's two elder sons, at the time to which I allude, had
already made their first step in the world. James was making a tour of
the West Indies, the Continent being closed against him; and Frank had
already begun his harvest of laurels in the navy under a distinguished
officer. The younger sons, my juniors, were my school-fellows. Master
Frank was two or three years my senior, and before he went to sea, not
going to the same school as myself, we got together only during the
vacations; when, notwithstanding my prowess, he would fag me desperately
at cricket, outswim me on the lake and out-cap me at making Latin
verses. However, I consoled myself by saying, "As I grow older all this
superiority will cease." But when he returned, after his first cruise,
glittering in his graceful uniform, my hopes and my ambition sank below
zero. He was already a man, and an officer--I a schoolboy, and nothing
else.

Of course, he had me home to spend the day with him--and a day we had of
it. It was in the middle of summer, and grapes were ripe only in such
well-regulated hothouses as were Mr ---'s. We did not enact the
well-known fable as it is written--the grapes were not _too_ sour--nor
did we repeat the fox's ill-natured and sarcastic observation, "That
they were only fit for blackguards." We found them very good for
gentlemen--though, I fear, Mr ---'s dessert some time after owed more
to Pomona than to Bacchus for its embellishments. And the fine
mulberry-tree on the lawn--we were told that it must be shaken, and we
shook it: if it still exist, I'll answer for it, it has never been so
shaken since.

The next day we went fishing. Though our bodies were not yet fully
grown, we were persons of enlarged ideas; and to suppose that we, two
mercurial spirits, could sit like a couple of noodles, each with a long
stick in our hands, waiting for the fish to pay us a visit, was the
height of absurdity. No, we were rather too polite for that; and as it
was we, and not the gentlemen of the finny tribe that sought
acquaintance, we felt it our duty as gentlemen to visit them. We
carried our politeness still further, and showed our good breeding in
endeavouring to accommodate ourselves to the tastes and habits of those
we were about to visit. "Do at Rome as the Romans do," is the essence
of all politeness. As our friends were accustomed to be _in
naturalibus--vulgice_, stark naked, we adopted their Adamite fashion,
and, undressing, in w