Page 55 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

—Gentlemen, the happiest day of my life was the day on
which I made my first holy communion.
Father Arnall came in and the Latin lesson began and
he remained still, leaning on the desk with his arms folded.
Father Arnall gave out the theme-books and he said that
they were scandalous and that they were all to be written
out again with the corrections at once. But the worst of all
was Fleming’s theme because the pages were stuck together
by a blot: and Father Arnall held it up by a corner and said
it was an insult to any master to send him up such a theme.
Then he asked Jack Lawton to decline the noun MARE and
Jack Lawton stopped at the ablative singular and could not
go on with the plural.
—You should be ashamed of yourself, said Father Arnall
sternly. You, the leader of the class!
Then he asked the next boy and the next and the next.
Nobody knew. Father Arnall became very quiet, more and
more quiet as each boy tried to answer it and could not. But
his face was black-looking and his eyes were staring though
his voice was so quiet. Then he asked Fleming and Fleming
said that the word had no plural. Father Arnall suddenly
shut the book and shouted at him:
—Kneel out there in the middle of the class. You are one
of the idlest boys I ever met. Copy out your themes again
the rest of you.
Fleming moved heavily out of his place and knelt be-
tween the two last benches. The other boys bent over their
theme-books and began to write. A silence filled the class-
room and Stephen, glancing timidly at Father Arnall’s dark

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