Bernard Brooks' Adventures: The Experience of a Plucky Boy
Horatio Alger
Bernard Brooks' Adventures: The Experience of a Plucky Boy
CHAPTER I. BERNARD BROOKS
You’re a bad lot, Bernard Brooks. I don’t think I ever knew a wuss boy.”
“Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Snowdon. Let me suggest, however, that wuss is hardly correct English.”
The speaker was fifteen years of age, but as tall as most boys of seventeen. He had a bold, aggressive manner, which he only assumed with those he thought were hostile or unfriendly.
He could be a devoted friend, and a loyal subordinate to one who gained his good will. Mr. Snowdon he did not look upon as a friend, though he had been placed in his charge two months before by a cousin of his deceased father.
Ezekiel Snowdon, a man of perhaps sixty, tall and with stooping shoulders, colored with anger at the boy’s sarcastic words.
He claimed to have been educated at a small Western college, and on the strength of it had established himself in the country and advertised for private pupils at a low rate.
These were mostly young, and not competent to see his deficiencies, but Bernard was old enough and well enough educated to perceive and comment on them. This greatly annoyed Mr. Snowdon, who felt that the boy did not treat him with proper respect.
“Quit your impudence!” said Snowdon with a vicious look in his greenish lived eyes. “I don’t need no criticisms from a whipper snapper like you.”
“I intended it for your benefit, Mr. Snowdon,” said Bernard demurely. “Besides, you criticise me. You called me a bad lot.”
“And so you are. A wuss – a worse boy I never seen.”
“Saw would be more correct, Mr. Snowdon.”
“Young man, you’d better look out. I won’t submit to your aggravating impudence. Besides, you are ignorant of the fact that Chaucer and Spenser use seen for saw. Them are my favorite poets, so it is not strange that I should occasionally make use of their diction.”
“Thank you for the information, Mr. Snowdon. I did not know that you had such high authority. I have read a little of Chaucer and Spenser, and I never observed the word you mention.”
“Perhaps you have not read the same works as I,” said Mr. Snowdon.
“Very likely,” remarked Bernard, struggling to suppress a smile.
“It might be well another time to be sure of your ground before you try to criticise your elders.”
“Yes, sir,” said Bernard, with a meekness which the twinkle in his eye belied.
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” remarked Mr. Snowdon with dignity.
“I am sure you are a good judge on that point, Mr. Snowdon,” said Bernard with demure face, so that his elder did not catch the covert sarcasm.
“I am glad you give me credit for something,” rejoined the teacher. “Now you hear what I say. I won’t have you goin’ round with that Nat Barclay, as you did last evening.”
“What’s the matter with Nat Barclay?”
“He was once a pupil of mine, and he defied my authority, so I had to discharge him.”
“That isn’t what he says, Mr. Snowdon.”
“What does he say?”
“He says that he found out you didn’t know enough to teach him, and got his father to take him away from your school.”
“Then the boy lied,” said Mr. Snowdon, coloring deeply. “I’d like to thrash him.”
“I dare say you would, Mr. Snowdon, but I don’t think it would be exactly safe. Nat wouldn’t stand it.”
“He’d have to stand it, if I took it into my head to chastise him.”
“If you had a scrimmage, I’d bet on Nat,” said the bold pupil.
“Do you consider scrimmage a classical word?” asked Mr. Snowdon with a sneer.
“Well, not exactly. I suppose you know that Dryden uses it,” said Bernard with a bold flight of imagination.
Now Mr. Snowdon was not sufficiently versed in English classical writers to know whether this statement was correct or not. So he equivocated to conceal his ignorance.
“Dryden is not always a corr