ied smiling, "I never liked to kick or be kicked."

"Surely you went about with some younger boy, did you not, to whom you
told your dreams and hopes, and whom you grew to care for?"

The question led to an intimate personal confession, which may take
its place here.

"It is strange you should have mentioned it," he said. "There was one
boy, and," he added slowly, "one peculiar incident. It occurred in my
last year at Portora. The boy was a couple of years younger than I--we
were great friends; we used to take long walks together and I talked
to him interminably. I told him what I should have done had I been
Alexander, or how I'd have played king in Athens, had I been
Alcibiades. As early as I can remember I used to identify myself with
every distinguished character I read about, but when I was fifteen or
sixteen I noticed with some wonder that I could think of myself as
Alcibiades or Sophocles more easily than as Alexander or Caesar. The
life of books had begun to interest me more than real life....

"My friend had a wonderful gift for listening. I was so occupied with
talking and telling about myself that I knew very little about him,
curiously little when I come to think of it. But the last incident of
my school life makes me think he was a sort of mute poet, and had much
more in him than I imagined. It was just before I first heard that I
had won an Exhibition and was to go to Trinity. Dr. Steele had called
me into his study to tell me the great news; he was very glad, he
said, and insisted that it was all due to my last year's hard work.
The 'hard' work had been very interesting to me, or I would not have
done much of it. The doctor wound up, I remember, by assuring me that
if I went on studying as I had been studying during the last year I
might yet do as well as my brother Willie, and be as great an honour
to the school and everybody connected with it as he had been.

"This made me smile, for though I liked Willie, and knew he was a
fairly good scholar, I never for a moment regarded him as my equal in
any intellectual field. He knew all about football and cricket and
studied the school-books assiduously, whereas I read everything that
pleased me, and in my own opinion always went about 'crowned.'" Here
he laughed charmingly with amused deprecation of the conceit.

"It was only about the quality of the crown, Frank, that I was in any
doubt. If I had been offered the Triple Tiara, it would have appeared
to me