Lewis Carroll in Wonderland and at Home

ence; he was appointed examing chaplain to the Bishop of Ripon, and finally

er the rule of a certain Mr. Tate, whose father, Dr. Tate, had made the school famou

special letter was written to his two eldest sisters and gives an excellent picture of those first days, when as a "new boy" he suffered at the hands of his schoolmates. As advanced as he was in Latin an

immediately they all fell upon him, and kicked and knocked him about pretty roughly. Another trick was "The Red Lion," and was played in the churchyard; they made a mark on a tombstone and one of the boys ran toward it with his finger pointed and eyes shut, trying to see how near he could get to the mark. When his turn came, and he walked toward the tombstone,

estling, leapfrog and fighting-he slurred over

ve as he was, he was always up in arms for those weaker and smaller than himself. Bullying enraged him, and distasteful as it was, he soon learned the art of using his fists for the protection of himself and others. These were the school-days of Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, and Little Pa

ing or summer the big, bare, comfortless schoolhouses were all very well, but when the days grew chill, the small boy shivered on his hard bench in his draughty corner, and in winter time the scarcity of fires was trying to ordinary flesh and blood. The po

had for him. Of course he let them "fight it out" among themselves according to the boy-nature; but the earnest little fellow with the grave face and the eager, questioning eyes, attracted him greatly, and he began to study him in his keen, kind way, finding much to admire and praise in th

love of composition, often contributing to the school magazine. The special story recorded was called "The Unknown One," but doubtless many a rhyme and jingle which could be traced to him found its way into this same

s; then he took the next step in an English boy's li

o all alike; but the English public school is another thing. It is a school for gentlemen

elt long after his untimely death, which occurred just four years before Charles was ready to enter the school. The Head-Master at that time was, strangely enough, named Tait, spelt a little differently from the Richmo

only look on and applaud the great creatures who led the game. Rugby was swarming with boys-three hundred at least-from small fourteen-year-olders of the lowest "form," or class, to those of eighteen or twenty of the fifth and sixth, the highest form

rchitecture, have no conception of what it was over sixty years ago, and even in 1846 it bore no resemblance to the original school founded by one Lawrence Sheriffe, "citizen and grocer of London" during the re

perhaps understand the feelings of the "new boy" just passing through the big,

s, and next, "the long line of gray buildings, beginning with the chapel and ending with the schoolhous

owling wilderness of boys. The eye of a boy is as keen as that of a girl regarding dress, and before Tom Brown wa

n of his conduct, 'a great deal depends on how a fellow cuts up at first. If he's got

through the schoolhouse hall which opened into the quadrangle. This was "a great room, thirty feet long and eighteen high or

h a fire at the end of each, and this was

six feet long and four feet broad. It was rather a gloomy light which came in through the bars and grating of the one window, but th

in and bottle for washing the hands, and a saucer or gallipot for soap." There was always a cotton curtain or a blind before the window. For such a mansion the Rugby schoolboy paid from ten to fifteen shillings a year, and the tenant bought his own furniture. Tom Brown had a "hard-seated sofa covered

oy and his studious ways, that Charles Dodgson's study was his castle, his home, and freehold while he was in the school. He drew ar

little Dodgson, who had been brought up in a most reverential way, but the Rugbeans

's most out of the way for masters, who all live on the other side and don't com

ole skin, and his mind clear for his studies; he was fond of tramping through the woods, or fishing along the banks of the pretty, winding Avon, or rowing up and down the river, or lying on some grassy slope, still weaving the many odd fancies which grew into clearer shape as the years

who were supposed to preserve order among the lower forms. In reality they bullied the smaller boys, for the system of fagging was much abused in those days, and the poor little fags had to be bootblacks, water-carriers, and general servants to very hard task-masters, while the "pr?poster" had little thought of doing any service f

for the life at Rugby. He owned several years later that none of the studying at Rugby was done from real love of it, and he specially bewaile

the boys had to copy out with their own hands, for the most trifling of

rough that terrible ordeal for the newcomer, called "singing in Hall." "Each new boy," we are told, "was mounted in turn upon a table, a candle in each hand, and told to sing a song. If he made a false note, a violent hiss followed, and during the performance pellets and crusts of bread we

us singing, in which solos and quartets of all sorts

elight, on

ason of t

lways wound up with '

ed this as it was great fun and they were out of it, so each year there was a lively scrimmage between the Rugbeans and the town, the former bent on kindling the bonfires before "lock-up" time, the

d when he left he had the proud distinction of being among the very few who had never gone up a certain winding staircase l

. Gummidge, that mournful, tearful lady, who was constantly bemoaning that she was "a lone lorn creetur," and that everything went "contrairy" with her. Dickens's humor touched a chord of s

cused by King James, and asked whether he or any of his ecclesiastical brethren had anything to do with it, replied: "I am fully persuaded, your Majesty, that there is not one of my brethren who is not innocent in

could not appreciate, he was forced to thrust them out of sight. He flung himself into his studies, coming out at examinations o

ly Rugbean in character; it is supposed to be a scene in which four of his sisters are roughly handling a fifth, because

nate correspondent who has been pulled into a horizontal position by the stern sister. The whole story is told by the expression of the eyes an

er, wrote to his father in 1848, that he had never had a more promising boy at his age, since he came to Rugby. Mr. Tait also wrote complimenting h

time he became their champion, their friend, and their comrade; whatever of youth and of boyhood was in his nature came out in brilliant flashes in their company. Boys, in his e