Page:Highways and Byways in Sussex.djvu/334

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306
OLD KENT
CH. XXXII

in the 83rd year of her age, agreeable to the testimony I had of a death in our family on the 10th of May last."

"Mr. Rogers came to the school, and brought with him the four volumes of Pamela, for which I paed him 4s. 6d., and bespoke Duck's Poems for Mr. Kine, and a Caution to Swearers for myself.

"Sunday. I went to church at Hothley. Text from St. Matthew 'Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed,' and I went to Jones', where I spent 2d., and there came Thomas Cornwall, and treated me with a pint of twopenny.

"Mr. James Kine came; we smoaked a pipe together and we went and took a survey of the fair; we went to a legerdemain show, which we saw with tolerable approbation.

"May 28th. Gave attendance at a cricket-match, played between the gamesters at Burwash and Mayfield to the advantage of the latter."

A series of quarrels with old Kent occupy much of the diary. Old Kent, it seems, used to enter the school house and vilify the master, not, I imagine, without cause. Thus:—"He again called me upstart, runagate, beggarly dog, clinched his fist in my face, and made a motion to strike me, and declared he would break my head. He did not strike me, but withdrew in a wonderful heat, and ended all with his general maxim, 'The greater scholler, the greater rogue!'"

Mr. Gale was removed from the school in 1771 for neglecting his duties.