was in the same boarding-house with Berry,
and we all looked to see whether he ate a good dinner, just as one would
examine a man who was going to be hanged. I recollected, in after-life,
in Germany, seeing a friend who was going to fight a duel eat five larks
for his breakfast, and thought I had seldom witnessed greater courage.
Berry ate moderately of the boiled beef--BOILED CHILD we used to call it
at school, in our elegant jocular way; he knew a great deal better than
to load his stomach upon the eve of such a contest as was going to take
place.

Dinner was very soon over, and Mr. Chip, who had been all the while
joking Berry, and pressing him to eat, called him up into his study,
to the great disappointment of us all, for we thought he was going to
prevent the fight; but no such thing. The Reverend Edward Chip took
Berry into his study, and poured him out two glasses of port-wine, which
he made him take with a biscuit, and patted him on the back, and went
off. I have no doubt he was longing, like all of us, to see the battle;
but etiquette, you know, forbade.

When we went out into the green, Old Hawkins was there--the great
Hawkins, the cock of the school. I have never seen the man since, but
still think of him as of something awful, gigantic, mysterious: he who
could thrash everybody, who could beat all the masters; how we longed
for him to put in his hand and lick Buckle! He was a dull boy, not very
high in the school, and had all his exercises written for him. Buckle
knew this, but respected him; never called him up to read Greek plays;
passed over all his blunders, which were many; let him go out of
half-holidays into the town as he pleased: how should any man dare to
stop him--the great calm magnanimous silent Strength! They say he licked
a Life-Guardsman: I wonder whether it was Shaw, who killed all those
Frenchmen? No, it could not be Shaw, for he was dead au champ d'honneur;
but he WOULD have licked Shaw if he had been alive. A bargeman I know he
licked, at Jack Randall's in Slaughter House Lane. Old Hawkins was too
lazy to play at cricket; he sauntered all day in the sunshine about the
green, accompanied by little Tippins, who was in the sixth form, laughed
and joked at Hawkins eternally, and was the person who wrote all his
exercises.

Instead of going into town this afternoon, Hawkins remained at Slaughter
House, to see the great fight between the second and third cocks.

The different masters of th