University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
Three years at school, under the ancient system of education; with
an account of Robin's rival, the heroic Dicky Dare, and the war
of the Feds and Demies.

In the meanwhile, I accommodated myself to the
change with surprising readiness; and, as I grew
older, I assumed the deportment, and gradually took
upon me all the airs of a rich man's son, bearing my
honours, and the favours of my protectors, with as
much grace as if I had been born to them; and this
presumption, as it was indicative of a gentlemanly
spirit, and had the good fortune to be backed by a
gentlemanly little body—for I was grown, as every
body said, quite a pretty little fellow—served the
purpose of endearing me still further to my pseudoparents;
who suffered me to fume and pout, to swell
and strut, to play the impertinent and tyrant, and
indulge all the other humours of a spoiled child,
yielding to them with as much dutiful submissiveness
as if they had been my parents in reality.
And, certainly, so long as my good patroness lived—
which, unhappily, was not long, for she died suddenly,
of an affection of the heart, in but little more
than a year after her son—even Tommy himself had
not been more effectually humoured to the top of
his bent.

But however bravely I bore it in my patron's

house, there was one place where my pretensions
were not so readily submitted to; that is, at school,
in which the only way to obtain supremacy, I found,
was to fight for it, and drub down all opposition.

As I have represented the associates of my boyhood
in no very amiable colours, as being neither
Cupids nor cherubs, such as the poets delight to picture
them, it may be supposed my delineations were
meant to apply to my schoolmates especially; which
is very true: only that the picture was then only
half drawn, being a sketch designed only to embrace
those general characteristics, which I supposed would
apply to the whole race of schoolboys all over the
continent. My own particular associates at school
were individuals of a genus as much worse than the
boys in general of that day, as the latter class was
worse than the boys of this; in fact, a set of such
imps and scapegallows as would now be considered
fit only for a House of Refuge: in which opinion I
think the reader will agree, when he has followed
me through a few more chapters; although I shall
speak of no more of their rogueries than are necessary
as parts and illustrations of my own history.

In the first place, then, they were all sons of Ishmael,
at war with themselves and every body else;
and firmly persuaded, that, as courage was by far the
highest and noblest of all human attributes, so strife
and battle were the most delightful of human enjoyments.
No new comer was allowed the freedom of
the school, until he had undergone a sound drubbing;
which was commonly inflicted the first day of
his appearance; and I remember well how greatly I
was astonished, on my first day, when, at the breaking
up of school, a manikin of about my own size,
whom I had never seen before, suddenly marched
up to me, and scratched my buttons, (which, it appears,

was a signal of defiance to mortal combat;)
and, upon my replying only by an innocent stare,
fetched me a cuff that sent me sprawling; a feat that
was instantly rewarded by shouts and cries, from
some, of, “Hurrah, Jim! give it to him handsome!”
while others roared out, “Fair play! Let him up!—
Hurrah for the monkey-faced little fellow!” meaning
me; for there were some who heroically took my
side of the question, and encouraged me to get up
and fight like a good fellow. This was a piece of
advice I was compelled to take whether I would or
not, or otherwise be trounced, without making resistance;
and, accordingly, I fell to work with great
spirit, and had the satisfaction, after half an hour's
combat, yard and yard arm, as the sailors say, of
coming off second best—that is, of being flogged
until I could stand up to be beaten no longer.

But, although thus vanquished, I gained a great
deal of credit by the constancy with which I endured
the pommelling: and the more particularly as I
refused to the last moment to “holler enough,” as
my adversary, with great magnanimity, bawled at
every blow; and when the affair was over, I was
complimented on all sides as being “a knotty little
feller, that had the game in him, and would be good
fight some day or other;” and encouragingly assured
that I had only been whipped, “because I did
not know how to fight;” which was very true: as,
from never having been in boys' company, I had
never been in combat before in my whole life.

As for the credit I gained by enduring the beating
so well, and not obeying the charge to cry enough,
I am not so certain I deserved it; for, as to the latter
point, the words were to me heathen Greek all, and
I did not understand what was required of me; and
as to the former, I had been so hardened to drubbing

in the hands of my skipper, (which was the
only benefit I ever derived from the villain,) that I
cared no more for it, unless when it came in excess,
than for the puffing of the winds.

This callousness or indifference to the pain of cuffing,
gave me, with the honourable nickname of Sy
Tough, which the boys presently bestowed upon
me, an infinite advantage over all my schoolmates,
as I soon discovered; and as my only deficiency was
a lack of knowledge and skill in the art pugilistic,
which, praised be my comrades, they gave me every
opportunity to acquire, by engaging me in one battle
at least, every day, I had the satisfaction, before
my first quarter was out, of drubbing master Jim,
my first antagonist, to his heart's content; and, in a
few months more, of extending the same favour to
three fourths of all the boys in school, so that I came
to be looked upon, in time, as a young Julius Cæsar,
a hero, a paragon of schoolboys.

How—as my disposition was naturally pacific,
and as averse from squabbling and contention as
could be desired—I ever came to be engaged in so
many battles as it was my fate to fight—and, I think,
for three years, they must have averaged at the rate
of at least one and a half each day—I am scarce
able to say; but, I believe, the chief cause was, that
my schoolmates so willed it, there being a standing
conspiracy among them to get up a battle whenever
it was possible; each and every one of them, though
not always fond of fighting in his own person, being
delighted when others could be driven into it. This
passion was especially observable among the bigger
boys, who were never so well content as in setting
their juniors by the ears; and, indeed, I have known
them so bent upon their purpose, that when they
found it impossible, by fair means, to engage a pair

of reluctant belligerents in affray, they did not hesitate
to flog them into it.

With this class of worthies, the leaders of the
school, it was my fate to become a favourite; and
they proved their affection by engaging me in a
never-ending round of conflicts; which, from my
simplicity, ignorance, disregard of fisticuffs, and
above all, a natural facility of being led by the nose,
was no very difficult task.

In this way, it happened, that, in the course of
two or three years, I had been involved in battle
with every soul in the school (which varied in
number from fifty to seventy boys,) that could be
considered in any degree a suitable antagonist; and,
as the toughness and insensibility to pain I have
mentioned, gave me an advantage that no one else
possessed, I usually came off victor; until, at last, there
was but one other boy of my own degree who was
able to dispute the palm with me.

This was Master Richard, or Dicky Dare, the son
of an old captain of the Revolution, who had infused
into his son's heart, the spirit not merely of a
soldier, but of a whole regiment, and filled his head
with drums, trumpets, ambition, glory and other
martial trumpery, to such degree, that there was no
room in it for any thing else. He was about my own
age, i. e. about the age I was supposed to be—though
somewhat taller and stronger; so that I should never
have been able to contend with him for superiority,
had it not been for the above mentioned toughness;
and he had, like myself, under the direction of the
seniors, drubbed all the rest of the school. Nothing
remained, then, for our leaders but to pit us against
each other; and—as neither was found the better
man—to incite us to the tug of war as often as possible.
In this latter particular, they succeeded so

well, that, after awhile, one battle a day between us
became a matter of course, and was as regularly expected
by the whole school, and ourselves, at the
breaking up in the morning, as the dinners that were
to follow it. And this kind of diversion we practised
daily, to the infinite delight of our comrades, for
more than a year; until, in fact, we, in our turn, had
become big boys, and leaders and masters of the
whole herd; which, like conquerors, we divided
between us.

Nor let it be supposed, that, during this long
period of strife, there was any peculiar animosity,
or ill feeling, betwixt my rival and me; on the contrary,
we drubbed one another into mutual friendship,
in less than a month after the rivalry began;
after which we continued to fight because it seemed
to be expected of us, and because, from having fallen
into the habit, we had come to consider it as very
good pastime. Nor, when we ceased, as after a
time we did, to pommel one another, did we leave
it off from disgust of combat; but only that we
might organize a plan devised by the martial Dicky,
and recommence hostilities on a grander scale.

My rival, although pronounced by the master the
greatest blockhead in school, (and truly, he never
knew a lesson, that I, out of my friendship had not
drilled into him,) was, nevertheless, the soul of honour
and generosity, and a prodigious genius into the bargain;
nature having intended him to rule the million,
and trample nations under his feet; though an unfortunate
accident caused him to leave the world before
his work was completed. The military spirit, which,
it was said, he had inherited from his father, and
which had hitherto been indicated only by a love of
fisticuffs, was beginning to blaze out its nobler attributes;
ambition, the love of rule, and a desire

and resolution to fight his further battles, not with
his own hands merely, but with the fists of his inferiors.
He was determined to organize his adherents,
who made up one half the school, into an army,
of which he was to be General; and he desired me
to do the same with mine; with which forces, after
having disciplined them to our minds, we should
fight our battles like true soldiers.

The notion was as agreeable to our adherents as
to ourselves; and, in a very brief space, behold us,
to wit, General Dicky Dare, and General Sy Tough,
(for by that sobriquet my school-mates always preferred
to distinguish me,) each at the head of his
train-bands, all in Coventry uniform, tag, rag, and
bobtail, with shingle-swords and broomstick-muskets,
banners of old paper-hangings, and full bands
of music—for, in truth, every soul, the generals only
excepted, was musician as well as soldier—in which
old kettles and frying-pans contended with conches
and tin-horns, and fifes and pitch-pipes with penny-whistles,
jews-harps, and comb-organs. In such
array, and all eager for the battle, we were wont to
meet, of Saturday afternoons, on the school house
green; and, having saluted each other with a preliminary
shower or two of pebbles and potatoes,
march gallantly up to the charge, and to it pell-mell
like brave fellows; so that the plain of Troy and
Donny brook-fair were mere nothings in comparison.
And such battles, fought with extreme rancour, and
at an expense of numberless broken heads, and, once
or twice, a broken bone, we never could give over,
until the towns-people, who by no means encouraged
such excesses, fell foul of us with switches and horsewhips,
and so routed both armies together.

Such interference we deemed a great hardship, as
the sport was in great vogue among us; and the more

particularly as we had dubbed our parties, respectively,
Feds and Demies—that is, Federalists and
Democrats—in imitation of the grown children, our
fathers of the country at large, and thought we had
as much right as they, under the above titles, to
knock one another on the head. But the enemy, or
the armed intervention, prevailed; switches and
horsewhips were weapons we could not resist; and
both armies, having been effectually routed half a
dozen times, were finally disbanded, to the unspeakable
grief of my great rival, General Dare; who
mourned his discomfiture in sorrow and humiliation,
but was too great of soul to despair. His spirit
was, indeed, not to be vanquished by one rebuff; and
his genius soon supplied, in a new undertaking, a
nobler field of fame than that from which we had
been driven.