res. Whippings were not frequent; but when they took
place, the correction was performed in a private room adjoining, where
we could only hear the plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened the
decorum and the solemnity. But the ordinary public chastisement was the
bastinado, a stroke or two on the palm with that almost obsolete weapon
now, the ferule. A ferule was a sort of flat ruler, widened at the
inflicting end into a shape resembling a pear,--but nothing like so
sweet,--with a delectable hole in the middle to raise blisters, like a
cupping-glass. I have an intense recollection of that disused instrument
of torture, and the malignancy, in proportion to the apparent mildness,
with which its strokes were applied. The idea of a rod is accompanied
with something ludicrous; but by no process can I look back upon this
blister-raiser with anything but unmingled horror. To make him look more
formidable,--if a pedagogue had need of these heightenings,--Bird wore
one of those flowered Indian gowns formerly in use with schoolmasters,
the strange figures upon which we used to interpret into hieroglyphics
of pain and suffering. But, boyish fears apart, Bird, I believe, was, in
the main, a humane and judicious master.

Oh, how I remember our legs wedged into those uncomfortable sloping
desks, where we sat elbowing each other; and the injunctions to attain a
free hand, unattainable in that position; the first copy I wrote after,
with its moral lesson, "Art improves Nature"; the still earlier
pot-hooks and the hangers, some traces of which I fear may yet be
apparent in this manuscript; the truant looks sidelong to the garden,
which seemed a mockery of our imprisonment; the prize for best spelling,
which had almost turned my head, and which to this day I cannot reflect
upon without a vanity which I ought to be ashamed of; our little leaden
inkstands, not separately subsisting, but sunk into the desks; the
bright, punctually washed morning fingers, darkening gradually with
another and another ink-spot! What a world of little associated
circumstances, pains, and pleasures, mingling their quotas of pleasure,
arise at the reading of those few simple words,--"Mr. William Bird, an
eminent writer, and teacher of languages and mathematics, in Fetter
Lane, Holborn"!

Poor Starkey, when young, had that peculiar stamp of old-fashionedness
in his face which makes it impossible for a beholder to predicate any
particular age in the object. You c