Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is
to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited
infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in
the society of youth who paid two pence per week each, for the improving
opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage, and Mr.
Wopsle had the room up stairs, where we students used to overhear him
reading aloud in a most dignified and terrific manner, and occasionally
bumping on the ceiling. There was a fiction that Mr. Wopsle "examined"
the scholars once a quarter. What he did on those occasions was to turn
up his cuffs, stick up his hair, and give us Mark Antony's oration over
the body of Caesar. This was always followed by Collins's Ode on
the Passions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge
throwing his blood-stained sword in thunder down, and taking the
War-denouncing trumpet with a withering look. It was not with me then,
as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of the Passions,
and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the disadvantage of
both gentlemen.

Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, besides keeping this Educational Institution,
kept in the same room--a little general shop. She had no idea what stock
she had, or what the price of anything in it was; but there was a little
greasy memorandum-book kept in a drawer, which served as a Catalogue
of Prices, and by this oracle Biddy arranged all the shop transaction.
Biddy was Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's granddaughter; I confess myself
quiet unequal to the working out of the problem, what relation she was
to Mr. Wopsle. She was an orphan like myself; like me, too, had been
brought up by hand. She was most noticeable, I thought, in respect of
her extremities; for, her hair always wanted brushing, her hands always
wanted washing, and her shoes always wanted mending and pulling up at
heel. This description must be received with a week-day limitation. On
Sundays, she went to church elaborated.