market";
and, when I was in his Form, it was chiefly characterized by an
agreeable laxity of discipline. As regards his boarding-house of forty
boys, it was currently reported that he had never been seen in the boys'
side of it. Perhaps he went round it when they were asleep. But it was
on his preaching that his fame chiefly rested. His sermons were written
in a most exuberant style of old-fashioned rhetoric, and abounded in
phrases, allusions, and illustrations, so quaint that, once heard, they
could never be forgotten. I believe that he kept a small stock of these
sermons, and seldom added to it; but knowing, I suppose, that if
preached twice they must inevitably be recognized, he never preached a
sermon a second time as long as there was even one boy in the School who
had heard it on its first delivery. This was a very sensible precaution;
but he little knew that some of his most elaborate passages had, by
their sheer oddity, imprinted themselves indelibly on the memories of
the hearers, and were handed down by oral tradition. One such
especially, about a lady who used to visit the hospitals in the American
War, and left a bun or a rose on the pillow of the wounded according as
she thought that they would recover or die, had an established place in
our annals; and it is not easy to describe the rapture of hearing a
passage which, as repeated by one's schoolfellows, had seemed too absurd
for credence, delivered from the School-pulpit, in a kind of solemn
stage-whisper. However, "Tommy Steel" was a kind-hearted old gentleman,
who believed in letting boys alone, and by a hundred eccentricities of
speech and manner, added daily to the gaiety of our life. For one great
boon I am eternally his debtor. He set me on reading Wordsworth, and
chose his favourite bits with skill and judgment. I had been reared in
the school that derided--

"A drowsy, frowsy poem called _The Excursion_,
Writ in a manner which is my aversion,"

and "Tommy Steel" opened my eyes to a new world of beauty. By the way,
he had known Wordsworth, and had entertained him at Harrow; and he told
us that the Poet always said "housen," where we say houses.

Another of our curiosities was Mr. Jacob Francis Marillier, a genial old
gentleman without a degree, who had been supposed to teach writing and
Mathematics, but long before my time had dropped the writing--I suppose
as hopeless--and only played a mathematical barrel-organ. He had joined
th