ment of
cheerfulness into the daily routine.

Unfortunately the words were English and the tune quite as foreign, so
that we had not the faintest notion what sort of incantation we were
practising; neither did the meaningless monotony of the performance tend
to make us cheerful. This failed to disturb the serene self-satisfaction
of the school authorities at having provided such a treat; they deemed
it superfluous to inquire into the practical effect of their bounty;
they would probably have counted it a crime for the boys not to be
dutifully happy. Anyhow they rested content with taking the song as they
found it, words and all, from the self-same English book which had
furnished the theory.

The language into which this English resolved itself in our mouths
cannot but be edifying to philologists. I can recall only one line:

_Kallokee pullokee singill mellaling mellaling mellaling._

After much thought I have been able to guess at the original of a part
of it. Of what words _kallokee_ is the transformation still baffles me.
The rest I think was:

_... full of glee, singing merrily, merrily, merrily!_

As my memories of the Normal School emerge from haziness and become
clearer they are not the least sweet in any particular. Had I been able
to associate with the other boys, the woes of learning might not have
seemed so intolerable. But that turned out to be impossible--so nasty
were most of the boys in their manners and habits. So, in the intervals
of the classes, I would go up to the second storey and while away the
time sitting near a window overlooking the street. I would count: one
year--two years--three years--; wondering how many such would have to be
got through like this.

Of the teachers I remember only one, whose language was so foul that,
out of sheer contempt for him, I steadily refused to answer any one of
his questions. Thus I sat silent throughout the year at the bottom of
his class, and while the rest of the class was busy I would be left
alone to attempt the solution of many an intricate problem.

One of these, I remember, on which I used to cogitate profoundly, was
how to defeat an enemy without having arms. My preoccupation with this
question, amidst the hum of the boys reciting their lessons, comes back
to me even now. If I could properly train up a number of dogs, tigers
and other ferocious beasts, and put a few lines of these on the field of
battle, that, I thought, would serve very well as