ter
world without fighting, for anything I know, but it wouldn't be our
world; and therefore I am dead against crying peace when there is no
peace, and isn't meant to be. I am as sorry as any man to see folks
fighting the wrong people and the wrong things, but I'd a deal sooner
see them doing that, than that they should have no fight in them. So
having recorded, and being about to record, my hero's fights of all
sorts, with all sorts of enemies, I shall now proceed to give an
account of his passage-at-arms with the only one of his school-fellows
whom he ever had to encounter in this manner.

HOW THE FIGHT AROSE.

It was drawing toward the close of Arthur's first half-year, and the
May evenings were lengthening out. Locking-up was not till eight
o'clock, and everybody was beginning to talk about what he would do in
the holidays. The shell, in which form all our _dramatis personae_[5]
now are, were reading amongst other things the last book of Homer's
"Iliad,"[6] and had worked through it as far as the speeches of the
women over Hector's[7] body. It is a whole school-day, and four or
five of the School-house boys (amongst whom are Arthur, Tom, and East)
are preparing third lesson together. They have finished the regulation
forty lines, and are for the most part getting very tired,
notwithstanding the exquisite pathos of Helen's[8] lamentation. And
now several long four-syllable words come together, and the boy with
the dictionary strikes work.

[5] #Dramatis personae#: persons represented in a drama or in a
story.

[6] #Homer's Iliad#: a Greek epic poem relating the siege of
Ilium or Troy.

[7] #Hector#: a Trojan hero slain in the siege of Troy.

[8] #Helen#: a beautiful Grecian princess whose abduction by
Paris of Troy caused the Trojan war.

"I am not going to look out any more words," says he; "we've done the
quantity. Ten to one we sha'n't get so far. Let's go out into the
close."

"Come along, boys," cries East, always ready to leave "the grind," as
he called it; "our old coach[9] is laid up, you know, and we shall
have one of the new masters, who's sure to go slow and let us down
easy."

[9] #Coach#: teacher or tutor.

So an adjournment to the close was carried _nem con._,[10] little
Arthur not daring to uplift his voice; but, being deeply interested in
what they were reading, stayed quietly behind, and learned on for his
own pleasure.

[10] #Nem. con.#: no one