nk not very soundly prepared for his profession.)

Accordingly, it was announced that the reading of Shakespeare
would be one of our lessons, and on the following afternoon we
began _The Merchant of Venice_. There was one large volume, and it
was handed about the class; I was permitted to read the part of
Bassanio, and I set forth, with ecstatic pipe, how

In Belmont is a lady richly left,
And she is fair, and fairer than that word!

Mr. M. must have had some fondness for the stage himself; his
pleasure in the Shakespeare scenes was obvious, and nothing else
that he taught me made so much impression on me as what he said
about a proper emphasis in reading aloud. I was in the seventh
heaven of delight, but alas! we had only reached the second act
of the play, when the readings mysteriously stopped. I never knew
the cause, but I suspect that it was at my Father's desire. He
prided himself on never having read a page of Shakespeare, and on
never having entered a theatre but once. I think I must have
spoken at home about the readings, and that he must have given
the schoolmaster a hint to return to the ordinary school
curriculum.

The fact that I was 'a believer', as it was our custom to call
one who had been admitted to the arcana of our religion, and that
therefore, in all commerce with 'unbelievers', it was my duty to
be 'testifying for my Lord, in season and out of season'--this
prevented my forming any intimate friendships at my first school.
I shrank from the toilsome and embarrassing act of button-holing
a schoolfellow as he rushed out of class, and of pressing upon
him the probably unintelligible question 'Have you found Jesus?'
It was simpler to avoid him, to slip like a lizard though the
laurels and emerge into solitude.

The boys had a way of plunging out into the road in front of the
school-villa when afternoon school was over; it was a pleasant
rural road lined with high hedges and shadowed by elm-trees.
Here, especially towards the summer twilight, they used to linger
and play vague games, swooping and whirling in the declining
sunshine, and I was glad to join these bat-like sports. But my
company, though not avoided, was not greatly sought for. I think
that something of my curious history was known, and that I was,
not unkindly but instinctively, avoided, as an animal of a
different species, not allied to the herd. The conventionality of
little boys is constant; the colour of their traditions is