se boisterous
ways never concealed his warm heart.

Reade's school-days were Spartan in their severity. A teacher with
the appropriate name of Slatter set him hard tasks and caned him
unmercifully for every shortcoming. A weaker nature would have been
crushed. Reade's was toughened, and he learned to resist pain and to
resent wrong, so that hatred of injustice has been called his dominating
trait.

In preparing himself for college he was singularly fortunate in his
tutors. One of them was Samuel Wilberforce, afterward Bishop of Oxford,
nicknamed, from his suavity of manner, "Soapy Sam"; and afterward, when
Reade was studying law, his instructor was Samuel Warren, the author
of that once famous novel, Ten Thousand a Year, and the creator of
"Tittlebat Titmouse."

For his college at Oxford, Reade selected one of the most beautiful
and ancient--Magdalen--which he entered, securing what is known as a
demyship. Reade won his demyship by an extraordinary accident. Always an
original youth, his reading was varied and valuable; but in his studies
he had never tried to be minutely accurate in small matters. At that
time every candidate was supposed to be able to repeat, by heart, the
"Thirty-Nine Articles." Reade had no taste for memorizing; and out of
the whole thirty-nine he had learned but three. His general examination
was good, though not brilliant. When he came to be questioned orally,
the examiner, by a chance that would not occur once in a million times,
asked the candidate to repeat these very articles. Reade rattled them
off with the greatest glibness, and produced so favorable an impression
that he was let go without any further questioning.

It must be added that his English essay was original, and this also
helped him; but had it not been for the other great piece of luck he
would, in Oxford phrase, have been "completely gulfed." As it was,
however, he was placed as highly as the young men who were afterward
known as Cardinal Newman and Sir Robert Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke).

At the age of twenty-one, Reade obtained a fellowship, which entitled
him to an income so long as he remained unmarried. It is necessary to
consider the significance of this when we look at his subsequent career.
The fellowship at Magdalen was worth, at the outset, about twelve
hundred dollars annually, and it gave him possession of a suite of rooms
free of any charge. He likewise secured a Vinerian fellowship in law, to
which was attached an