e of either hats or caps bring the Yankee up with
a halt. To conduct an American around to the vicinity of Christ's Hospital
and let him discover a "Blue-Coat" for himself is a sensation. The costume
is exactly the same as that worn by Edward, "the Boy King," who founded
the school; and these youngsters, like the birds, never grow old. You lean
against the high iron fence, and looking through the bars watch the boys
frolic and play, just as visitors looked in the Eighteenth Century; and
I've never been by Christ's Hospital yet when curious people did not stand
and stare. And one thing the Blue-Coats seem to prove, and that is that
hats are quite superfluous.

One worthy man from Jamestown, New York, was so impressed by these hatless
boys that he wrote a book proving that the wearing of hats was what has
kept the race in bondage to ignorance all down the ages. By statistics he
proved that the Blue-Coats had attained distinction quite out of ratio to
their number, and cited Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb and many
others as proof. This man returned to Jamestown hatless, and had he not
caught cold and been carried off by pneumonia, would have spread his
hatless gospel, rendering the name of Knox the Hatter infamous, and
causing the word "Derby" to be henceforth a byword and a hissing.

When little Charles Lamb tucked the tails of his long blue coat under his
belt and played leap-frog in the school-yard every morning at ten minutes
after 'leven, his sister, wan, yellow and dreamy, used to come and watch
him through these selfsame iron bars. She would wave the corner of her
rusty shawl in loving token, and he would answer back and would have
lifted his hat if he had had one. When the bell rang and the boys went
pellmell into the entry-way, Charles would linger and hold one hand above
his head as the stone wall swallowed him, and the sister knowing that all
was well would hasten back to her work in Little Queen Street, hard by, to
wait for the morrow when she could come again.

"Who is that girl always hanging 'round after you?" asked a tall, handsome
boy, called Ajax, of little Charles Lamb.

"Wh' why, don't you know--that, wh' why that's my sister Mary!"

"How should I know when you have never introduced me!" loftily replied
Ajax.

And so the next day, at ten minutes after 'leven, Charles and the mighty
Ajax came down to the fence, and Charles had to call to Mary not to run
away, and Charles introduced Ajax to Mary