i 4 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



about in the garden in front of the house, and, being 

 almost blind, he said to the boys, " Turn that ass out 

 of the garden." They looked round and answered, 

 " Please, sir, it's Mrs. Shepherd." 



Shepherd had a remarkable old clerk, Turton by 

 name, who was the village saddler. On one occasion a 

 stranger was to preach, and when the doctor returned 

 he said to him, " Well, Turton, what did you think of 

 the sermon last Sunday ? " " Well," said he, " I dunno. 

 I yeard a kind o' tuzzlin', but wheer it cum from I 

 cudna rightly tell." 



For a few years I was sent as a day-boarder to Miss 

 Hunt's school at Gateacre. On one occasion my 

 mother and sister went to London for some months, 

 and my cousin Charles Crompton and I became 

 boarders for that time at this establishment. It is only 

 when a boy becomes a boarder that he understands 

 school life and begins to see the unadulterated iniquities 

 of boys. We had rice-pudding at dinner before meat, 

 and on Saturday night there was a general washing of 

 feet in tin foot-pans. It was our firm belief that the 

 watery rice-puddings which we were made to eat were 

 cooked in the foot-pans. There were no games in those 

 days except marbles, and the sports now so common 

 were then almost unknown. 



In 1842 my mother moved to Liverpool and I was sent 

 to the High School of the Liverpool Institute. The 

 school was divided into two parts, the higher and the 

 lower the higher for boys of a better class, and the lower 

 school for tradesmen's sons and boys of the lower middle 

 class. It was one of the first of what are now called 

 modern schools. My mother, a most capable woman, 

 saw that her son would not benefit by the usual classical 

 grind, and that his tendencies were of a different char- 

 acter, and she therefore chose for me a non-classical 



