The quarter of an hour being up, the master would appear at the chancel-door, and the cry ‘All in! all in!’ would be raised, fights and other sports would be cut short, and away we would all scamper to our different classes, ready for the march to the church, a newer building on the other side of the main road.
Sometimes, I remember, the fights were adjourned. My Sunday-school teacher was for a considerable time a publican. I am afraid he was a sinner, too, for he arranged the adjournment of a fight in which I was one of the principals, and on the following Monday night I sat on his knee between the rounds, and on that occasion, at least, my opponent got the black eye and the caning. Nothing succeeded like success with a pugilistic boy, and the master invariably acted on the principle ‘To him that hath shall be given.’
In church a steep gallery in one corner on the left-hand side of the door downstairs was reserved for us, there being the usual gallery for the congregation upstairs. Here in front of us, a little oak desk before him, and a white rod about 12 feet long and 1 inch in diameter beside him, sat the master for two mortal hours. I fancy I can see him now—a tall man, with spectacles, collar and stock, sitting bolt upright, grasping with one hand his white pole and with the other his Prayer-Book. Always intent on his devotions, he nevertheless seemed to have half a dozen eyes; for though we were rude enough to call him ‘Four eyes’ (behind his back), we really had reason to believe him possessed of a much larger number. For with his white pole he could reach every boy on the gallery, and though he never struck us with it, he did worse, for he prodded us. When he saw any boy inattentive, sleeping, or in mischief, he would put down his books, make a rest of his left hand, and prod with his right. It was not pleasant—in fact, it hurt very much—when one received in quick succession several prods on the chest or in the ribs, where they generally got home. I used to get into mischief on that gallery on which I sat four hours every Sunday for many years. But I got afraid of the long pole, with the cane to follow on the Monday. So I determined to be a good boy.
If boys did not buy their Bibles, Prayer-Books, and hymn-books, they had to go without them excepting in school. There were no penny ones in those days, and I wish there were none now. A Prayer-Book cost sixpence at the lowest, and we used to pay the master a halfpenny a time, which he duly placed to our credit. When a boy had paid his last halfpenny, he became the proud owner of a new black and shining Prayer-Book, and he thought something of it. Proudly and promptly his name was written in it, coupled with a warning to thieves; neatly was it covered in brown paper or calico; jealously was it guarded and treasured, for it had cost something: it had been worked for, hoped for, and waited for. Things had for nothing are lightly esteemed; the value of anything equals its cost. Nothing is more sad—I think I ought to say disgusting—than to see the way in which at all Sunday-schools (church or chapel) the hymn-books, Prayer-Books, and Bibles are used. Cheap and nasty in their printing and paper, shoddy altogether in the putting together, which cannot be called binding, they cost nothing, they are worth nothing, they are valued at nothing, and the dust-heap becomes the receptacle of the bulk of them.
But we thought something of ours, and I, who had never seen any book in my father’s house but the old family Bible with the Apocrypha and family register in, learned my Prayer-Book off by heart as I sat for four hours a Sunday on the gallery. It kept me out of mischief, and it strengthened or trained my memory, but it also—and this was the chief glory—allowed me more time to play during the week. Sunday by Sunday, year in and year out, in the old chancel for Sunday-school, we had to repeat aloud individually the Collect, Gospel, and the Epistle for the day. They were supposed to be learned during the week. On the gallery, white pole in front of me, during those interminable sermons mornings and afternoons, I committed to memory the whole of them, and so had nothing to learn during the week—and the master thought I was a devout boy.
When I became possessed of a Bible of my own, I went for the poetry of Isaiah and the Psalms. At the Sunday-school, morning and afternoon, they gave us tickets, which were saved up and counted at the end of the year. They were little bits of cardboard, marked ‘A.’ for attendance, ‘L.’ for lessons, ‘C.’ for conduct. In addition, if boys committed to memory and recited on Sunday extra chapters, they were credited with the number of verses repeated. I used to get all possible tickets, and a large credit of extra verses.
What an event the prize-giving day was in that old chancel! The boys all there, scrupulously clean, nearly all clad alike, for choice of clothing was limited; corduroy trousers, a Holland tunic with leathern belt, home-made linen collars, and Scotch caps made out of a sound piece of some disused garment was the general rule. The vicar and his curate, the master in his collar and stock, the clergy from neighbouring villages, and various ladies and gentlemen were gathered there. Then the prizes—what a heap of them, to be sure! I wonder what the boys of to-day would think of them—few or no books, no toys, no cricket-bats or footballs, but yards of calico, flannel, or cotton goods! Many a time I have staggered home with a big parcel of such ‘prizes’; but how well I remember that mothers were very glad of them! Very few books were given, and those were of the old-fashioned ‘goody’ sort, in which a bad boy came to a bad end, and a good boy died young, and which made it appear that there was a very bad look-out for lads either way.
There was one particular Sunday in the year in which the boys had to uphold their superiority over girls, and the next Sunday girls tried their best to prove themselves better than boys. Both boys and girls became excited about it, so much so that I have seen them fight over the matter. This was Catechism Sunday, for which boys and girls would train and practise for weeks beforehand, both at school and at home. If the boys did well, a half-day’s holiday at the Sunday-school was given them, with full marks and tickets. But if the girls did best, they got the tickets and the half-holiday.
On the Sunday afternoon appointed the boys, with clean collars and tunics, would be arranged by the master along the aisles of the church—a double row—facing each other. The clergyman in the three-decker pulpit would be interrogator, and put the question of the Catechism, and each boy in his turn would answer the question put to him. The schoolmaster would arrange the boys, and from their lessons in the day-school would know how to place them so that the longer and harder answers would fall to boys who were good at repetition. Every mistake was noted down by the clergyman and schoolmaster, and by the girls, who were eager listeners. The girls had their turn the following Sunday, with the boys for listeners. The side that made the fewest mistakes were champions for the year. If any boy or girl made a comical mistake, or mispronounced a word, he or she would be known by the mispronounced word for many a day. We got a lot of fun and many quarrels out of the Catechism, and though it generally fell to me to tell the clergyman what was the duty I owed to my neighbour, and though my knowledge was perfect, I am much afraid that I never attained to its performance. So Sunday and week-day boys were under the watchful eye of the schoolmaster, and though in trying to get the better of him we sometimes dropped in for the worst (for he was a big man with a strong arm), we loved him, and he loved us, rascals though we were.
In those days boys went to work at a very early age; many lads that I knew went to work in the pits before they were ten years old, and started from home before five o’clock in the morning in order to be at the pit’s mouth before six, that they might descend to earn sixpence by twelve hours’ labour plus a two-mile walk. Holidays were never heard of unless there was some accident to the engine or machinery. Times were hard and wages were low; food was very dear. Bread was a shilling per loaf, and bad at that, sugar sixpence per pound, dirty and adulterated. Tea was about six shillings per pound, and in those days much of it was not tea. So before I was twelve I found myself in the iron foundry, working fourteen hours a day, getting three shillings per week, and thinking