the quick. And then he never earned the rest of the play-time; he
always had impositions to write. The imposition, a punishment which
varies according to the practice of different schools, consisted at
Vendome of a certain number of lines to be written out in play hours.
Lambert and I were so overpowered with impositions, that we had not
six free days during the two years of our school friendship. But for
the books we took out of the library, which maintained some vitality
in our brains, this system of discipline would have reduced us to
idiotcy. Want of exercise is fatal to children. The habit of
preserving a dignified appearance, begun in tender infancy, has, it is
said, a visible effect on the constitution of royal personages when
the faults of such an education are not counteracted by the life of
the battle-field or the laborious sport of hunting. And if the laws of
etiquette and Court manners can act on the spinal marrow to such an
extent as to affect the pelvis of kings, to soften their cerebral
tissue, and so degenerate the race, what deep-seated mischief,
physical and moral, must result in schoolboys from the constant lack
of air, exercise, and cheerfulness!

Indeed, the rules of punishment carried out in schools deserve the
attention of the Office of Public Instruction when any thinkers are to
be found there who do not think exclusively of themselves.

We incurred the infliction of an imposition in a thousand ways. Our
memory was so good that we never learned a lesson. It was enough for
either of us to hear our class-fellows repeat the task in French,
Latin, or grammar, and we could say it when our turn came; but if the
master, unfortunately, took it into his head to reverse the usual
order and call upon us first, we very often did not even know what the
lesson was; then the imposition fell in spite of our most ingenious