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DOCTOR BIRCH AND HIS YOUNG FRIENDS.

By Mr. M. A. Titmarsh.

London:

Chapman and Hall

1840.

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DOCTOR BIRCH.




THE DOCTOR AND HIS STAFF.

|There is no need to say why I became Assistant Master and Professor of
the English and French languages, flower-painting, and the German flute,
in Doctor Birch's Academy, at Rodwell Regis. Good folks may depend on
this that there was good reason for my leaving lodgings near London,
and a genteel society, for an under-master's desk in that old school.
I promise you, the fare at the Usher's table, the getting up at five
o'clock in the morning, the walking out with little boys in the fields,
(who used to play me tricks, and never could be got to respect my awful
and responsible character as teacher in the school,) Miss Birch's vulgar
insolence, Jack Birch's glum condescension, and the poor old Doctor's
patronage, were not matters in themselves pleasurable: and that that
patronage and those dinners were sometimes cruel hard to swallow. Never
mind--my connexion with the place is over now, and I hope they have got
a more efficient under-master.

Jack Birch (Rev. J. Birch, of St. Neot's Hall, Oxford,) is partner with
his father the Doctor, and takes some of the classes. About his Greek
I can't say much; but I will construe him in Latin any day. A more
supercilious little prig, (giving himself airs, too, about his cousin,
Miss Baby,