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BRIGHTON 195 |
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of the kind of knotty problem he used to set his boys—
" When first the marriage knott was Ty'd, Betwixt my wife
and mee My age did hers as far exceed, as three times three doth
three, But when Ten years and half ten years, we man and wife
had been Her age came up as near to mine as eight is to sixteen Come quickly then and Tell I pray, what was our age, the
marriage day.''
From the diary of another schoolmaster, one Walter Gale of Mayfield, by no means a practitioner of all the virtues, we have the following rather ill-natured reference. "The rain clearing off at three o'clock, I set out for Brighthelm-stone, passing through Southover, but being advanced on the hills, the rain returned, and drove me for shelter under a thin hawthorn hedge, and I was obliged to return to Grover's, where I drank tea, and discoursed merrily, but innocently, with his wife, notwithstanding which, Grover was so indiscreet as to show some distaste at it, and to have great difficulty to keep his temper." Gale was dismissed from his schoolmastership in 1771, and his successor, Benjamin Hearnden, was extremely determined to do better, so put the following advertisement into the Lewes Journal (p. 278) for July 20th of that year. It is an interesting side-light on the education of the day. " Parents may divest themselves of the apprehensions often attendant on sending their Children to Boarding schools 'that proper care is not taken of them,' as they may be assured to the contrary ; |
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