Ernest Bracebridge Or Schoolboy Days Author:William Henry Giles Kingston Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Ernest's First Bats At School. The next morning -when he got up Eraest was told, after prayers, to take his seat on a vacant bench at the botto... more »m of the school, till the Doctor had time to examine him. He felt rather nervous about bis examination, for he had been led to suppose it a very awful affair. At last the Doctor called him up and asked him what books he had read. Ernest ran through a long list; Sir Walter Scott ' s novels, and Locke on the Human Understanding, were among them. The Doctor smiled as he enumerated them. " I fear that they will not stand you in good stead here, my man; the books I mean are Greek and Latin books. What have you read of them 1" " None, Sir, right through. I know a great number of words, and can put them together, and papa and I sometimes talk Latin and Greek together just as easily as we do French and German and Italian." " I have no doubt that you will do in the end," observed Doctor Carr. " I make a rule, however, to put boys who have not read certain books, in the class in which those books are about to be read, and let them work their way up. I reserve the power of removing a boy up as rapidly as I 43 think fit sO that if you are diligent I have ho donbi that you will rapidly rise in the school." Ernest thanked the Doctor, and in the forenoon went up with Mis new class. He felt rather ashamed at finding himself among so many little boys, and still more at the bungling hesitating way in which they said their lessons. They were just beginning Caesar. He found that he could quickly turn it into English, but he took hia dictionary that he might ascertain the exact meaning of each word. The Doctor called up his class that day, though he generally heard only the upper classes. Ernest began at the bottom, but before t...« less