The two ushers at Tom’s first school were not gentlemen, and very poorly educated, and were only driving their poor trade of usher to get such living as they could out of it.  They were not bad men, but had little heart for their work, and of course were bent on making it as easy as possible.  One of the methods by which they endeavoured to accomplish this was by encouraging tale-bearing, which had become a frightfully common vice in the school in consequence, and had sapped all the foundations of school morality.  Another was, by favouring grossly the biggest boys, who alone could have given them much trouble; whereby those young gentlemen became most abominable tyrants, oppressing the little boys in all the small mean ways which prevail in private schools.

Poor little Tom was made dreadfully unhappy in his first week by a catastrophe which happened to his first letter home.  With huge labour he had, on the very evening of his arrival, managed to fill two sides of a sheet of letter-paper with assurances of his love for dear mamma, his happiness at school, and his resolves to do all she would wish.  This missive, with the help of the boy who sat at the desk next him, also a new arrival, he managed to fold successfully; but this done, they were sadly put to it for means of sealing.  Envelopes were then unknown; they had no wax, and dared not disturb the stillness of the evening school-room by getting up and going to ask the usher for some.  At length Tom’s friend, being of an ingenious turn of mind, suggested sealing with ink; and the letter was accordingly stuck down with a blob of ink, and duly handed by Tom, on his way to bed, to the housekeeper to be posted.  It was not till four days afterwards that the good dame sent for him, and produced the precious letter and some wax, saying, “O Master Brown, I forgot to tell you before, but your letter isn’t sealed.”  Poor Tom took the wax in silence and sealed his letter, with a huge lump rising in his throat during the process, and then ran away to a quiet corner of the playground, and burst into an agony of tears.  The idea of his mother waiting day after day for the letter he had promised her at once, and perhaps thinking him forgetful of her, when he had done all in his power to make good his promise, was as bitter a grief as any which he had to undergo for many a long year.  His wrath, then, was proportionately violent when he was aware of two boys, who stopped close by him, and one of whom, a fat gaby of a fellow, pointed at him and called him “Young mammy-sick!” Whereupon Tom arose, and giving vent thus to his grief and shame and rage, smote his derider on the nose; and made it bleed; which sent that young worthy howling to the usher, who reported Tom for violent and unprovoked assault and battery.  Hitting in the face was a felony punishable with flogging, other hitting only a misdemeanour—­a distinction not altogether clear in principle.  Tom, however, escaped the penalty by pleading primum tempus; and having written a second letter to his mother, inclosing some forget-me-nots, which he picked on their first half-holiday walk, felt quite happy again, and began to enjoy vastly a good deal of his new life.