e kept by
the boys in desks, drawers, hat-boxes, and other strange refuges for
birds; but that white mice were the favorite stock, and that the boys
trained the mice much better than the master trained the boys. He
recalled in particular one white mouse who lived in the cover of a Latin
dictionary, ran up ladders, drew Roman chariots, shouldered muskets,
turned wheels, and even made a very creditable appearance on the stage
as the dog of Montargis, who might have achieved greater things but for
having had the misfortune to mistake his way in a triumphal procession
to the Capitol, when he fell into a deep inkstand and was dyed black and
drowned.

Nevertheless he mentions the school as one also of some celebrity in
its neighborhood, though nobody could have said why; and adds that among
the boys the master was supposed to know nothing, and one of the ushers
was supposed to know everything. "We are still inclined to think the
first-named supposition perfectly correct. We went to look at the place
only this last midsummer, and found that the railway had cut it up, root
and branch. A great trunk line had swallowed the playground, sliced away
the school-room, and pared off the corner of the house. Which, thus
curtailed of its proportions, presented itself in a green stage of
stucco, profile-wise towards the road, like a forlorn flat-iron without
a handle, standing on end."

One who knew him in those early days, Mr. Owen P. Thomas, thus writes to
me (February, 1871): "I had the honor of being Mr. Dickens's
schoolfellow for about two years (1824-1826), both being day-scholars,
at Mr. Jones's 'Classical and Commercial Academy,' as then inscribed in
front of the house, and which was situated at the corner of Granby
Street and the Hampstead Road. The house stands now in its original
state, but the school and large playground behind disappeared on the
formation of the London and Northwestern Railway, which at this point
runs in a slanting direction from Euston Square underneath the Hampstead
Road. We were all companions and playmates when out of school, as well
as fellow-students therein." (Mr. Thomas includes in this remark the
names of Henry Danson, now a physician in practice in London; of Daniel
Tobin, whom I remember to have been frequently assisted by his old
schoolfellow in later years; and of Richard Bray.) "You will find a
graphic sketch of the school by Mr. Dickens himself in _Household
Words_ of 11th October, 1851. The