matters to nobody when I left
it; I revisited it lately. I went to see the boys break up, as I once
broke up, and I felt disgusted--not with the school, or the breaking up,
but with myself. I felt disgracefully old. In fact, I went home, and
began a poem with these words:--

My years, I feel, are getting on:
Yet, ere the trembling balance kicks, I
Will imitate the dying swan,
And sing an ode threnodic--vixi.

I never got any farther than that. By the way, I shall have to mention
eventually that the school was King's College, in the Strand. I am not
going to unbosom beyond this, or to add anything in the way of an
autobiography; but the locale would have to come out anon, and there is
no possible reason for concealment.

Well, I went to see them break up for the holidays, and only got over my
antediluvian feelings by seeing one of the masters still on the staff
who was there when I was a boy. It was a comfort to think what a
Methuselah he must be; and yet, if he will excuse the personality, he
looked as rosy and smooth-faced as when he used to stand me outside his
door with my coat-sleeves turned inside out. It was a way he had. Well,
the presence of that particular master made me feel an Adonis forthwith.

I will not go into the prizes. There were lots of them, and they were
very nice, and the boys looked very happy, and their mammas legitimately
proud. What I want to speak of is the school speeches or recitations, as
they are termed. King's College School speeches are, to my thinking, a
model of what such things ought to be.

Some schools--I name no names--go in for mere scholastic recitations
which nobody understands, and the boys hate. Others burst out in
full-blown theatricals. King's College acts on the motto, Medio
tutissimus ibis. It keeps the old scholastic recitations, but gilds the
pill by adding the accessory of costume. I can quote Latin as well as
Dr. Pangloss, and certain lines were running in my mind all the time I
was in King's College Hall. They were

Pueris olim dant crustula blandi
Doctores, elementa velint ut discere prima.

First we had a bit of German in the shape of an extract from Kotzebue's
"Die Schlaue Wittwe," or "Temperaments." I wish I had my programme, I
would compliment by name the lad who played the charming young Frau.
Suffice it to say the whole thing went off sparkling like a firework. It
was short, and made you wish for more--a great virtue in speeche