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matters to nobody when I left it; I revisited it lately. I went to see the boys break up, as I once broke up, and I felt disgusted--not with the school, or the breaking up, but with myself. I felt disgracefully old. In fact, I went home, and began a poem with these words:-- My years, I feel, are getting on: Yet, ere the trembling balance kicks, I Will imitate the dying swan, And sing an ode threnodic--vixi. I never got any farther than that. By the way, I shall have to mention eventually that the school was King's College, in the Strand. I am not going to unbosom beyond this, or to add anything in the way of an autobiography; but the locale would have to come out anon, and there is no possible reason for concealment. Well, I went to see them break up for the holidays, and only got over my antediluvian feelings by seeing one of the masters still on the staff who was there when I was a boy. It was a comfort to think what a Methuselah he must be; and yet, if he will excuse the personality, he looked as rosy and smooth-faced as when he used to stand me outside his door with my coat-sleeves turned inside out. It was a way he had. Well, the presence of that particular master made me feel an Adonis forthwith. I will not go into the prizes. There were lots of them, and they were very nice, and the boys looked very happy, and their mammas legitimately proud. What I want to speak of is the school speeches or recitations, as they are termed. King's College School speeches are, to my thinking, a model of what such things ought to be. Some schools--I name no names--go in for mere scholastic recitations which nobody understands, and the boys hate. Others burst out in full-blown theatricals. King's College acts on the motto, Medio tutissimus ibis. It keeps the old scholastic recitations, but gilds the pill by adding the accessory of costume. I can quote Latin as well as Dr. Pangloss, and certain lines were running in my mind all the time I was in King's College Hall. They were Pueris olim dant crustula blandi Doctores, elementa velint ut discere prima. First we had a bit of German in the shape of an extract from Kotzebue's "Die Schlaue Wittwe," or "Temperaments." I wish I had my programme, I would compliment by name the lad who played the charming young Frau. Suffice it to say the whole thing went off sparkling like a firework. It was short, and made you wish for more--a great virtue in speeche
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