ed in the United States of America by Jerome K. Jerome.)

On the sixteenth, we were still debating the character of our hero; and
I see that I suggested "a man of the Charley Buswell type."

Poor Charley, I wonder what could have made me think of him in
connection with heroes; his lovableness, I suppose--certainly not his
heroic qualities. I can recall his boyish face now (it was always a
boyish face), the tears streaming down it as he sat in the schoolyard
beside a bucket, in which he was drowning three white mice and a tame
rat. I sat down opposite and cried too, while helping him to hold a
saucepan lid over the poor little creatures, and thus there sprang up a
friendship between us, which grew.

Over the grave of these murdered rodents, he took a solemn oath never to
break school rules again, by keeping either white mice or tame rats, but
to devote the whole of his energies for the future to pleasing his
masters, and affording his parents some satisfaction for the money being
spent upon his education.

Seven weeks later, the pervadence throughout the dormitory of an
atmospheric effect more curious than pleasing led to the discovery that
he had converted his box into a rabbit hutch. Confronted with eleven
kicking witnesses, and reminded of his former promises, he explained
that rabbits were not mice, and seemed to consider that a new and
vexatious regulation had been sprung upon him. The rabbits were
confiscated. What was their ultimate fate, we never knew with certainty,
but three days later we were given rabbit-pie for dinner. To comfort him
I endeavoured to assure him that these could not be his rabbits. He,
however, convinced that they were, cried steadily into his plate all the
time that he was eating them, and afterwards, in the playground, had a
stand-up fight with a fourth form boy who had requested a second
helping.

That evening he performed another solemn oath-taking, and for the next
month was the model boy of the school. He read tracts, sent his spare
pocket-money to assist in annoying the heathen, and subscribed to "The
Young Christian" and "The Weekly Rambler, an Evangelical Miscellany"
(whatever that may mean). An undiluted course of this pernicious
literature naturally created in him a desire towards the opposite
extreme. He suddenly dropped "The Young Christian" and "The Weekly
Rambler," and purchased penny dreadfuls; and, taking no further interest
in the welfare of the heathen, saved up and bo