“Here I sit at the desk again, watching his eye, as he rules out a ciphering book, with a pocket handkerchief. I have plenty to do. I don’t watch his eye in idleness but because I am morbidly attracted to it, in a dread desire to know what he will do next, and whether it will be my turn to suffer, or somebody else’s. A lane of small boys beyond me, with the same interest. I think he knows it, though he pretends he don’t. He makes dreadful mouths as he rules the ciphering book; and now he throws his eye down our lane, and we all drop over our books and tremble. A moment after we are eyeing him again. An unhappy culprit found guilty of an imperfect exercise, approaches at his command. The culprit falters excuses, and professes a determination to do better tomorrow. Mr. Creakle cuts a joke before he beats him, and we laugh at it-miserable little dogs. We laugh with our visages as white as ashes, and our hearts sinking into our boots.”
Charles Dickens, “David Copperfield”, 1850
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