CHAPTER VI. MORTIFICATION FISK.
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After this adventure, I requested my uncle to
send me to school. I had got to be a lubberly
boy by this time, and even Joshua was tired
of me; so that I found no difficulty in obtaining
permission.
After remaining a requisite number of years
at school, I was removed to College. Here I
should likewise have continued the usual term,
but for an unlucky adventure.
Some members of my class amused themselves
one night with setting fire to the college chapel.
This was a little gingerbread cathedral of pine
boards, in the Gothic taste, and painted in fancy
colours. Its architecture was considered so admirable,
and its destruction so heinous, that the
strictest measures were taken to punish the perpetrators.
As, moreover, the incendiaries had
aggravated their offence by tarring and feathering
six tutors who had endeavoured to extinguish
the conflagration, the crime was considered the
most desperate one in the annals of the college.
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Fancy, then, the rage of the Reverend Mortification
Fisk, (at that time the most influential
and hard-hearted of the professors) when he found
himself unable to discover the criminals.
Not having it in his power to punish the culprits,
he resolved to wreak his vengeance on the
spectators; and as I had unfortunately been taken
with a bucket of water in my hand, in the
very act, as they said, of aiding and abetting
at the fire, the faculty resolved upon my expulsion.
I accordingly returned to the Hope, whither
a detailed account of the affair, together with a
bill of damages for the whole expense of the
cathedral, had preceded me.
The bill and the letter, however, much to the
disgust of the Reverend Mortification Fisk, remained
unpaid and unanswered. Joshua, who
was as arbitrary as the ace of trumps, resolutely
refused to pay the slighest attention to the animadversions
of the faculty.
I found that the whole affair occasioned but
very slight annoyance; for it afforded him an
opportunity for a little oratorical display, of which
he was very fond.
Accordingly, after having made me an oration
the first morning of my return, in which
he condemned our whole system of education,
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and made a flourish about the university of
Padua and the gardens of Plato, he became
good-natured by his own eloquence, and dismissed
the subject forever.
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Motley, John Lothrop, 1814-1877 [1839], Morton's hope, or, The memoirs of a provincial, volume 1 (Harper & Brothers, New York) [word count] [eaf284v1].
