It is to be noticed that there is a curious sympathy in point of error on both sides of the Atlantic, for seventeen of the mistakes quoted in this book as being made in the Public Schools of America appear in similar or identical words in an Article on “Boys’ Blunders” in the Cornhill Magazine of June, 1886, which was written by a Master in an English Public School.

Dr. Blimber’s establishment was a great hothouse in which there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work. All the boys blew before their time. Mental green peas were produced at Christmas and intellectual asparagus all the year round. Mathematical gooseberries (very sour ones) were common at untimely seasons and from mere sprouts of bushes under Dr. Blimber’s cultivation. Every description of Greek and Latin vegetable was got off the dryest twigs of boys under the frostiest circumstances. Nature was of no consequence at all. No matter what a young gentleman was intended to bear Dr. Blimber made him bear to pattern. But the system of forcing was attended with its usual disadvantages. There was not the right taste about the premature productions and they didn’t keep well. When poor Paul had spelt out No. 2 he found he had no idea of No. 1, fragments whereof afterwards obtruded themselves into No. 3 which slided into No. 4 which grafted itself on to No. 2; so that whether twenty Romuluses made a Remus, or a verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or three times four was Taurus a bull, were open questions with him. But however high and false the temperature at which Dr. Blimber kept his hothouse, the owners of the plants were always ready to lend a helping hand at the bellows and to stir the fire.