on a Sunday morning; were it not, indeed,
Tom the blacksmith's son, or Toby Crance
who lived " along a Saunders," which last—the
self-styled cock of the village—he, the embryo
Gunner, met on a Sabbath morning and
"paid," knocking him from his cockish
eminence, crowing, to the very bottom and
foundation of a muck-midden, where he lay howling
amongst the ordure; for which exploit he
(Gunner) was sorely scourged next morning
by the schoolmaster, a learned man, who could
talk like a book, and had a wonderful property
of boxing your ears, sitting the while at his
desk, were you ever so many feet off. Many
a Sunday morning has he, Gunner, sat in the
free-seats close to the squire's pew, wondering
why the brave gentlemen and fair ladies on
the brasses always crossed their arms like
scissors, and held their heads askew; why the
mailed knights with tin pots (in marble) on
their heads, always went to sleep with their
feet resting on little dogs; spelling out that
quaint marble tablet setting forth how Sir
Roger Bielby died in the Civil Wars, and
wondering what wars were like. Those
Sunday mornings: how drowsy, how distressingly
somnolent they were to him! That
weary litany! that still more sleepy sermon!
There was a sharp zest or relish thrown in to
relieve the monotony of the former in the
shape of the publication of marriage banns,
and a neat peppery little prayer about the
French and the Pope and a certain " blood-
thirsty usurper," whose '' casting down " was
hebdomadally supplicated; but no such zests
enlivened the dreary waste of sermon. Page
after page of manuscript was turned over
with a lullaby of rustling foolscap, and the
drooping, sleep-oppressed spirits of the boys
would have given in, have knocked under
entirely, were it not for the thought—the
mighty thought—the bark riding on a sea of
joy with twenty anchors of Hope at the bows
—the thought of the gathering round about
the baker's shop after church; the glad
symposium of boys and girls with snowy napkins
waiting for the baked dinners; the gastronomic
Bourse—where a rumour that Starling's
pie was spoilt, that Bailey's over-cake or puff-
paste rider to her pie had been devoured by
a buccaneering baker, was sufficient to throw
a gloom on the market, and cause apples and
marbles to be quoted at nothing at all. And,
when the Sunday bakings did come forth,
what glorious sights they were! Gunner and
Driver number seven, you have had commissariat
beef, and commissariat biscuit, this
Sunday morning; but in those days you were
entitled to a share in a dish in which there
was brown, hot meat with streaky fat—a dish
so brown, so streaked with white itself, so
encompassed with savoury crispness that you
fancied you could eat it, as well as the meat,
for all it came from Staffordshire and was
but a potsherd. Nor was this all; for in
another compartment of this edible dish there
lurked in a greasy nectar, potatoes—so crisp,
so exquisitely done, so yellow, that they
looked like the golden apples of the Hesperides,
or that the shepherd gave to Venus. Who
would mind sermons with such fruits in store?
Old days, those, Gunner and Driver number
seven, quiet days, timid days!

Sunday morning at Doctor Tweep's Classical
Seminary, Kilburn, Middlesex. Classical
was Doctor Tweep's. There were talismanic
"adsums " and " licets " and " placets," used in
playground, and class, and refectory. There
was Smith major and Smith minor and
Smith minimus; and the boy who had charge
of the birches, hang him! was præfectus.
When we saw Doctor Tweep coming, we
cried " Cave,"—when he gave us permission to
go " down street," on half-hours, he granted
us an " exeat." Everybody was classical save
the writing-master, who pretended to be, but
wasn't; and who, wishing to bestow a mark
of approbation on one of his pupils one day,
called him bonus puerus (thinking, good man,
that what was sauce for the goose was sauce
for the gander) and was then and there
discharged by Dr. Tweep " for poisoning," as he
elegantly expressed it, " the pure stream that
flowed from the Aonian Mount." Select,
also, was Doctor Tweep. At least we had
room for forty, but only numbered twenty,
which did not hinder our impartial preceptor
dispensing among us the full allowance of
flogging for two score.

Sunday morning at Kilburn is marked in
my recollection with three white stones. One
stands for tea at breakfast, the next for letters
from home, the third for Greek Testament.
The tea was a great thing. We had milk and
water during the week—"sky-blue," as we
ironically called it—and bitter jokes we made
about the chalk supposed to form one of its
component parts, and the preposterous share
the pump-handle had in its manufacture.
But, on Sunday mornings we had tea, not in
mugs, mind you, but in real cups, mind you.
It was curious tea—somewhat resembling thin
broth, not unlike very weak sago, with a
smack of diluted cole wort and a dash of
camomiles, and a pervading, sickly flavour,
half saccharine, half " clothy," that gave it
quite a relish. It was of a light liver colour,
and had a thin marbled scum of skim milk
a-top, and left a residue of thin leaves of a
strange shape and colour, with a great
quantity of short stiff stalks, that, when you
swallowed any of them by accident, made you
cough and sputter a great deal. Our head
satirist and poet, who was thrashed about five
times a week for inability to scan the humorous
Virgilian line ending with " vox faucibus
hæsit" and who always got the quantities
right in his sleep and forgot them when he
woke—Muffinhard he was called,—who is now,
I believe, a professed " funny man" and diner-
out, declared that these stalks were chopped
birch-brooms. He ought to have known; for
no boy had a more intimate acquaintance with
the twigs of the tree of knowledge than he had.