NOSTRIL MEMORIES 

 Quaint place, that Institutionwhen 

 one looks back on it from this far 

 end of the road ! I think I can breathe 

 its peculiar atmosphere this instant 

 and see the queer, long, low room, 

 with the beams across the ceiling/ 

 the whitewashed walls, covered with 

 highly coloured elementary maps and 

 graphic pictures of the metrical 

 system applied to measures lineal 

 and cubical, solid and liquid, and to 

 the national coinage. . . . There they 

 are: the six rows of benches and 

 desks, each with its half-dozen 

 youngsters, some elaborately drawing 

 a steel nib, in strokes alternately 

 swelling and slender, over a copybook of bafflingly soft 

 paper, productive of periodical splutters / others reading 

 <in earnest or in pretence) a chapter of Epitome ; others, 

 again, committing, with dumb mouthing, a fable of La 

 Fontaine to memory for to-morrow's recitation, until such 

 moment as the cracked voice of the courtyard clock 

 striking five should proclaim the hour of release. The 

 usher, ensconced in cathedra, at his high desk/ a smaller 

 lamp for his especial benefit burning <and smelling) by his 

 side / a book before him . ' In his own walk he must have 

 passed, methinks now, for something of a dandy, in the 

 cheap line / for he remains associated more with sedulous 

 trimming of nails, with pulling out of curly brown 

 whiskers / with a nervous, tricky settling of collar, tie and 

 cuffs <obviously false), than with anything else. ... He 



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