ay them, or seem to say them, by reading them off the
master's or some other boy's book who stood near, he was sent back,
and went below all the boys who did so say or seem to say them; but
in either case his vulgus was looked over by the master, who gave and
entered in his book, to the credit or discredit of the boy, so many
marks as the composition merited. At Rugby vulgus and lines were the
first lesson every other day in the week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and
Saturdays; and as there were thirty-eight weeks in the school year, it
is obvious to the meanest capacity that the master of each form had
to set one hundred and fourteen subjects every year, two hundred and
twenty-eight every two years, and so on. Now, to persons of moderate
invention this was a considerable task, and human nature being prone to
repeat itself, it will not be wondered that the masters gave the same
subjects sometimes over again after a certain lapse of time. To meet
and rebuke this bad habit of the masters, the schoolboy mind, with its
accustomed ingenuity, had invented an elaborate system of tradition.
Almost every boy kept his own vulgus written out in a book, and these
books were duly handed down from boy to boy, till (if the tradition has
gone on till now) I suppose the popular boys, in whose hands bequeathed
vulgus-books have accumulated, are prepared with three or four vulguses
on any subject in heaven or earth, or in "more worlds than one," which
an unfortunate master can pitch upon. At any rate, such lucky fellows
had generally one for themselves and one for a friend in my time. The
only objection to the traditionary method of doing your vulguses was the
risk that the successions might have become confused, and so that you
and another follower of traditions should show up the same identical
vulgus some fine morning; in which case, when it happened, considerable
grief was the result. But when did such risk hinder boys or men from
short cuts and pleasant paths?

Now in the study that night Tom was the upholder of the traditionary
method of vulgus doing. He carefully produced two large vulgus-books,
and began diving into them, and picking out a line here, and an ending
there (tags, as they were vulgarly called), till he had gotten all
that he thought he could make fit. He then proceeded to patch his tags
together with the help of his Gradus, producing an incongruous and
feeble result of eight elegiac lines, the minimum quantity for his form,