Free A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

ferulæ you are to get. I won’t come back too.
    —Yes, said Cecil Thunder, and the prefect of studies was in second of grammar this morning.
    —Let us get up a rebellion, Fleming said. Will we?
    All the fellows were silent. The air was very silent and you could hear the cricketbats but more slowly than before: pick, pock.
    Wells asked:
    —What is going to be done to them?
    —Simon Moonan and Tusker are going to be flogged, Athy said,and the fellows in the higher line got their choice of flogging or being expelled.
    —And which are they taking? asked the fellow who had spoken first.
    —All are taking expulsion except Corrigan, Athy answered. He’s going to be flogged by Mr Gleeson.
    —Is it Corrigan that big fellow? said Fleming. Why, he’d be able for two of Gleeson!
    —I know why, Cecil Thunder said. He is right and the other fellows are wrong because a flogging wears off after a bit but a fellow that has been expelled from college is known all his life on account of it. Besides Gleeson won’t flog him hard.
    —It’s best of his play not to, Fleming said.
    —I wouldn’t like to be Simon Moonan and Tusker, Cecil Thunder said. But I don’t believe they will be flogged. Perhaps they will be sent up for twice nine.
    —No, no, said Athy. They’ll both get it on the vital spot.
    Wells rubbed himself and said in a crying voice:
    —Please, sir, let me off!
    Athy grinned and turned up the sleeves of his jacket, saying:
It can’t be helped;
It must be done .
So down with your breeches
And out with your bum .
    The fellows laughed; but he felt that they were a little afraid. In the silence of the soft grey air he heard the cricketbats from here and from there: pock. That was a sound to hear but if you were hit then you would feel a pain. The pandybat made a sound too but not like that. The fellows said it was made of whalebone and leather with lead inside: and he wondered what was the pain like. There were different kinds of pains for all the different kinds of sounds. A long thin cane would have a high whistling sound and he wondered what was that pain like. It made him shivery to think of it and cold: and what Athy said too. But what was there to laugh at in it? It made him shivery: but that was because you always felt like a shiver when you let down your trousers. It was the same in the bath when you undressed yourself. He wondered who had to let them down, the master or the boy himself. O how could they laugh about it that way?
    He looked at Athy’s rolledup sleeves and knuckly inky hands. He had rolled up his sleeves to show how Mr Gleeson would roll up his sleeves. But Mr Gleeson had round shiny cuffs and clean white wrists and fattish white hands and the nails of them were long and pointed. Perhaps he pared them too like Lady Boyle. But they were terribly long and pointed nails. So long and cruel they were though the white fattish hands were not cruel but gentle. And though he trembled with cold and fright to think of the cruel long nails and of the high whistling sound of the cane and of the chill you felt at the end of your shirt when you undressed yourself yet he felt a feeling of queer quiet pleasure inside him to think of the white fattish hands, clean and strong and gentle. And he thought of what Cecil Thunder had said; that Mr Gleeson would not flog Corrigan hard. And Fleming had said he would not because it was best of his play not to. But that was not why.
    A voice from far out on the playground cried:
    —All in!
    And other voices cried:
    —All in! All in!
    During the writing lesson he sat with his arms folded, listening to the slow scraping of the pens. Mr Harford went to and fro making little signs in red pencil and sometimes sitting beside the boy to show him how to hold the pen. He had tried to spell out the headline for himself though he knew already what it was for it was the last of the book. Zeal without prudence is like a ship adrift . But the lines of the letters were like fine invisible