There were portraits of him on the walls,
with all his weak points monstrously portrayed. Diabolical sentiments,
foreign to his character, were represented as issuing from his mouth in
fat balloons. Every pupil had added something, even unto fancy portraits
of his father with one eye, and of his mother with a disproportionate
nose, and especially of his sister; who always being presented as
extremely beautiful, made full amends to Tom for any other jokes. Under
less uncommon circumstances, it would have cut Tom to the heart to leave
these things and think that he saw them for the last time; but it didn't
now. There was no Pecksniff; there never had been a Pecksniff; and all
his other griefs were swallowed up in that.
So, when he returned into the bedroom, and, having fastened his box and
a carpet-bag, put on his walking gaiters, and his great-coat, and his
hat, and taken his stick in his hand, looked round it for the last time.
Early on summer mornings, and by the light of private candle-ends on
winter nights, he had read himself half blind in this same room. He had
tried in this same room to learn the fiddle under the bedclothes, but
yielding to objections from the other pupils, had reluctantly abandoned
the design.
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