“We purify the boys’ blood now and then, Nickleby,” said Squeers, when the operation was over.

A meagre breakfast followed; and then Mr. Squeers made his way to his desk, and called up the first class.

“This is the first class in English spelling and philosophy, Nickleby,” said Squeers, beckoning Nicholas to stand beside him.  “Now then, where’s the first boy?”

“Please, sir, he’s cleaning the back parlour window.”

“So he is, to be sure,” replied Squeers.  “We go upon the practical mode of teaching, Nickleby; the regular education system.  C-l-e-a-n, clean, verb active, to make bright.  W-i-n, win; d-e-r, winder, a casement.  When the boy knows this out of a book, he goes and does it.  Where’s the second boy?”

“Please, sir, he’s weeding the garden.”

“So he is,” said Squeers.  B-o-t, bot; t-i-n, bottin; n-e-y, ney, bottiney, noun substantive, a knowledge of plants.  When he has learned that bottiney means a knowledge of plants, he goes and knows ’em.  That’s our system, Nickleby.  Third boy, what’s a horse?”

“A beast, sir,” replied the boy.

“So it is,” said Squeers.  “A horse is a quadruped, and quadruped’s Latin for beast, as everybody that’s gone through the grammar knows.  As you’re perfect in that, go and look after my horse, and rub him down well, or I’ll rub you down.  The rest of the class go and draw water up, till somebody tells you to leave off, for it’s washing day to-morrow, and they want the coppers filled.”

The deficiencies of Mr. Squeers’ scholastic methods were made up by lavish punishments, and Nicholas was compelled to stand by every day and see the unfortunate pupils of Dotheboys Hall beaten without mercy, and know that he could do nothing to alleviate their misery.

In particular the plight of one poor boy, older than the rest, called Smike, a drudge whom starvation and ill-treatment had rendered dull and slow-witted, aroused all Nicholas’s pity.

It was Smike who was the cause of Nicholas leaving Yorkshire.

Nicholas could endure the coarse and brutal language of Squeers, the displeasure of Mrs. Squeers (who decided that the new usher was “a proud, haughty, consequential, turned-up-nosed peacock,” and that “she’d bring his pride down"), and the petty indignities this lady could inflict upon him.  He bore with the bad food, dirty lodging, and daily round of squalid misery in the school.

But there came a day when Smike, unable to face his tormentors any longer, ran away.  He was taken within four-and-twenty hours, and brought back, bedabbled with mud and rain, haggard and worn—­to all appearance more dead than alive.

The work this unhappy drudge performed would have cost the establishment some ten or twelve shillings a week in the way of wages, and Squeers, who, as a matter of policy, made severe examples of all runaways from Dotheboys Hall, prepared to take full vengeance on Smike.