master, is a matter of course. We refer to children generally,
the good and the bad, the studious and the idle, in short, to
all who belong to the _genus_ Boy. Perhaps we should include the
_genus_ Girl, also, but of that we are not certain; for, not
to dwell upon the fact that we have never been a girl, and are,
therefore, unable to enter into the feelings of girlhood, we hold
that girls are better than boys, as women are better than men,
and that, consequently, they take more kindly to school life.
What boys are we know, unless the breed has changed very much
since we were young, which is now upwards of--but our age
does not concern the reader. We did not take kindly to school,
although we were sadly in need of what we could only obtain in
school, viz., learning. We went to school with reluctance,
and remained with discomfort; for we were not as robust as the
children of our neighbors. We hated school. We did not dare to
play truant, however, like other boys whom we knew (we were not
courageous enough for that); so we kept on going, fretting, and
pining, and--learning.

Oh the long days (the hot days of summer, and the cold days of
winter), when we had to sit for hours on hard wooden benches,
before uncomfortable desks, bending over grimy slates and
ink-besprinkled "copy books," and poring over studies in which
we took no interest--geography, which we learned by rote;
arithmetic, which always evaded us, and grammar, which we never
could master. We could repeat the "rules," but we could not
"parse;" we could cipher, but our sums would not "prove;" we
could rattle off the productions of Italy--"corn, wine, silk and
oil"--but we could not "bound" the State in which we lived. We
were conscious of these defects, and deplored them. Our teachers
were also conscious of them, and flogged us! We had a morbid
dread of corporeal punishment, and strove to the uttermost to
avoid it; but it made no difference, it came all the same--came
as surely and swiftly to us as to the bad boys who played
"hookey," the worse boys who fought, and the worst boy who once
stoned his master in the street. With such a school record as
this, is it to be wondered at that we rejoiced when school was
out? And rejoiced still more when we were out of school?

The feeling which we had then appears to be shared by the
children in our illustration. Not for the same reasons, however;
for we question whether the most ignorant of their number does
not know