about the lesson. In the
following schooltime I was, of course, "put in the bill," but was not
flogged, in consequence of pleading my "first fault," another and too
fleeting privilege of a new boy.

On returning to my room in the evening, I found my two friends looking
unutterable things, while around them lay, "like leaves in wint'ry
weather," the fragments of our prided crockery ware!

In our absence, a boy, well knowing what he was about, had come to the
cupboard to sharp some tea-things, but finding, to his disappointment,
that it was locked, he was yet determined that we should not escape
him. The whole was unfortunately suspended, by a bit of rope, to a
large nail in the wall; this, then, he had maliciously cut, and the
result had proved fatal to the whole "double set of tea-things," with
the exception of a pewter salt-cellar. "Well, they must have been
broken, one time or another," archly remarked Kennedy.

A very few days had elapsed before I had become a genuine Etonian,
which a boy is never accounted until he has been once flogged.
Notwithstanding my respect of that honourable title, I was still very
unwilling to purchase it so dearly. I had an inclination for forming my
own opinion upon matters, somewhat independently of others; and though,
in the lower part of the school, to be put in the bill, and suffer
accordingly, carried with it anything but a reflection towards the
subject of it, still, for reasons of my own, I concluded that it would
be far more respectable to act otherwise. This, then, with me, was not
merely an opinion--it became a principle, and one which, unfortunately,
I was most anxious to preserve inviolate--unfortunately, because it
must inevitably be outraged. Even under the most favourable
circumstances, owing to my ignorance of its rudiments, I was sensible
that I must frequently fail in my Greek tasks; what chance, then, had
I, constantly thwarted in my endeavours to avoid this, by hourly and
capricious fagging?

This, then, weighed upon my mind in no slight degree, for though
exposed, from an early period, "to rough it" more than was common, the
sensitiveness of a boy's disposition will be anything but deadened in
consequence, so long as he thinks for himself, and forms his own line
of right and wrong, though perhaps it schools him precociously to
conceal what his associates may deem to be his weaknesses, though
probably his better traits of character, should he be blessed with
such.