ugh unchecked faults of temperament. Some
had declined with a sort of unambitious comfort, some had fallen
into the trough of Toryism, and spent their time in holding fast to
conventional and established things; one or two had flown like Icarus so
near the sun that their waxen wings had failed them; and yet some of us
had missed greatness by so little. Was it to be always so? Was it always
to be a battle against hopeless odds? Was defeat, earlier or later,
inevitable? The tamest defeat of all was to lapse smoothly into easy
conventional ways, to adopt the standards of the world, and rake
together contentedly and seriously the straws and dirt of the street.
If that was to be the destiny of most, why were we haunted in youth with
the sight of that cloudy, gleaming crown within our reach, that sense
of romance, that phantom of nobleness? What was the significance of the
aspirations that made the heart beat high on fresh sunlit mornings,
the dim and beautiful hopes that came beckoning as we looked from our
windows in a sunset hour, with the sky flushing red behind the old
towers, the sense of illimitable power, of stainless honour, that came
so bravely, when the organ bore the voices aloft in the lighted chapel
at evensong? Was all that not a real inspiration at all, but a mere
accident of boyish vigour? No, it was not a delusion--that was life as
it was meant to be lived, and the best victory was to keep that hope
alive in the heart amid a hundred failures, a thousand cares.

As I walked thus full of fancies, the boys singly or in groups kept
passing me, smiling, full of delighted excitement and chatter, all
intent on themselves and their companions. I heard scraps of their
talk, inconsequent names, accompanied with downright praise or blame,
unintelligible exploits, happy nonsense. How odd it is to note that when
we Anglo-Saxons are at our happiest and most cheerful, we expend so much
of our steam in frank derision of each other! Yet though I can hardly
remember a single conversation of my school days, the thought of
my friendships and alliances is all gilt with a sense of delightful
eagerness. Now that I am a writer of books, it matters even more how I
say a thing than what I say. But then it was the other way. It was what
we felt that mattered, and talk was but the sparkling outflow of trivial
thought. What heroes we made of sturdy, unemphatic boys, how we repeated
each other's jokes, what merciless critics we were of ea