mother's petting, will make up to this savage for
the racket of the dormitories, and the fight at the bathroom, and the
babel at the dinner-table, and the recreations which enliven "prep," and
the excitement of a house match, and the hazardous delights of football,
and the tricks on a new boy, and the buttered eggs--a dozen at least
between two at a study supper. It only remains therefore that his father
should write a pathetic letter to the _Standard_, and that other parents
should join in, for a fortnight, explaining to the English public that
the manhood of the country is being destroyed in its early years, and
the boys at school will read the letters aloud with much unction, and
declare that "Pater has warmed up old Skinny properly," while their
mother sends them generous remittances that they may obtain nourishing
food to supplement their starvation rations. This money will be spent
rapidly, but also shrewdly, at the "tuck-shop," where some old servant
of the school is making a small fortune in providing for the boys such
meat as their souls love, and for a fortnight Tom and his friends, for
he is not a fellow to see his chums die before his eyes, will live on
the fat of the land, which, upon the whole, means cocoa, sardines,
sausages, and eggs.

Seminary boys had their meals at home, and were very soundly fed with
porridge and milk in the morning, followed by tea and ham, if their
conduct had been passably decent. Scots broth and meat for dinner, with
an occasional pudding, and a tea in the evening which began with
something solid and ended with jam, made fair rations, and, although
such things may very likely be done now, when we are all screaming about
our rights, no boy of the middle Victorian period wrote to the _Muirtown
Advertiser_ complaining of the home scale of diet. Yet, being boys,
neither could they be satisfied with the ordinary and civilised means of
living, but required certain extra delicacies to help them through the
day. It was not often that a Seminary lad had a shilling in his pocket,
and once only had gold been seen--when Dr. Manley paid Speug a medical
fee for his advice in Bulldog's sickness--but there were few in the
Seminary who were not able to rattle some pennies together, and, in the
end, every penny found its way to the till of that comprehensive
merchant and remarkable woman, Mrs. McWhae. Her shop and the other old
houses beside it have been pulled down long ago, to make room for a
ha