The Mill on the Floss

Young

Wynd, for example, and other heroes who were especial favorites with Tom, because they laid about them with heavy strokes. He had small opinion of Saladin, whose cimeter could cut a cushion in two in an instant; who wanted to cut cushions? That was a stupid story, and he didn't care to hear it again. But when Robert Bruce, on the black pony, rose in his stirrups, and lifting his good battle-axe, cracked at once the helmet and the skull of the too hasty knight at Bannockburn, then Tom felt all the exaltation of sympathy, and if he had had a cocoanut at hand, he would have cracked it at once with the poker. Philip in his happier moods indulged Tom to the top of his bent, heightening the crash and bang and fury of every fight with all the artillery of epithets and similes at his command. But he was not always in a good

teresting form of art. Mr. Tulliver, having a vague intention that Tom should be put to some business which included the drawing out of plans and maps, had complained to Mr. Riley, when he saw him at Mudport, that Tom seemed to be learning nothing of that sort; whereupon that obliging adviser had suggested that Tom should have drawing-lessons. Mr. Tulliver must not mind paying extra for drawing; let Tom be made a good draughtsman, and he would be able to turn his pencil

expected to know that education was a delicate and difficult business, any more than an animal endowed with a power of boring a hole through a rock should be expected to have wide views of excavation? Mr. Stelling's faculties had been early trained to boring in a straight line, and he had no faculty to spare. But among Tom's contemporaries, whose fathers cast their sons on clerical instruction to find them ignorant after many days, there were many far less lucky than Tom Tulliver. Education was almost entirely a matter of luck–usually of ill-luck–in those distant days. The state of mind in which you take a billiard-cue or a dice-box in your hand is one of sober certainty compared with that of old-fashioned fathers, like Mr. Tulliver, when they selected a school or a tutor for their sons. Excellent men, who had been forced all their lives to spell on an impromptu-phonetic system, and having carried on a successful business in spite of this disadvantage, had acquired money enough to give their sons a better start in life than they had had themselves, must necessarily take t

how they could all live genteelly if they had nothing to do with education or government. Besides, it was the fault of Tom's mental constitution that his faculties could not be nourished on the sort of knowledge Mr. Stelling had to communicate. A boy born with a deficient power of apprehending signs and abstractions must suffer the penalty of his congenital deficiency, just as if he had been born with one leg shorter than the other. A method of education sanctioned by the long practice of our venerable ancestors was not to give way before the exceptional dulness of a boy who was merely living at the time then present. And Mr. Stelling was convinced that a boy so stupid at signs and abstractions must be stupid at everything e

gentlemen are rather indolent, their divin? particulum aur? being obstructed from soaring by a too hearty appetite. Some reason or other there was why Mr. Stelling deferred the execution of many spirited projects,–why he did not begin the editing of his Greek play, or any other work of scholarship, in his leisure hours, but, after turning the key of his private study with much resolution, sat down to one of Theodore Hook's novels. Tom was gradually allowed to shuffle through his lessons with less rigor, and having Philip to help him, he was able to make some show of havi

s not a boy in the abstract, existing solely to illustrate the evils of a mistaken education, b

charger who hears the drum. The drilling-lessons were always protracted by episodes of warlike narrative, much more interesting to Tom than Philip's stories out of the Iliad; for there were no cannon in the Iliad, and besides, Tom had felt some disgust on learning that Hector and Achilles might possibly never have existed. But the Duke of Wellington was really alive, and Bony had not been long dead; therefore Mr. Poulter's reminiscences of the Peninsular War were removed from all suspicion of being mythical. Mr. Poulter, it appeared, had been a conspicuous figure at Talavera, and had contributed not a little to the peculiar terror with which his regiment of infantry was regarded by the enemy. On afternoons when his memory was more stimulated than usual, he remembered that the Duke of Wellington had (in strict privacy, lest jealousies should be awakened) expressed his esteem for that fine fellow Poulter. The

said Tom, who held the notion that all the martial heroes commemo

t! Heads up!" he added, in a tone of stern command, which delighted

e about General Wolfe. He did nothing but die of his wound; that's a poor haction, I consider. Any other m

lusion to the sword, "I wish you'd brin

piter may have done when Semele urged her too ambitious request. But one afternoon, when a sudden shower of heavy rain ha

l the battles, Mr. Poulter?" said Tom, handling t

d would, if he'd

because you could shoot 'em first and spear 'em after. Bang! Ps-s-s-s!" Tom gave the requisi

d Mr. Poulter, involuntarily falling in with Tom's enthusiasm, and d

a little conscious that he had not stood his ground as became an Eng

Mr. Poulter, contemptuously; "w

ting," said Tom, "and how they used to fi

s bows and arrows," said Mr. Poulter, coughing and drawing him

ng them. He was supremely happy, perched like an amorphous bundle on the high stool, with his head thrown back, his eyes fixed on the opp

ay roaring 'la la' there; come and see old Poult

n of Poulter the drilling-master; and Tom, in the hurry of seizing something to say to prevent Mr. Poulter from thinking he was afraid of the sword when he sprang away from it, had alighted on this propositio

sed from his music. Then turning r

come bellowing at me; you're not fit t

gry by him, but Tom had never before been assaile

ng up immediately at Philip's fire. "You know I won't hit you, because you're no better

g, who was probably not far off, was an offence only to be wiped out by twenty lines of Virgil. In fact, that lady did presently descend from her roo

? what was that noise abo

his eyes. "It was Tulliver who cam

in trouble about?"

ever, met her advances toward a good understanding very much as a caressed mollusk meets an invitation to show himself out of his shell. Mrs. Stelling was not a loving, tender-hearted woman; she was a woman whose skirt sat well, who adjusted

stion, "My toothache came on,

as like an inspiration to enable him to excuse his crying. He had to accep

elf; that is to say, he admired himself more than a whole army of spectators could have admired him. He took no notice of Tom's return, being too entirely absorbed in the cut and thrust,–the solemn one, two, three, four; and Tom, not without a slight feeling of alarm at Mr. Poulter's fixed eye and hungry-

as being finally sheathed, "I wish you'd

ter, shaking his head decidedly; "you m

not hurt myself. I shouldn't take it out of the sheat

't do," said Mr. Poulter, preparing to d

the sword a week. Look here!" said Tom, reaching out the attractively large round of

still deeper gravity, "you must

bed," said Tom, eagerly, "or els

en gone through more than once, Mr. Poulter felt that he had acted with scrupulous conscientiousness, and said, "

nding him the crown-piece, and grasping the sword, whi

n?" said Mr. Poulter, pocketing the crown-piec

lling–to his bedroom, where, after some consideration, he hid it in the closet behind some hanging clothes. That night he fell asleep in the thought that he would astonish Maggie with it when she came,–tie it round his waist with his red comforter, and make her believe that

rather than formidable, yet never, since you had a beard, threw yourself into a martial attitude, and frowned before the looking-glass. It is doubtful whether our soldiers wou