of it, and, even if they had,
would not have dreamed of taking it seriously. He who used it was of the
initiated, belonged to the Schools. We youngsters regarded that name as
a fine jest, the invention of a most excellent fancy. Even as I uttered
it to my boy I experienced again that sense of my privileged initiation.
And then, happening to look up at the wall, I saw in the light of the
corner lamp, a white, cast-iron tablet fixed thereon, bearing an
inscription in raised black letters, thus: "Line A.B." Heavens! The
name had been adopted officially! Any town urchin, any guttersnipe, any
herb-selling woman of the market-place, any wandering Boeotian, was free
to talk of the line A.B., to walk on the line A.B., to appoint to meet
his friends on the line A.B. It had become a mere name in a directory. I
was stunned by the extreme mutability of things. Time could work
wonders, and no mistake. A Municipality had stolen an invention of
excellent fancy, and a fine jest had turned into a horrid piece of cast-
iron.

I proposed that we should walk to the other end of the line, using the
profaned name, not only without gusto, but with positive distaste. And
this, too, was one of the wonders of Time, for a bare minute had worked
that change. There was at the end of the line a certain street I wanted
to look at, I explained to my companion.

To our right the unequal massive towers of St. Mary's Church soared aloft
into the ethereal radiance of the air, very black on their shaded sides,
glowing with a soft phosphorescent sheen on the others. In the distance
the Florian Gate, thick and squat under its pointed roof, barred the
street with the square shoulders of the old city wall. In the narrow,
brilliantly pale vista of bluish flagstones and silvery fronts of houses,
its black archway stood out small and very distinct.

There was not a soul in sight, and not even the echo of a footstep for
our ears. Into this coldly illuminated and dumb emptiness there issued
out of my aroused memory, a small boy of eleven, wending his way, not
very fast, to a preparatory school for day-pupils on the second floor of
the third house down from the Florian Gate. It was in the winter months
of 1868. At eight o'clock of every morning that God made, sleet or
shine, I walked up Florian Street. But of that, my first school, I
remember very little. I believe that one of my co-sufferers there has
become a much appreciated editor of histor