At the time when I stood in the churchyard reading the family

tombstones, I had just enough learning to be able to spell them out. My

construction even of their simple meaning was not very correct, for I

read "wife of the Above" as a complimentary reference to my father's

exaltation to a better world; and if any one of my deceased relations

had been referred to as "Below," I have no doubt I should have formed

the worst opinions of that member of the family. Neither were my notions

of the theological positions to which my Catechism bound me, at

all accurate; for, I have a lively remembrance that I supposed my

declaration that I was to "walk in the same all the days of my life,"

laid me under an obligation always to go through the village from our

house in one particular direction, and never to vary it by turning down

by the wheelwright's or up by the mill.

When I was old enough, I was to be apprenticed to Joe, and until I could

assume that dignity I was not to be what Mrs. Joe called "Pompeyed," or

(as I render it) pampered. Therefore, I was not only odd-boy about the

forge, but if any neighbor happened to want an extra boy to frighten

birds, or pick up stones, or do any such job, I was favored with the

employment. In order, however, that our superior position might not be

compromised thereby, a money-box was kept on the kitchen mantel-shelf,

in to which it was publicly made known that all my earnings were

dropped. I have an impression that they were to be contributed

eventually towards the liquidation of the National Debt, but I know I

had no hope of any personal participation in the treasure.

Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is

to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited

infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in

the society of youth who paid two pence per week each, for the improving

opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage, and Mr.

Wopsle had the room up stairs, where we students used to overhear him

reading aloud in a most dignified and terrific manner, and occasionally

bumping on the ceiling. There was a fiction that Mr. Wopsle "examined"

the scholars once a quarter. What he did on those occasions was to turn

up his cuffs, stick up his hair, and give us Mark Antony's oration over

the body of Caesar. This was always followed by Collins's Ode on

the Passions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge

throwing his blood-stained sword in thunder down, and taking the

War-denouncing trumpet with a withering look. It was not with me then,

as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of the Passions,

and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the disadvantage of

both gentlemen.




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