t
of the time with Ned Swire. The boys play me no tricks now.
The only fault (tell Mama) that there has been was coming in
one day to dinner just after grace. On Sunday we went to
church in the morning, and sat in a large pew with Mr.
Fielding, the church we went to is close by Mr. Tate's
house, we did not go in the afternoon but Mr. Tate read a
discourse to the boys on the 5th commandment. We went to
church again in the evening. Papa wished me to tell him all
the texts I had heard preached upon, please to tell him that
I could not hear it in the morning nor hardly one sentence
of the sermon, but the one in the evening was I Cor. i. 23.
I believe it was a farewell sermon, but I am not sure. Mrs.
Tate has looked through my clothes and left in the trunk a
great many that will not be wanted. I have had 3 misfortunes
in my clothes etc. 1st, I cannot find my tooth-brush, so
that I have not brushed my teeth for 3 or 4 days, 2nd, I
cannot find my blotting paper, and 3rd, I have no shoe-horn.
The chief games are, football, wrestling, leap frog, and
fighting. Excuse bad writing.

Yr affec' brother Charles.

_To_ SKEFF [_a younger brother, aged six_].

My dear Skeff,--Roar not lest thou be abolished. Yours,
etc.,--.

The discomforts which he, as a "new boy," had to put up with from his
school-mates affected him as they do not, unfortunately, affect most
boys, for in later school days he was famous as a champion of the weak
and small, while every bully had good reason to fear him. Though it is
hard for those who have only known him as the gentle and retiring don
to believe it, it is nevertheless true that long after he left school
his name was remembered as that of a boy who knew well how to use his
fists in defence of a righteous cause.

As was the custom at that time, Charles began to compose Latin verses
at a very early age, his first copy being dated November 25, 1844. The
subject was evening, and this is how he treated it:--

Phoebus aqua splendet descendens, aequora tingens
Splendore aurato. Pervenit umbra solo.
Mortales lectos quaerunt, et membra relaxant
Fessa labore dies; cuncta per orbe silet.
Imperium placidum nunc sumit Phoebe corusca.
Antris procedunt sanguine ore ferae.

These lines the boy solemnly copied into his Diary, apparently in the
most blissful