l my farewell with my mother without tears. It is enough to say
that I quitted the parental home determined as I never was before to do
my duty and fight against my besetting sin, and occupied that doleful
day's journey with picturing to myself the happiness which my altered
habits would bring to the dear parents whom I was leaving behind.

I pass over my first week at Welford. It was a new and wonderful world
to me; very desolate at first, but by degrees more attractive, till at
last I went the way of all schoolboys, and found myself settled down to
my new life as if I had never known another.

All this time I had faithfully kept my resolution. I was as punctual as
clockwork, and as diligent as an ant. Nothing would tempt me to abate
my attention in the preparation of my lessons; no seductions of cricket
or fishing would keep me late for "call over." I had already gained the
approval of my masters, I had made my mark in my class, and I had
written glowing letters home, telling of my kept resolutions, and
wondering why they should ever before have seemed difficult to adhere
to.

But as I got better acquainted with some of my new schoolfellows it
became less easy to stick steadily to work. I happened to find myself
in hall one evening, where we were preparing our tasks for next day,
seated next to a lively young scapegrace, whose tongue rattled
incessantly, and who, not content to be idle himself, must needs make
every one idle too.

"What a muff you are, Charlie," he said to me once, as I was poring over
my _Caesar_ and struggling desperately to make out the meaning of a
phrase--"what a muff you are, to be grinding away like that! Why don't
you use a crib?"

"What's a crib?" I inquired.

"What, don't you know what a crib is? It's a translation. I've got
one. I'll lend it to you, and you will be able to do your _Caesar_ with
it like winking."

I didn't like the notion at first, and went on hunting up the words in
the dictionary till my head ached. But next evening he pulled the
"crib" out of his pocket and showed it to me. I could not resist the
temptation of looking at it, and no sooner had I done so than I found it
gave at a glance the translation it used to take me an hour to get at
with the dictionary. So I began to use the "crib" regularly; and thus,
getting my lessons quickly done, I gradually began to relapse into my
habits of dawdling.

Instead of preparing my lessons steadily, I now began