In other angles were two other similar boxes, far
      less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One of
      these was the pulpit of the “classical” usher, one of the
      “English and mathematical.” Interspersed about the room, crossing
      and recrossing in endless irregularity, were innumerable benches
      and desks, black, ancient, and time-worn, piled desperately with
      much-bethumbed books, and so beseamed with initial letters, names
      at full length, grotesque figures, and other multiplied efforts
      of the knife, as to have entirely lost what little of original
      form might have been their portion in days long departed. A huge
      bucket with water stood at one extremity of the room, and a clock
      of stupendous dimensions at the other. Encompassed by the massy walls of this venerable academy, I
      passed, yet not in tedium or disgust, the years of the third
      lustrum of my life. The teeming brain of childhood requires no
      external world of incident to occupy or amuse it; and the
      apparently dismal monotony of a school was replete with more
      intense excitement than my riper youth has derived from luxury,
      or my full manhood from crime. Yet I must believe that my first
      mental development had in it much of the uncommon—even much of
      the _outré_. Upon mankind at large the events of very early
      existence rarely leave in mature age any definite impression. All
      is gray shadow—a weak and irregular remembrance—an indistinct
      regathering of feeble pleasures and phantasmagoric pains. With me
      this is not so. In childhood I must have felt with the energy of
      a man what I now find stamped upon memory in lines as vivid, as
      deep, and as durable as the _exergues_ of the Carthaginian
      medals. Yet in fact—in the fact of the world’s view—how little was there
      to remember! The morning’s awakening, the nightly summons to bed;
      the connings, the recitations; the periodical half-holidays, and
      perambulations; the play-ground, with its broils, its pastimes,
      its intrigues;—these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, were
      made to involve a wilderness of sensation, a world of rich
      incident, an universe of varied emotion, of excitement the most
      passionate and spirit-stirring. “_Oh, le bon temps, que ce siècle
      de fer!_”

      In truth, the ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of my
      disposition, soon rendered me a marked character among my
      schoolmates, and by slow, but natural gradations, gave me an
      ascendancy over all not greatly older than myself;—over all with
      a single exception. This exception was found in the person of a
      scholar, who, although no relation, bore the same Christian and
      surname as myself;—a circumstance, in fact, little remarkable;
      for, notwithstanding a noble descent, mine was one of those
      everyday appellations which seem, by prescriptive right, to have
      been, time out of mind, the common property of the mob. In this
      narrative I have therefore designated myself as William Wilson,—a
      fictitious title not very dissimilar to the real. My namesake
      alone, of those who in school phraseology constituted “our set,”
      presumed to compete with me in the studies of the class—in the
      sports and broils of the play-ground—to refuse implicit belief in
      my assertions, and submission to my will—indeed, to interfere
      with my arbitrary dictation in any respect whatsoever. If there
      is on earth a supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the
      despotism of a master-mind in boyhood over the less energetic
      spirits of its companions. Wilson’s rebellion was to me a source of the greatest
      embarrassment; the more so as, in spite of the bravado with which
      in public I made a point of treating him and his pretensions, I
      secretly felt that I feared him, and could not help thinking the
      equality which he maintained so easily with myself, a proof of
      his true superiority; since not to be overcome cost me a
      perpetual struggle. Yet this superiority—even this equality—was
      in truth acknowledged by no one but myself; our associates, by
      some unaccountable blindness, seemed not even to suspect it. Indeed, his competition, his resistance, and especially his
      impertinent and dogged interference with my purposes, were not
      more pointed than private. He appeared to be destitute alike of
      the ambition which urged, and of the passionate energy of mind
      which enabled me to excel. In his rivalry he might have been
      supposed actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart,
      astonish, or mortify myself; although there were times when I
      could not help observing, with a feeling made up of wonder,
      abasement, and pique, that he mingled with his injuries, his
      insults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and
      assuredly most unwelcome affectionateness of manner. I could only
      conceive this singular behavior to arise from a consummate
      self-conceit assuming the vulgar airs of patronage and
      protection. Perhaps it was this latter trait in Wilson’s conduct, conjoined
      with our identity of name, and the mere accident of our having
      entered the school upon the same day, which set afloat the notion
      that we were brothers, among the senior classes in the academy. These do not usually inquire with much strictness into the
      affairs of their juniors. I have before said, or should have
      said, that Wilson was not, in the most remote degree, connected
      with my family. But assuredly if we had been brothers we must
      have been twins; for, after leaving Dr. Bransby’s, I casually
      learned that my namesake was born on the nineteenth of January,
      1813—and this is a somewhat remarkable coincidence; for the day
      is precisely that of my own nativity. It may seem strange that in spite of the continual anxiety
      occasioned me by the rivalry of Wilson, and his intolerable
      spirit of contradiction, I could not bring myself to hate him
      altogether. We had, to be sure, nearly every day a quarrel in
      which, yielding me publicly the palm of victory, he, in some
      manner, contrived to make me feel that it was he who had deserved
      it; yet a sense of pride on my part, and a veritable dignity on
      his own, kept us always upon what are called “speaking terms,”
      while there were many points of strong congeniality in our
      tempers, operating to awake me in a sentiment which our position
      alone, perhaps, prevented from ripening into friendship. It is
      difficult, indeed, to define, or even to describe, my real
      feelings towards him.