find out," said Maggie, scornfully.

"Why, how?"

"I should look inside, and see what it was about."

"You'd better not, Miss Maggie," said Tom, seeing her hand on the
volume. "Mr. Stelling lets nobody touch his books without leave, and
_I_ shall catch it, if you take it out."

"Oh, very well. Let me see all _your_ books, then," said Maggie,
turning to throw her arms round Tom's neck, and rub his cheek with her
small round nose.

Tom, in the gladness of his heart at having dear old Maggie to dispute
with and crow over again, seized her round the waist, and began to
jump with her round the large library table. Away they jumped with
more and more vigor, till Maggie's hair flew from behind her ears, and
twirled about like an animated mop. But the revolutions round the
table became more and more irregular in their sweep, till at last
reaching Mr. Stelling's reading stand, they sent it thundering down
with its heavy lexicons to the floor. Happily it was the ground-floor,
and the study was a one-storied wing to the house, so that the
downfall made no alarming resonance, though Tom stood dizzy and aghast
for a few minutes, dreading the appearance of Mr. or Mrs. Stelling.

"Oh, I say, Maggie," said Tom at last, lifting up the stand, "we must
keep quiet here, you know. If we break anything Mrs. Stelling'll make
us cry peccavi."

"What's that?" said Maggie.

"Oh, it's the Latin for a good scolding," said Tom, not without some
pride in his knowledge.

"Is she a cross woman?" said Maggie.

"I believe you!" said Tom, with an emphatic nod.

"I think all women are crosser than men," said Maggie. "Aunt Glegg's a
great deal crosser than uncle Glegg, and mother scolds me more than
father does."

"Well, _you'll_ be a woman some day," said Tom, "so _you_ needn't
talk."

"But I shall be a _clever_ woman," said Maggie, with a toss.

"Oh, I dare say, and a nasty conceited thing. Everybody'll hate you."

"But you oughtn't to hate me, Tom; it'll be very wicked of you, for I
shall be your sister."

"Yes, but if you're a nasty disagreeable thing I _shall_ hate you."

"Oh, but, Tom, you won't! I sha'n't be disagreeable. I shall be very
good to you, and I shall be good to everybody. You won't hate me
really, will you, Tom?"

"Oh, bother! never mind! Come, it's time for me to learn my lessons.
See here! what I've got to do," said Tom, drawing Maggie toward him
and showing her his theorem, while she pushed her hair behind her
ears, and prepared herself to prove her capability of helping him in
Euclid. She began to read with full confidence in her own powers, but
presently, becoming quite bewildered, her face flushed with
irritation. It was unavoidable; she must confess her incompetency, and
she was not fond of humiliation.

"It's nonsense!" she said, "and very ugly stuff; nobody need want to
make it out."

"Ah, there, now, Miss Maggie!" said Tom, drawing the book away, and
wagging his head at her, "You see you're not so clever as you thought
you were."

"Oh," said Maggie, pouting, "I dare say I could make it out, if I'd
learned what goes before, as you have."

"But that's what you just couldn't, Miss Wisdom," said Tom. "For it's
all the harder when you know what goes before; for then you've got to
say what definition 3 is, and what axiom V. is. But get along with you
now; I must go on with this. Here's the Latin Grammar. See what you
can make of that."

Maggie found the Latin Grammar quite soothing after her mathematical
mortification; for she delighted in new words, and quickly found that
there was an English Key at the end, which would make her very wise
about Latin, at slight expense. She presently made up her mind to skip
the rules in the Syntax, the examples became so absorbing. These
mysterious sentences, snatched from an unknown context,--like strange
horns of beasts, and leaves of unknown plants, brought from some
far-off region,--gave boundless scope to her imagination, and were all
the more fascinating because they were in a peculiar tongue of their
own, which she could learn to interpret. It was really very
interesting, the Latin Grammar that Tom had said no girls could learn;
and she was proud because she found it interesting. The most
fragmentary examples were her favourites. _Mors omnibus est communis_
would have been jejune, only she liked to know the Latin; but the
fortunate gentleman whom every one congratulated because he had a son
"endowed with _such_ a disposition" afforded her a great deal of
pleasant conjecture, and she was quite lost in the "thick grove
penetrable by no star," when Tom called out,--

"Now, then, Magsie, give us the Grammar!"

"Oh, Tom, it's such a pretty book!" she said, as she jumped out of the
large arm-chair to give it him; "it's much prettier than the
Dictionary. I could learn Latin very soon. I don't think it's at all
hard."

"Oh, I know what you've been doing," said Tom; "you've been reading
the English at the end. Any donkey can do that."

Tom seized the book and opened it with a determined and business-like
air, as much as to say that he had a lesson to learn which no donkeys
would find themselves equal to. Maggie, rather piqued, turned to the
bookcases to amuse herself with puzzling out the titles.

Presently Tom called to her: "Here, Magsie, come and hear if I can say
this. Stand at that end of the table, where Mr. Stelling sits when he
hears me."

Maggie obeyed, and took the open book.

"Where do you begin, Tom?"

"Oh, I begin at _'Appellativa arborum,'_ because I say all over again
what I've been learning this week."

Tom sailed along pretty well for three lines; and Maggie was beginning
to forget her office of prompter in speculating as to what _mas_ could
mean, which came twice over, when he stuck fast at _Sunt etiam
volucrum_.

"Don't tell me, Maggie; _Sunt etiam volucrum_--_Sunt etiam
volucrum_--_ut ostrea, cetus_----"

"No," said Maggie, opening her mouth and shaking her head.

"_Sunt etiam volucrum_," said Tom, very slowly, as if the next words
might be expected to come sooner when he gave them this strong hint
that they were waited for.

"C, e, u," said Maggie, getting impatient.

"Oh, I know--hold your tongue," said Tom. "_Ceu passer, hirundo;
Ferarum_--_ferarum_----" Tom took his pencil and made several hard
dots with it on his book-cover--"_ferarum_----"

"Oh dear, oh dear, Tom," said Maggie, "what a time you are! _Ut_----"

"_Ut ostrea_----"

"No, no," said Maggie, "_ut tigris_----"

"Oh yes, now I can do," said Tom; "it was _tigris, vulpes_, I'd
forgotten: _ut tigris, volupes; et Piscium_."

With some further stammering and repetition, Tom got through the next
few lines.

"Now, then," he said, "the next is what I've just learned for
to-morrow. Give me hold of the book a minute."

After some whispered gabbling, assisted by the beating of his fist on
the table, Tom returned the book.

"_Mascula nomina in a_," he began.

"No, Tom," said Maggie, "that doesn't come next. It's _Nomen non
creskens genittivo_----"

"_Creskens genittivo!_" exclaimed Tom, with a derisive laugh, for Tom
had learned this omitted passage for his yesterday's lesson, and a
young gentleman does not require an intimate or extensive acquaintance
with Latin before he can feel the pitiable absurdity of a false
quantity. "_Creskens genittivo!_ What a little silly you are, Maggie!"

"Well, you needn't laugh, Tom, for you didn't remember it at all. I'm
sure it's spelt so; how was I to know?"

"Phee-e-e-h! I told you girls couldn't learn Latin. It's _Nomen non
crescens genitivo_."

"Very well, then," said Maggie, pouting. I can say that as well as you
can. And you don't mind your stops. For you ought to stop twice as
long at a semicolon as you do at a comma, and you make the longest
stops where there ought to be no stop at all."

"Oh, well, don't chatter. Let me go on."

They were presently fetched to spend the rest of the evening in the
drawing-room, and Maggie became so animated with Mr. Stelling, who,
she felt sure, admired her cleverness, that Tom was rather amazed and
alarmed at her audacity. But she was suddenly subdued by Mr.
Stelling's alluding to a little girl of whom he had heard that she
once ran away to the gypsies.

"What a very odd little girl that must be!" said Mrs. Stelling,
meaning to be playful; but a playfulness that turned on her supposed
oddity was not at all to Maggie's taste. She feared that Mr. Stelling,
after all, did not think much of her, and went to bed in rather low
spirits. Mrs. Stelling, she felt, looked at her as if she thought her
hair was very ugly because it hung down straight behind.

Nevertheless it was a very happy fortnight to Maggie, this visit to
Tom. She was allowed to be in the study while he had his lessons, and
in her various readings got very deep into the examples in the Latin
Grammar. The astronomer who hated women generally caused her so much
puzzling speculation that she one day asked Mr. Stelling if all
astronomers hated women, or whether it was only this particular
astronomer. But forestalling his answer, she said,--

"I suppose it's all astronomers; because, you know, they live up in
high towers, and if the women came there they might talk and hinder
them from looking at the stars."

Mr. Stelling liked her prattle immensely, and they were on the best
terms. She told Tom she should like to go to school to Mr. Stelling,
as he did, and learn just the same things. She knew she could do
Euclid, for she had looked into it again, and she saw what A B C
meant; they were the names of the lines.

"I'm sure you couldn't do it, now," said Tom; "and I'll just ask Mr.
Stelling if you could."

"I don't mind," said the little conceited minx, "I'll ask him myself."

"Mr. Stelling," she said, that same evening when they were in the
drawing-room, "couldn't I do Euclid, and all Tom's lessons, if you
were to teach me instead of him?"

"No, you couldn't," said Tom, indignantly. "Girls can't do Euclid; can
they, sir?"

"They can pick up a little of everything, I dare say," said Mr.
Stelling. "They've a great deal of superficial cleverness; but they
couldn't go far into anything. They're quick and shallow."

Tom, delighted with this verdict, telegraphed his triumph by wagging
his head at Maggie, behind Mr. Stelling's chair. As for Maggie, she
had hardly ever been so mortified. She had been so proud to be called
"quick" all her little life, and now it appeared that this quickness
was the brand of inferiority. It would have been better to be slow,
like Tom.

"Ha, ha! Miss Maggie!" said Tom, when they were alone; "you see it's
not such a fine thing to be quick. You'll never go far into anything,
you know."

And Maggie was so oppressed by this dreadful destiny that she had no
spirit for a retort.

But when this small apparatus of shallow quickness was fetched away in
the gig by Luke, and the study was once more quite lonely for Tom, he
missed her grievously. He had really been brighter, and had got
through his lessons better, since she had been there; and she had
asked Mr. Stelling so many questions about the Roman Empire, and
whether there really ever was a man who said, in Latin, "I would not
buy it for a farthing or a rotten nut," or whether that had only been
turned into Latin, that Tom had actually come to a dim understanding
of the fact that there had once been people upon the earth who were so
fortunate as to know Latin without learning it through the medium of
the Eton Grammar. This luminous idea was a great addition to his
historical acquirements during this half-year, which were otherwise
confined to an epitomized history of the Jews.

But the dreary half-year _did_ come to an end. How glad Tom was to see
the last yellow leaves fluttering before the cold wind! The dark
afternoons and the first December snow seemed to him far livelier than
the August sunshine; and that he might make himself the surer about
the flight of the days that were carrying him homeward, he stuck
twenty-one sticks deep in a corner of the garden, when he was three
weeks from the holidays, and pulled one up every day with a great
wrench, throwing it to a distance with a vigor of will which would
have carried it to limbo, if it had been in the nature of sticks to
travel so far.

But it was worth purchasing, even at the heavy price of the Latin
Grammar, the happiness of seeing the bright light in the parlor at
home, as the gig passed noiselessly over the snow-covered bridge; the
happiness of passing from the cold air to the warmth and the kisses
and the smiles of that familiar hearth, where the pattern of the rug
and the grate and the fire-irons were "first ideas" that it was no
more possible to criticise than the solidity and extension of matter.
There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where
we were born, where objects became dear to us before we had known the
labor of choice, and where the outer world seemed only an extension of
our own personality; we accepted and loved it as we accepted our own
sense of existence and our own limbs. Very commonplace, even ugly,
that furniture of our early home might look if it were put up to
auction; an improved taste in upholstery scorns it; and is not the
striving after something better and better in our surroundings the
grand characteristic that distinguishes man from the brute, or, to
satisfy a scrupulous accuracy of definition, that distinguishes the
British man from the foreign brute? But heaven knows where that
striving might lead us, if our affections had not a trick of twining
round those old inferior things; if the loves and sanctities of our
life had no deep immovable roots in memory. One's delight in an
elderberry bush overhanging the confused leafage of a hedgerow bank,
as a more gladdening sight than the finest cistus or fuchsia spreading
itself on the softest undulating turf, is an entirely unjustifiable
preference to a nursery-gardener, or to any of those regulated minds
who are free from the weakness of any attachment that does not rest on
a demonstrable superiority of qualities. And there is no better reason
for preferring this elderberry bush than that it stirs an early
memory; that it is no novelty in my life, speaking to me merely
through my present sensibilities to form and color, but the long
companion of my existence, that wove itself into my joys when joys
were vivid.