t. The elder boys shook
their heads, and could make nothing of it. The ushers made what
inquiries they dared, and found nothing which they could contradict
positively, but much upon which to found conjecture.

Still, notwithstanding my success, my life began to grow burthensome.
The lies became too manifold, too palpable, and, to me, too onerous.
They had been extremely inconsistent--ridicule began to raise her
hissing head. Shame became my constant companion--yet I lied on. I
think I may safely say, that I would, at the time that I was giving
myself out as a future king, have scorned the least violation of the
truth, to have saved myself from the most bitter punishment, or to
injure, in the least, my worst enemy; my lies were only those of a most
inordinate vanity, begun in order to make a grand impression of myself,
and persevered in through obstinacy and pride. But I was crushed
beneath the stupendous magnificence of my own creations. I had been so
circumstantial--described palaces, reviews, battles, my own charges, and
now--oh! how sick all these fabrications made me! It was time I left
the school, or that life left me, for it had become intolerable. And
yet this state of misery, the misery of the convicted, yet obstinately
persevering liar, lasted nearly a year. Let me hurry over it; but, at
the same time, let me hold it up as a picture to youth, upon the same
principle as the Spartans showed drunken slaves to their children.
Could the young but conceive a tithe of the misery I endured, they would
never after swerve from the truth.

I have not time to expatiate on several droll mishaps that occurred to
Mr Root; how he was once bumped in all the glowing panoply of equine
war; how, when one night, with his head well powdered, he crept upon
all-fours, as was his wont, into one of the boys' bedrooms, to listen to
their nightly conversations; and how such visit being expected, as his
head lay on the side of the bedstead, it was there immovably fixed, by
the application of a half-pound of warm cobbler's wax, and release could
only be obtained by the Jason-like operation of shearing the fleecy
locks. We must rapidly pass on. I was eager to get away from this
school, and my desire was accomplished in the following very singular
manner:--

One fine sunshiny Sunday morning, as we were all arranged in goodly
fashion, two by two, round the play-ground, preparatory to issuing
through the house to go to church, the