was about twelve, he was jerked by his parent to "finish off" in a

private school of dingy aspect and still dingier pretensions, where

there were no object lessons, and the studies of book-keeping and

French were pursued (but never effectually overtaken) under the

guidance of an elderly gentleman who wore a nondescript gown and took

snuff, wrote copperplate, explained nothing, and used a cane with

remarkable dexterity and gusto.

Mr. Polly went into the National School at six and he left the private

school at fourteen, and by that time his mind was in much the same

state that you would be in, dear reader, if you were operated upon for

appendicitis by a well-meaning, boldly enterprising, but rather

over-worked and under-paid butcher boy, who was superseded towards the

climax of the operation by a left-handed clerk of high principles but

intemperate habits,--that is to say, it was in a thorough mess. The

nice little curiosities and willingnesses of a child were in a jumbled

and thwarted condition, hacked and cut about--the operators had left,

so to speak, all their sponges and ligatures in the mangled

confusion--and Mr. Polly had lost much of his natural confidence, so

far as figures and sciences and languages and the possibilities of

learning things were concerned. He thought of the present world no

longer as a wonderland of experiences, but as geography and history,

as the repeating of names that were hard to pronounce, and lists of

products and populations and heights and lengths, and as lists and

dates--oh! and boredom indescribable. He thought of religion as the

recital of more or less incomprehensible words that were hard to

The History of Mr Polly