printed at the best than any
curiosities of literature I have since met with, speckled all over with
iron-mould, and having various specimens of the insect world smashed between
their leaves. This part of the Course was usually lightened by several single
combats between Biddy and refractory students. When the fights were over, Biddy
gave out the number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we could - or
what we couldn't - in a frightful chorus; Biddy leading with a high shrill
monotonous voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or reverence for,
what we were reading about. When this horrible din had lasted a certain time, it
mechanically awoke Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, who staggered at a boy fortuitously,
and pulled his ears. This was understood to terminate the Course for the
evening, and we emerged into the air with shrieks of intellectual victory. It is
fair to remark that there was no prohibition against any pupil's entertaining
himself with a slate or even with the ink (when there was any), but that it was
not easy to pursue that branch of study in the winter season, on account of the
little general shop in which the classes were holden - and which was also Mr.
Wopsle's great-aunt's sitting-room and bed-chamber - being but faintly
illuminated through the agency of one low-spirited dip-candle and no snuffers.
    It appeared to me that it would take time to become uncommon under these
circumstances: nevertheless, I resolved to try it, and that very evening Biddy
entered on our special agreement, by imparting some information from her little
catalogue of Prices, under the head of moist sugar, and lending me, to copy at
home, a large old English D which she had imitated from the heading of some
newspaper, and which I supposed, until she told me what it was, to be a design
for a buckle.
    Of course there was a public-house in the village, and of course Joe liked
sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I had received strict orders from my sister
to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen, that evening, on my way from
school, and bring him home at my peril. To the Three Jolly Bargemen, therefore,
I directed my steps.
    There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk
scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to be never
paid off. They had been there ever since I could remember, and