1828.] Nolesfor the Month. 179 



the office of " mathematical assistant," &c. at some particular school ; 

 where he was surprised to find that he was not treated as a gentleman 

 which fact he exemplifies in the following manner. 



" My breakfast" he says, " was served up, at the desk in the school- 

 room, ready made in a compendious form, as if I were a mechanic or a 

 labourer. At dinner I was treated like the boys ; with this difference, 

 that I was obliged to see them served first. Tea and supper were served 

 in the school-room like breakfast ; and not once during the whole half 

 year did I take a single meal with the principal, nor did I enter a room 

 that had a carpet on it." 



Now we confess that all this strikes us as rather too high and mighty. 

 For the matter of " not associating with the principal/' a school-master, 

 in person, answers that part of the case very well. " Good God !" ex- 

 claims the despairing pedagogue, " is it not sufficient that I am pes- 

 tered with the scholars all day, but I must have the usher inflicted upon 

 me at night !" And we do think, certainly, that even a pedagogue is a 

 man, and is entitled, in his hours of leisure, to choose his own society. 

 A banker's clerk, to put a parallel case, is as good a " gentleman," as a 

 school assistant. But what a fuss it would make, if all the people with 

 pens behind their ears,, at No. 250 or whatever the number is of 

 Coutts's banking house in the Strand, were to make a protest, because 

 they don't go to the opera with the " Duchess of St. Alban's ?" If by 

 the cc compendious" form in which his breakfast was served up, our 

 mathematician means that in quantity or quality that breakfast was 

 deficient, he has ground of complaint; but the former kind of iniquity 

 seems hardly chargeable, and, in fact, is not charged, since he speaks of 

 the indignities inflicted upon him by the dispositions at " breakfast," 

 " dinner," " tea," and " supper." And the rest of the quarrel is singu- 

 larly infelicitous " At dinner," he says, " he was treated like the boys." 

 That is to say, he received the same respect and advantage as the scholars 

 whom he was hired to instruct, and by whose payments the establishment 

 which maintained him was upheld ; and yet he is delicate and offended, 

 because he does not sit " in a room that has a carpet on it." 



Now we repeat that we have no inclination to depreciate either the 

 claims or the qualities of " gentlemen assistants ;" but, if " respect" is 

 their object, they are taking a wrong course to obtain it. The secret of 

 their degradation if they are degraded is, that they are too cheap ; and 

 they are too cheap, because the very unlucky desire (which they express) 

 of being " gentlemen," makes very considerably too many of them. An 

 usher in a school performs twice the labour, and receives about half the 

 stipend, of a competent footman. Society is not in fault here ; the footman 

 (who is wanted) is well paid ; but, for the tutor he can only have his 

 market price why should we give Mr. A. forty pounds a-year salary, 

 when Mr. B. intreats us to accept his services at fi ve-aiid-twerity ? 



The same cause produces the notoriously inadequate payment of 

 another unlucky class of professors, whom we have already alluded 

 to the clerks and haberdasher's shopmen. The desire of being called 

 " Mr." among the first, and of having their hair curled, and wearing 

 blue coats among the second, crowds the market for this sort of labour 

 with applicants, who reject the more modest (although more gainful) 

 sources of employment. The result is, that they must ba ill paid because 

 their necessity makes them underbid each other: and they must be exposed 

 to ridicule because they are practically impostors : the ticket-porter, to 



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