esolve into component parts!
And now, will you maintain that it is good for Tommy, tear-stained,
ink-bespattered little brat, to be given AEsop's Fables, Ovid's
Metamorphoses to treat in like manner? Would it not be just as sensible
to insist upon his practising his skinny little arms with hundred pounds
dumb-bells?

We were the sons of City men, of not well-to-do professional men, of
minor officials, clerks, shopkeepers, our roads leading through the
workaday world. Yet quite half our time was taken up in studies utterly
useless to us. How I hated them, these youth-tormenting Shades. Homer!
how I wished the fishermen had asked him that absurd riddle earlier.
Horace! why could not that shipwreck have succeeded: it would have in
the case of any one but a classic.

Until one blessed day there fell into my hands a wondrous talisman.

Hearken unto me, ye heavy burdened little brethren of mine. Waste not
your substance upon tops and marbles, nor yet upon tuck (Do ye still
call it "tuck"?), but scrape and save. For in the neighbourhood of
Paternoster Row there dwells a good magician who for silver will provide
you with a "Key" that shall open wide for you the gates of Hades.

By its aid, the Frogs of Aristophanes became my merry friends. With
Ulysses I wandered eagerly through Wonderland. Doctor Florret was
charmed with my progress, which was real, for now, at last, I was
studying according to the laws of common sense, understanding first,
explaining afterwards. Let Youth, that the folly of Age would imprison
in ignorance, provide itself with "Keys."

But let me not seem to claim credit due to another. Dan it was--Dan of
the strong arm and the soft smile, Dan the wise hater of all useless
labour, sharp-witted, easy-going Dan, who made this grand discovery.

Dan followed me a term later into the Lower Fourth, but before he had
been there a week was handling Latin verse with an ease and dexterity
suggestive of unholy dealings with the Devil. In a lonely corner of
Regent's Park, first making sure no one was within earshot, he revealed
to me his magic.

"Don't tell the others," he commanded; "or it will get out, and then
nobody will be any the better."

"But is it right?" I asked.

"Look here, young 'un," said Dan; "what are you here for--what's
your father paying school fees for (it was the appeal to our
conscientiousness most often employed by Dr. Florret himself), for you
to play a silly game, or to learn something?