y, a school-comrade, in the course of a recent interesting article
by the Editor of the _Boy's Own Paper_, as being at this period "a
handsome boy, strong and well proportioned, with a frank open face,
black hair, and lively dark eyes, fresh complexion, full of life and
vigour, and with a clear ringing voice ... He was audacious with that
charming audacity that suits some boys. On one occasion he had very
calmly absented himself from the class-room during a temporary
engagement by the French master, who, having returned before he was
expected, and while Reed was away, demanded by what leave he had left
the class-room. Reed replied with (as he would probably have expressed
it) 'awful cheek,' 'If you please, sir, I took "French" leave!'"

Reed was popular at school both with masters and boys. His initials,
"T.B.," soon became changed familiarly into "Tib," by which endearing
nickname Mr Vardy says he was known to the last by the comrades of his
school-days.

It is interesting, in the light of the prominence which in all his
school stories he properly gave to out-of-door sports and athletic
exercises, to have it, on the authority of his old school-fellow, that
he excelled in all manly exercises. He was a first-rate football-
player, and a good all-round cricketer; he was an excellent oar, and a
fairly good swimmer; and until the last few months of his life no man
could enjoy with more zest a game of quoits, or tennis, or a day devoted
to the royal game of golf. In the early days of his manhood, with
characteristic unselfishness, he risked his own life on one occasion by
leaping from a rock into the sea, on the wild north Irish coast, to
bring safely ashore his cousin (and life-long friend, Mr Talbot Baines,
the distinguished editor of the _Leeds Mercury_), who has told me that
he would, without Reed's prompt and plucky aid, inevitably have been
drowned.

The large contribution he made to literature in later days amply serves
to prove that the more serious studies of school were never neglected
for his devotion to sport. He seldom missed the old boys' annual dinner
of the City of London School. In proposing a toast at a recent dinner,
he reminded Mr Asquith, M.P. (a school-fellow of Reed's) that at the
school debating society they had "led off" on separate sides in a wordy
battle on the red-hot controversy of "Queen Elizabeth versus Queen
Mary." Every boy who has read "Sir Ludar" will remember that the hero
of