Eric, or, Little by Little | Page 3

troubled themselves with no theories of education, but mingled gentle nurture with "wholesome neglect." There was nothing exotic or constrained in the growth of Eric's character. He was not one of your angelically good children at all, and knew none of the phrases of which infant prodigies are supposed to be so fond. He had not been taught any distinction between "Sunday books" and "week-day" books, but no book had been put in his way that was not healthy and genuine in tone. He had not been told that he might use his Noah's ark on Sunday, because it was "a Sunday plaything," while all other toys were on that day forbidden. Of these things the Trevors thought little; they only saw that no child could be happy in enforced idleness or constrained employment; and so Eric grew up to love Sunday quite as well as any other day in the week, though, unlike your angelic children, he never professed to like it better. But to be truthful, to be honest, to be kind, to be brave, these had been taught him, and he never quite forgot the lesson; nor amid the sorrows of after life did he ever quite lose the sense--learnt at dear quiet Fairholm--of a present loving God, of a tender and long-suffering Father.
As yet he could be hardly said to know what school was. He had been sent indeed to Mr. Lawley's grammar-school for the last half-year, and had learned a few declensions in his Latin grammar. But as Mr. Lawley allowed his upper class to hear the little boys their lessons, Eric had managed to get on pretty much as he liked. Only once in the entire half-year had he said a lesson to the dreadful master himself, and of course it was a ruinous failure, involving some tremendous pulls of Eric's hair, and making him tremble like a leaf. Several things combined to make Mr. Lawley dreadful to his imagination. Ever since he was quite little, he remembered hearing the howls which proceeded from the "Latin school" as he passed by, whilst some luckless youngster was getting caned; and the reverend pedagogue was notoriously passionate. Then, again, he spoke so indistinctly with his deep, gruff voice, that Eric never could and never did syllable a word he said, and this kept him in a perpetual terror. Once Mr. Lawley had told him to go out, and see what time it was by the church clock. Only hearing that he was to do something, too frightened to ask what it was, and feeling sure that even if he did, he should not understand what the master said, Eric ran out, went straight to Mr. Lawley's house, and after having managed by strenuous jumps to touch the knocker, informed the servant "that Mr. Lawley wanted his man."
"What man?" said the maid-servant, "the young man? or the butler? or is it the clerk?"
Here was a puzzler! all Eric knew was that he was in the habit of sending sometimes for one or the other of these functionaries; but he was in for it, so with a faltering voice he said "the young man" at hazard, and went back to the Latin school.
"Why have you been so long?" roared Mr. Lawley, as he timidly entered. Fear entirely prevented Eric from hearing what was said, so he answered at random, "He's coming, sir." The master, seeing by his scared look that something was wrong, waited to see what would turn up.
Soon after, in walked "the young man," and coming to the astonished Mr. Lawley, bowed, scraped, and said, "Master Williams said you sent for me, sir."
"A mistake," growled the schoolmaster, turning on Eric a look which nearly petrified him; he quite expected a book at his head, or at best a great whack of the cane; but Mr. Lawley had naturally a kind heart, soured as it was, and pitying perhaps the child's white face, he contented himself with the effects of his look.
The simple truth was, that poor Mr. Lawley was a little wrong in the head. A scholar and a gentleman, early misfortunes and an imprudent marriage had driven him to the mastership of the little country grammar-school; and here the perpetual annoyance caused to his refined mind by the coarseness of clumsy or spiteful boys, had gradually unhinged his intellect. Often did he tell the boys "that it was an easier life by far to break stones by the roadside than to teach them;" and at last his eccentricities became too obvious to be any longer overlooked.
The dénouement of his history was a tragic one, and had come a few days before the time when, our narrative opens. It was a common practice among the Latin school boys, as I suppose among all boys, to amuse