'Skyblue' and bread as before.

As to cleanliness, I never had a bath, never bathed (at the
school) during the two years I was there. On Saturday
nights, before bed, our feet were washed by the housemaids,
in tubs round which half a dozen of us sat at a time. Woe to
the last comers! for the water was never changed. How we
survived the food, or rather the want of it, is a marvel.
Fortunately for me, I used to discover, when I got into bed,
a thickly buttered crust under my pillow. I believed, I
never quite made sure, (for the act was not admissible), that
my good fairy was a fiery-haired lassie (we called her
'Carrots,' though I had my doubts as to this being her
Christian name) who hailed from Norfolk. I see her now: her
jolly, round, shining face, her extensive mouth, her ample
person. I recall, with more pleasure than I then endured,
the cordial hugs she surreptitiously bestowed upon me when we
met by accident in the passages. Kind, affectionate
'Carrots'! Thy heart was as bounteous as thy bosom. May the
tenderness of both have met with their earthly deserts; and
mayest thou have shared to the full the pleasures thou wast
ever ready to impart!

There were no railways in those times. It amuses me to see
people nowadays travelling by coach, for pleasure. How many
lives must have been shortened by long winter journeys in
those horrible coaches. The inside passengers were hardly
better off than the outside. The corpulent and heavy
occupied the scanty space allotted to the weak and small -
crushed them, slept on them, snored over them, and