Eleven, and practically autocrat of my house--"Charity's" the
house was called, in allusion to a prominent feature of my tutor's
character. Well, at Charity's we did not think much of intellectual
distinction in those days, and little recked that Biceps was "unworthy
to be classed" in the terminal examination. We were much more concerned
with the fact that he made the highest score at Lord's; that we at
Charity's were absolutely under his thumb, in the most literal
acceptation of that phrase; that he beat us into mummies if we evaded
cricket-fagging; and that if we burnt his toast he chastised us with a
tea-tray. Where is Biceps now, and what? If he took Orders, I am sure he
must be a muscular Christian of the most aggressive type. If he is an
Old Bailey barrister, I pity the timid witness whom he cross-examines.
Why do I never meet him at the club or in society? It would be a
refreshing novelty to sit at dinner opposite a man who corrected your
juvenile shortcomings with a tea-tray. Would he attempt it again if I
contradicted him in conversation, or confuted him in argument, or capped
his best story with a better?

Next comes Longbow--Old Longbow, as we called him; I suppose as a term
of endearment, for there was no Young Longbow. He was an Irishman, and
the established wit, buffoon, and jester of the school. Innumerable
stories are still told of his youthful escapades, of his audacity and
skill in cribbing, of his dexterity in getting out of scrapes, of his
repartees to masters and persons in authority. He it was who took up the
same exercise in algebra to Mr. Rhomboid all the time he was in the
Sixth Form, and obtained maiks, ostensibly for a French exercise, with a
composition called _De Camelo qualis sit_. He alone of created boys
could joke in the rarefied air of the Head Master's schoolroom, and had
power to "chase away the passing frown" with some audacious witticism
for which an English boy would have been punished. Longbow was ploughed
three times at Oxford, and once "sent down." But he is now the very
orthodox vicar of a West End parish, a preacher of culture, and a
pattern of ecclesiastical propriety. Then, leaving these heroic figures
and coming to my own contemporaries, I discern little Paley, esteemed a
prodigy of parts--Paley, who won an Entrance Scholarship while still in
knickerbockers; Paley, who ran up the school faster than any boy on
record; Paley, who was popularly supposed never to have been turn