Intimately he knew its
bringing-up. With the hand of a master he has drawn for us a type of the
teachers and trainers of its youth, a type of its places of education.
Mr. Creakle and Salem House are immortal. The type itself, it is to be
hoped, will perish; but the drawing of it which Dickens has given cannot
die. Mr. Creakle, the stout gentleman with a bunch of watch-chain and
seals, in an armchair, with the fiery face and the thick veins in his
forehead; Mr. Creakle sitting at his breakfast with the cane, and a
newspaper, and the buttered toast before him, will sit on, like Theseus,
for ever. For ever will last the recollection of Salem House, and of the
'daily strife and struggle' there; the recollection 'of the frosty
mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the
dark nights when we were rung into bed again; of the evening schoolroom
dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which
was nothing but a great shivering-machine; of the alternation of boiled
beef with roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mutton; of clods of
bread and butter, dog's-eared lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted
copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy Sundays, suet
puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink surrounding all.
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