irm of
Vougeot-Conti et Cie., wine merchants, Dijon. And at Dijon I had
spent much of my childhood, and been to a day school there, and led
a very happy life indeed.

Then I was sent to Brossard's school, in the Avenue de St.-Cloud,
Paris, where I was again very happy, and fond of (nearly) everybody,
from the splendid head master and his handsome son, Monsieur
Merovee, down to Antoine and Francisque, the men-servants, and Pere
Jaurion, the concierge, and his wife, who sold croquets and pains
d'epices and "blom-boudingues," and sucre-d'orge and nougat and pate
de guimauve; also pralines, dragees, and gray sandy cakes of
chocolate a penny apiece; and gave one unlimited credit; and never
dunned one, unless bribed to do so by parents, so as to impress on
us small boys a proper horror of debt.

Whatever principles I have held through life on this important
subject I set down to a private interview my mother had with le pere
et la mere Jaurion, to whom I had run in debt five francs during the
horrible winter of '47-8. They made my life a hideous burden to me
for a whole summer term, and I have never owed any one a penny
since.

The Institution consisted of four separate buildings, or "corps de
logis."

In the middle, dominating the situation, was a Greco-Roman pavilion,
with a handsome Doric portico elevated ten or twelve feet above the
ground, on a large, handsome terrace paved with asphalt and shaded
by horse-chestnut trees. Under this noble esplanade, and ventilating
themselves into it, were the kitchen and offices and pantry, and
also the refectory--a long room, furnished with two parallel tables,
covered at the top by a greenish oil-cloth spotted all over with
small black disks; and alongside of these tables were wooden forms
for the boys to sit together at meat--"la table des grands," "la
table des petits," each big enough for thirty boys and three or four
masters. M. Brossard and his family breakfasted and dined apart, in
their own private dining-room, close by.

In this big refectory, three times daily, at 7.30 in the morning, at
noon, and at 6 P.M., boys and masters took their quotidian
sustenance quite informally, without any laying of cloths or saying
of grace either before or after; one ate there to live--one did not
live merely to eat, at the Pension Brossard.

Breakfast consisted of a thick soup, rich in dark-hued garden
produce, and a large hunk of bread--except on Thursdays, when a pat
of butter was