descriptions. And I was prepared to perform
them, pending the time when I should have a fag of my own.

I must do Leo justice. His tyranny was merciful. I was soon expert in
preparing his breakfast. I used to fetch him hot dishes from the shop.
My own cooking was not good, and I made, so he said, the most
execrable coffee, which led him to fling the contents of the pot at me
one morning, ruining my shirt, trickling hot and wet down my body
under my clothes, and giving me infinite trouble in cleaning his
carpet. (As to _his_ coffee, and the salad dressing he made, and his
cooking generally, when he chose to do it, I have never met with
anything like it since. However, things taste well in one's
school-days.)

Leo Damer was one of those people who seem able to do everything just
a little better than his neighbours, without attaining overwhelming
superiority in any one line. The masters always complained that he did
not do as much in school as he might have done, and yet he stood well
with them. His conduct was of the highest. I may say here that,
knowing him intimately in boyhood and youth, I am able to assert that
his moral conduct was always "without reproach." His own freedom from
vice, and the tight hand he kept over me, who lived but to admire and
imitate him, were of such benefit to me in the manifold temptations of
school-life as I can never forget. His self-respect amounted to
self-esteem, his love for other people's good opinion to a failing, he
was refined to fastidiousness; but I think these characteristics
helped him towards the exceptional character he bore. A keen
sensitiveness to pain and discomfort, and considerable natural
indolence, further tended to keep him out of scrapes into which an
adventurous spirit led many more reckless boys. He had never been
flogged, and he said he never would be. "I would drown myself sooner,"
he said to me. And if any dark touch were wanting to complete my
hero's portrait, it was given by this terrible threat, in which I put
full faith.

He was a dandy, and his dressing-table was the plague of my life. Well
do I remember breaking some invaluable toilette preparation on it, and
the fit of rage in which he flung the broken bottle at my head. He was
very sorry when his first wrath was past, and he bound up my head, and
gave me a pound of sausages, and a superbly bound copy of Young's
"Night Thoughts," which I still possess. I also retain a white scar
above one of my eyes,