companions, or casting the genial brickbat at the
passing stranger. Ah happy time! Ah happy
they! Ah happy, happy Doctor Pantologos!

Happy, at least, in school he might have
been, notwithstanding the din, and the boys
who couldn't and the boys who wouldn't
learn—both very numerous classes of boys in
Accidentium Grammar School—comparatively
happy would the days have passed in the
absorption of the treatise upon the Æolic
Digamma but for that worst of boys
Quandoquidem. Quandoquidem was a big, raw-
boned boy of fourteen. He had an impracticable
head, incorrigible hands, and irretrievable
feet. He was all knuckles—that is,
his wrists, elbows, fingers, knees, toes,
shoulders, hips, and feet, all seemed to possess
the property of " knuckling down," and bending
themselves into strange angles. Quandoquidem
was a widow's son, and his mother
Veturia, who had some little property,
dwelt in a cottage just opposite the dwelling
of Doctor Pantologos, over against the old
stone cross. Quandoquidem either could not
or would not learn. He would play at all
boyish games with infinite skill and readiness,
but he would not say hic, hæc, hoc. He could
make pasteboard coaches, and windmills, and
models of boats, but he could not decline
Musa. He was the bane of the doctor's
school life—the plague, the shame, the scandal
of the school. He was the most impudent boy.
The rudest boy. The noisiest boy. He made
paper pellets and discharged them through
popguns at the Doctor as he pored over the
treatise, or, as oft-times happened, took a quiet
doze. He shod cats with walnut-shells and
caused them to perambulate the camera
studiorum. Doctor Pantologos, mild man,
clenched his fist frequently, and looked at
him vengefully, muttering something about
the proverbs of King Solomon.

I am coming to the catastrophe of Doctor
Pantologos. One very hot drowsy summer's
afternoon, it so fell out that the boy Quandoquidem,
the widow's son, was called upon by
Doctor Pantologos to say a certain lesson.
Young Quidvetat, the attorney's son, had just
said his as glibly as may be, and he, with
Quemadmodum, and Tom Delectus, and Bill
Spondee, with little Charley Dactyl, his fag
and bottle-holder, were all gathered round
the doctor's desk, anticipating vast amusement
from the performances of the widow's
son, who was the acknowledged dunce of the
school. Of course, Quandoquidem didn't
know his lesson—he never did; but on this
summer's afternoon he began to recite it so
glibly, and with so much confidence, that his
erudite preceptor was about to bestow a
large meed of praise upon him, when his
suspicions being roused by a titter he saw
spreading amongst the boys on the forms
near him, he was induced to look over the
brow of his magisterial rostrum or desk.
The incorrigible Quandoquidem had wafered
the page of the book containing his lesson
against the Doctor's desk, and was coolly
reading it.

Now, it was extremely unlucky for
Quandoquidem that the Doctor had been without
the treatise all day, and that he had as yet
sent no boy for it. If that famous Opus upon
the Digamma had been at hand, the perusal
of the title-page alone would, no doubt, have
softened his resentment; but, he was treatiseless
and remorseless, and Quandoquidem read
in his eyes that it was all up.

"Varlet," exclaimed the Doctor, in the lava
voice, "Bos, Fur, Sus, Carnifex! Furcifer!
Mendax! Oh puer nequissimus, sceleratissimus,
nocentissimus; unworthy art thou of the
lenient cane, the innocuous ferula. Let Thomas
Quandoquidem be hoisted. Were he to cry
Civis Romanum sum, he should be scourged!"

Thus classically did the Doctor announce
his dread design. The rod that might have
been in the cupboard since Doctor Busby's
time, was brought forth; and Thomas
Quandoquidem, the widow's son, suffered in the flesh.

It was a very hot and drowsy summer's
afternoon, and the school was dismissed. The
afternoon was so hot and drowsy that Doctor
Pantologos, who had been hot and drowsy
himself since execution had been done upon
Quandoquidem, began to nod in his
arm-chair, and at length, not having the treatise
to divert his attention, fell fast asleep.
He was not aware when he did so, that
one boy had remained behind, sitting in a
corner; nor that that boy was Thomas
Quandoquidem; nor was he aware that that widow's
son was gazing at him with a flushed face
and an evil eye, and that he, from time to
time, shook his knuckly fist at him.

When the Doctor was fast asleep, Quandoquidem
rose and left the school house as softly
as possible. He hastened as fast as he could
—not to his mother's home, but to the
domicile of Doctor Pantologos.

Volumnia was upstairs writing a tender epistle
to Mr. O'Bleak. The red-headed children
were all in the back garden, socially employed
in torturing a cat. When Quandoquidem
lifted the latch and entered the keeping-room,
he found no one there but the little lass
Pulchrior, who was sitting by the window,
mending the Doctor's black cotton stockings.

Now, between Thomas Quandoquidem,
the widow's son, and Pulchrior Pantologos,
the motherless, there had existed, for
some period of time, a very curious friendship
and alliance. Numberless were the
pasteboard coaches, models of boats, and
silkworm boxes he had made her. Passing one
day while she was laboriously sweeping out
the parlour, what did Quandoquidem do but
seize the broom from her hand, sweep the
parlour, passage, kitchen, and washhouse, with
goblin-like rapidity, dust all the furniture
(there was not much to dust, truly), give
Pulchrior a kiss, and then dart across the
road to his mother, the widow's house, shouting
triumphantly. Thus it grew to be that