's hero. Those readings were often disturbed by
Drake's exclamations. His overflowing, outspoken disposition could not
be restrained when his interest was powerfully enlisted; and as Mr
Clare read, in his clear, impassioned manner, some exciting passage,
Drake would shout out an exclamation of encouragement or satisfaction
with a favourite warrior, and bring down his fist on the desk, as
another favourite was discomfited or came to grief. I remember very
well how often Drake was reproved for such unseasonable enthusiasm,
which always caused an after sarcasm or witticism from Alfred Higginson;
and I distinctly recall how, notwithstanding the formality of
school-hours, when we came to the single combat between Aeneas and
Turnus, and the death of the latter, Drake flung his book from the
table, and shouted out in an angry voice, "I'll bet anything Virgil
tells fibs!"

Those readings were treats to all of us. Drake having told Captain
Mugford of them, and discussed the incidents that vexed him with the
Captain, got him so interested that he asked Mr Clare to allow him to
come in at the close of our recitations. Of course that favour was
readily granted, and after that time the Captain always made one of the
auditors. He used to laugh and shake over Drake's excitement, and yet
entered into it himself, and I have seen salt drops running down his
cheeks and Mr Clare's, as the latter rendered in a voice slightly
trembling some of the pathetic passages in which Virgil is so
exquisitely beautiful.

I am glad to write of those lessons in the old brig's carcass, for they
are remembered so pleasantly. Moreover, it came naturally in drawing my
dear brother Drake's character, and the effect of those heroical
classics influenced, in a manner very quixotic, the crisis of the
continued quarrel between Drake and Alfred Higginson, to which we are
coming. The great dissimilarity in the characters of the two was a
reason for their want of sympathy and agreement, one with the other, but
the causes of the open warfare which existed between them were the
faults of each--the irritability, slight conceit, and stinging tongue of
Alfred Higginson; the teasing practices, want of toleration for the
feelings and peculiarities of others, and a certain recklessness of
Drake's. And yet they were both noble boys, with nothing false or
ungenerous or underhanded about either of them.

Ever since we had come to the cape, their skirmishes of words