e, this tool-house, this bag of soot. I think we
little boys were taken out of our sleep to be brought to the ordeal. We
came, then, and showed our little hands to the master; washed them or
not--most probably, I should say, not--and so went bewildered back to
bed.

Something had been stolen in the school that day; and Mr. Wiseacre
having read in a book of an ingenious method of finding out a thief by
making him put his hand into a sack (which, if guilty, the rogue would
shirk from doing), all we boys were subjected to the trial. Goodness
knows what the lost object was, or who stole it. We all had black hands
to show the master. And the thief, whoever he was, was not Found Out
that time.

I wonder if the rascal is alive--an elderly scoundrel he must be by this
time; and a hoary old hypocrite, to whom an old schoolfellow presents
his kindest regards--parenthetically remarking what a dreadful place
that private school was; cold, chilblains, bad dinners, not enough
victuals, and caning awful!--Are you alive still, I say, you nameless
villain, who escaped discovery on that day of crime? I hope you have
escaped often since, old sinner. Ah, what a lucky thing it is, for you
and me, my man, that we are NOT found out in all our peccadilloes; and
that our backs can slip away from the master and the cane!

Just consider what life would be, if every rogue was found out, and
flogged coram populo! What a butchery, what an indecency, what an
endless swishing of the rod! Don't cry out about my misanthropy. My good
friend Mealymouth, I will trouble you to tell me, do you go to church?
When there, do you say, or do you not, that you are a miserable sinner?
and saying so do you believe or disbelieve it? If you are a M. S., don't
you deserve correction, and aren't you grateful if you are to be let
off? I say again, what a blessed thing it is that we are not all found
out!

Just picture to yourself everybody who does wrong being found out,
and punished accordingly. Fancy all the boys in all the school being
whipped; and then the assistants, and then the head master (Dr. Badford
let us call him). Fancy the provost-marshal being tied up, having
previously superintended the correction of the whole army. After the
young gentlemen have had their turn for the faulty exercises, fancy Dr.
Lincolnsinn being taken up for certain faults in HIS Essay and Review.
After the clergyman has cried his peccavi, suppose we hoist up a
bishop, and give him