10. Great Expectations: Charles Dickens
The appropriate idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I awoke that the best step towards making myself uncommon was to get out of Biddy everything she knew. In pursuance of this luminous conception I mentioned to Biddy that I had a particular reason for wishing to get on in life, and that I should feel very much obliged to her if she would impart all her learning to me. Biddy immediately said she would, and began to carry out her promise. The educational scheme of Mr Wopsle's great aunt was like this: The pupils ate apples and put straws up one another's backs, until Mr Wopsle's great aunt collected her energies and made an indiscriminate totter at them with a birch-rod . After receiving the charge with every mark of derision, the pupils formed in line and buzzing passed a ragged book from hand to hand. The book had an alphabet in it, some figures and some tables, and a little spelling- that is to say it had once. As soon as this...