It is to be noted that although Mr. Joseph Marryat was a prosperous man, he did not send his sons to a public school. Frederick and his elder brother (Joseph also, and not unknown as a collector of, and writer on, porcelain) were sent to some sort of academy kept by a Mr. Freeman, at Ponders End. It is an almost universal experience that the boy who has been at a private school may remember an individual master with kindness, but never has any degree of respect or affection for the place itself. He is not one of an ancient body like the public-school man, and has nothing in his memory to set off against the restraint--or in the old hard days the floggings and hardships of school life. The Wykamite might laugh at the wash pot of Moab, but what private-school boy would forgive his master for turning him out to wash in a back yard? What is inflicted by a public school is inflicted by the school itself; in a private establishment it is inflicted by the master, and is a personal wrong. Marryat was no exception to the rule. His memories of Ponders End were not of a kind to make him draw cheerful pictures of school life. That he was far from a model pupil, and had his share of the cane, has nothing to do with it. He scamped his work, and forgot it, as many other boys have done and will do. Not only that, but he was the cause of scamping in others. Mr. Babbage, who was for a time his schoolfellow, is the authority for a story which shows that Marryat was indeed a model young scamp. Babbage wished to work (it does not appear whether they called it “sweating” or “greasing” at Ponders End), and to get up for that purpose with another “swot” at the absurd hour of three. With intentions which were only too obvious, Marryat, who was his room fellow, proposed to join the party. Babbage objected, and thought to escape the intrusion by the easy method of not waking Marryat. This answered until the creator of Mr. Midshipman Easy first bethought himself of drawing his bed across the door, and then when even the moving of his bed did not rouse him, of tying his hand to the handle. For some nights Babbage got over the difficulty by cutting the fastening, until Marryat found a chain which could not be cut. Babbage had his revenge. He invented an ingenious machine for jerking the chain, and went on waking his chum repeatedly for no purpose. At last a compromise was made. Marryat joined the good boys for early study, and of course it was not long before others joined too, and then the letting off of fireworks and various noises betrayed the secret. How many of the party were flogged does not appear. Before long Marryat had to be up at six bells in the middle watch on duty too often to leave him much inclination to turn out voluntarily, even for mischief, when he could by any chance get a night in.