akes a plunge with his heavy left--for he was ker-handed--at our
stomach. But a dip of our right elbow caught the blow, to the loud
admiration of Bob Howie--and even the Mad Dominie, the umpire, could not
choose but smile. Like lightning, our left returns between the
ogles--and Ben bites the snow. Three cheers from the School--and, lifted
on the knee of his second, James Maxwell Wallace, since signalised at
Waterloo, and now a knighted colonel of horse, "he grins horribly a
ghastly smile," and is brought up staggering to the scratch. We know
that we have him--and ask considerately, "what he means by winking?" And
now we play around him,

"Just like unto a trundling mop,
Or a wild-goose at play."

He is brought down now to our own weight--then nine stone jimp--his
eyes are getting momently more and more pig-like--water-logged, like
those of Queen Bleary, whose stone image lies in the echoing aisle of
the old Abbey Church of Paisley--and bat-blind, he hits past our head
and body, like an awkward hand at the flail, when drunk, thrashing corn.
Another hit on the smeller, and a stinger on the throat-apple--and down
he sinks like a poppy--deaf to the call of "time"--and victory smiles
upon us from the bright blue skies. "Hurra--hurra--hurra! Christopher
for ever!" and perched aloft, astride on the shoulders of Bob Howie--he,
the Invincible, gallops with us all over the field, followed by the
shouting School, exulting that Ben the Bully has at last met with an
overthrow. We exact an oath that he will never again meddle with Meg
Whitelaw--shake hands cordially, and

"Off to some other game we all together flew."

And so ended the famous Snowball Bicker of Pedmount, now immortalised in
our Prose-Poem.

Some men, it is sarcastically said, are boys all life-long, and carry
with them their puerility to the grave. 'Twould be well for the world
were there in it more such men. By way of proving their manhood, we have
heard grown-up people abuse their own boyhood--forgetting what our great
Philosophical Poet--after Milton and Dryden--has told them, that

"The boy is father of the man,"

and thus libelling the author of their existence. A poor boy indeed must
he have been, who submitted to misery when the sun was new in heaven.
Did he hate or despise the flowers around his feet, congratulating him
on being young like themselves? the stars, young always, though Heaven
only knows how many million years old, every n