HERTFORD: MY SCHOOL LIFE 55 



as I was sure to be kept in for inability to repeat them, and 

 it was sometimes only by several repetitions that I could attain 

 even an approximate knowledge of them. No interesting 

 facts were ever given in connection with these names, no 

 accounts of the country by travellers were ever read, no good 

 maps ever given us, nothing but the horrid stream of unin- 

 telligible place-names, to be learned in their due order as 

 belonging to a certain country. 



History was very little better, being largely a matter of 

 learning by heart names and dates, and reading the very 

 baldest account of the doings of kings and queens, of wars, 

 rebellions, and conquests. Whatever little knowledge of history 

 I have ever acquired has been derived more from Shakes- 

 peare's plays and from good historical novels than from any- 

 thing I learned at school. 



At one period when the family was temporarily broken 

 up, for some reason I do not remember, I was for about half 

 a year a boarder in Mr. Crutwell's house, in company with 

 twenty or thirty other boys ; and I will here give the routine 

 of a pretty good boarding-school at that period. 



Our breakfast at eight consisted of a mug of milk-and- 

 water and a large and very thick slice of bread-and-butter. 

 For the average boy this was as much as they could eat, a 

 few could not eat so much, a few wanted more, and the former 

 often gave their surplus to the latter. Any boy could have 

 an egg or a slice of bacon cooked if he bought it himself or 

 had it sent from home, but comparatively very few had such 

 luxuries. Three times a week half the boys had a hot buttered 

 roll instead of the bread-and-butter. These penny rolls were 

 much larger than any I have seen in recent years, although 

 this was in the corn-law days, and one of them was as much 

 as any boy wanted. They were cut in two longitudinally 

 and well buttered, and were served quite hot from the kitchen 

 oven. Any boy who preferred it could have bread-and-butter 

 instead, as a few did, and any bread-and-butter boy who had 

 not much appetite could have a thin slice instead of a thick 

 one by asking for it. 



