n it,
thankee) was placed beside it. Two of the pupils, the season being
autumn, and hollyhocks and dahlias being in, ornamented the wall with
three devices in those flowers. On one might be read, "MAY ALBION NEVER
LEARN;" on another "KEEP THE PUBLIC DOWN;" on another, "OUR
REFRESHMENTING CHARTER." The whole had a beautiful appearance, with
which the beauty of the sentiments corresponded.

On Our Missis's brow was wrote Severity, as she ascended the fatal
platform. (Not that that was anythink new.) Miss Whiff and Miss Piff
sat at her feet. Three chairs from the Waiting Room might have been
perceived by a average eye, in front of her, on which the pupils was
accommodated. Behind them a very close observer might have discerned a
Boy. Myself.

"Where," said Our Missis, glancing gloomily around, "is Sniff?"

"I thought it better," answered Mrs. Sniff, "that he should not be let to
come in. He is such an Ass."

"No doubt," assented Our Missis. "But for that reason is it not
desirable to improve his mind?"

"Oh, nothing will ever improve _him_," said Mrs. Sniff.

"However," pursued Our Missis, "call him in, Ezekiel."

I called him in. The appearance of the low-minded cove was hailed with
disapprobation from all sides, on account of his having brought his
corkscrew with him. He pleaded "the force of habit."

"The force!" said Mrs. Sniff. "Don't let us have you talking about
force, for Gracious' sake. There! Do stand still where you are, with
your back against the wall."

He is a smiling piece of vacancy, and he smiled in the mean way in which
he will even smile at the public if he gets a chance (language can say no
meaner of him), and he stood upright near the door with the back of his
head agin the wall, as if he was a waiting for somebody to come and
measure his heighth for the Army.

"I should not enter, ladies," says Our Missis, "on the revolting
disclosures I am about to make, if it was not in the hope that they will
cause you to be yet more implacable in the exercise of the power you
wield in a constitutional country, and yet more devoted to the
constitutional motto which I see before me,"--it was behind her, but the
words sounded better so,--"'May Albion never learn!'"

Here the pupils as had made the motto admired it, and cried, "Hear! Hear!
Hear!" Sniff, showing an inclination to join in chorus, got himself
frowned down by every brow.

"The baseness of the French," pursued Our Missis, "