urch, but, it being a
week-day, we wore our school caps in the place of high hats. Ascension
Day thus falling, if I may so express myself, within the Octave of
"Cock-hat Sunday," I decreed that the customary ritual must be observed
with the school caps, and my little flock obeyed me implicitly. So
eager were some of the boys to do honour to this religious festival,
that their caps were worn at such an impossible angle that they kept
tumbling off all the way to church. It is the only time in my life that
I have ever wielded even a semblance of ecclesiastical authority, and I
cannot help thinking that the Archbishop of Canterbury would have
envied the unquestioning obedience with which all my directions were
received, for I gather that his own experience has not invariably been
equally fortunate.

At thirteen I said good-bye to the pleasant Grange, and went, as my
elder brothers, my father, and my grandfather had done before me, to
Harrow.

In the Harrow of the "seventies" there was one unique personality, that
of the Rev. John Smith, best-loved of men. This saintly man was
certainly very eccentric. We never knew then that his whole life had
been one long fight against the hereditary insanity which finally
conquered him. In appearance he was very tall and gaunt, with
snow-white whiskers and hair, and the kindest eyes I have ever seen in
a human face; he was meticulously clean and neat in his dress. "John,"
as he was invariably called, on one occasion met a poorly clad beggar
shivering in the street on a cold day, and at once stripped off his own
overcoat and insisted on the beggar taking it. John never bought
another overcoat, but wrapped himself in a plaid in winter-time. He
addressed all boys indiscriminately as "laddie," though he usually
alluded to the younger ones as "smallest of created things,"
"infinitesimal scrap of humanity," or "most diminutive of men"; but,
wildly eccentric as he was, no one ever thought of laughing at him. It
was just "old John," and that explained everything.

I was never "up" to John, for he taught a low Form, and I had come from
Chittenden's, and all Chittenden's boys took high places; but he took
"pupil-room" in my house, and helped my tutor generally, so I saw John
daily, and, like every one else, I grew very much attached to this
simple, saint-like old clergyman.

He went round every room in the house on Sunday evenings, always first
scrupulously knocking at the door. An untidy roo