S., don't
you deserve correction, and aren't you grateful if you are to be let
off? I say again, what a blessed thing it is that we are not all found
out!
Just picture to yourself everybody who does wrong being found out,
and punished accordingly. Fancy all the boys in all the school being
whipped; and then the assistants, and then the head master (Dr. Badford
let us call him). Fancy the provost-marshal being tied up, having
previously superintended the correction of the whole army. After the
young gentlemen have had their turn for the faulty exercises, fancy Dr.
Lincolnsinn being taken up for certain faults in HIS Essay and Review.
After the clergyman has cried his peccavi, suppose we hoist up a
bishop, and give him a couple of dozen! (I see my Lord Bishop of
Double-Gloucester sitting in a very uneasy posture on his right reverend
bench.) After we have cast off the bishop, what are we to say to the
Minister who appointed him? My Lord Cinqwarden, it is painful to have
to use personal correction to a boy of your age; but really . . .
Siste tandem, carnifex! The butchery is too horrible. The hand drops
powerless, appalled at the quantity of birch which it must cut and
brandish. I am glad we are not all found out, I say again; and protest,
my dear brethren, against our having our deserts.
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