ore probably) "a solicitor." In the
former case your friends bound up into the smoking-room, howling, "Here's
a new fellow says his father is a Duke. Let's take the cheek out of
him." And they "take it out" with umbrellas, slippers, and other
surgical instruments. Or, in the latter case (your parent being a
solicitor) they reply, "Then your father must be a beastly cad. All
solicitors are sharks. _My_ father says so, and he knows. How many
sisters have you?" The new member answers, "Four." "Any of them
married?" "No." "How awfully awkward for you."

By this time, perhaps, luncheon is ready, or the evening papers come in,
and you are released for a moment. You sneak up into the library, where
you naturally expect to be entirely alone, and you settle on a sofa with
a novel. But an old member bursts into the room, spies a new fellow, and
puts him through the usual catechism. He ends with, "How much tin have
you got?" You answer "twenty pounds," or whatever the sum may be, for
perhaps you had contemplated playing whist. "Very well, fork it out; you
must give a dinner, all new fellows must, and _you_ are not going to
begin by being a stingy beast?" Thus addressed, as your friend is a big
bald man, who looks mischievous, you do "fork out" all your ready money,
and your new friend goes off to consult the cook. Meanwhile you "shed a
blooming tear," as Homer says, and go home heart-broken. Now, does any
grown-up man call this state of society civilisation? Would life be
worth living (whatever one's religious consolations) on these terms? Of
course not, and yet this picture is a not overdrawn sketch of the career
of some new boy, at some schools new or old. The existence of a small
schoolboy is, in other respects, not unlike that of an outsider in a
lawless "Brotherhood," as the Irish playfully call their murder clubs.

The small boy is _in_ the society, but not _of_ it, as far as any
benefits go. He has to field out (and I admit that the discipline is
salutary) while other boys bat. Other boys commit the faults, and compel
him to copy out the impositions--say five hundred lines of Virgil--with
which their sins are visited. Other boys enjoy the pleasures of
football, while the small boy has to run vaguely about, never within five
yards of the ball. Big boys reap the glories of paperchases, the small
boy gets lost in the bitter weather, on the open moors, or perhaps (as in
one historical case) is frozen t