tely given us some pleasant echoes from the Board
School. A young moralist recorded his judgment, that it is not cruel to
kill a turkey, "if only you take it into the backyard and use a sharp
knife, _and the turkey is yours!_" Another dogmatized thus: "Don't
teese cats, for firstly, it is wrong so to do; and 2nd, cats have
clawses which is longer than people think." The following theory of the
Bank Holiday would scarcely commend itself to that sound economist Sir
John Lubbock:--"The Banks shut up shop, so as people can't put their
money in, but has to spend it." So far the rude male: it required the
genius of feminine delicacy to define a Civil War as "one in which the
military are unnecessarily and punctiliously civil or polite, often
raising their helmets to each other before engaging in deadly combat."

The joys of childhood are a theme on which a good deal of verse has been
expended. I am far from denying that they are real, but I contend that
they commonly take a form which is quite inconsistent with poetry, and
that the poet (like heaven) "lies about us in our infancy." "I wish
every day in the year was a pot of jam," was the obviously sincere
exclamation of a fat little boy whom I knew, and whom Leech would have
delighted to draw. Two little London girls who had been sent by the
kindness of the vicar's wife to have "a happy day in the country,"
narrating their experiences on their return, said, "Oh yes, mum, we
_did_ 'ave a 'appy day. We saw two pigs killed and a gentleman buried."
And the little boy who was asked if he thought he should like a
hymn-book for his birthday present replied that "he _thought_ he should
like a hymn-book, but he _knew_ he should like a squirt." A small cousin
of mine, hearing his big brothers describe their experiences at a Public
School, observed with unction, "If ever I have a fag of my own, I will
stick pins into him." But now we are leaving childhood behind, and
attaining to the riper joys of full-blooded boyhood.

"O running stream of sparkling joy
To be a soaring human boy!"

exclaimed Mr. Chadband in a moment of inspiration. "In the strictest
sense a boy," was Mr. Gladstone's expressive phrase in his controversy
with Colonel Dopping. For my own part, I confess to a frank dislike of
boys. I dislike them equally whether they are priggish boys, like Kenelm
Chillingly, who asked his mother if she was never overpowered by a sense
of her own identity; or sentimental boys, li