nnouncement
of the reassembling of the school in which you spent your own years of
schoolboy life--what a mingled and many-figured romance does it recall
of all that has befallen to yourself and others since the day when the
same advertisement made you sigh, because the hour was close at hand
when you were to leave home and all its homely ways to dwell among
strangers! Going onward, you remember how each one after another ceased
to be a stranger, and twined himself about your heart; and then comes
the reflection, Where are they all now? You remember how

"He, the young and strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell and perished,
Weary with the march of life."

You recall to your memory also those two inseparables--linked together,
it would seem, because they were so unlike. The one, gentle, dreamy, and
romantic, was to be the genius of the set; but alas, he "took to bad
habits," and oozed into the slime of life, imperceptibly almost, hurting
no creature but himself--unless it may be that to some parent or other
near of kin his gentle facility may have caused keener pangs than others
give by cruelty and tyranny. The other, bright-eyed, healthy, strong,
and keen-tempered--the best fighter and runner and leaper in the
school--the dare-devil who was the leader in every row--took to Greek
much about the time when his companion took to drinking, got a
presentation, wrote some wonderful things about the functions of the
chorus, and is now on the fair road to a bishopric.

[Footnote 50: Take, for instance, the announcement of the wants of an
affluent and pious elderly lady, desirous of having the services of a
domestic like-minded with herself, who appeals to the public for a
"groom to take charge of two carriage-horses of a serious turn of mind."
So also the simple-hearted innkeeper, who founds on his "limited charges
and civility;" or the description given by a distracted family of a
runaway member, who consider that they are affording valuable means for
his identification by saying, "age not precisely known--but looks older
than he is."]

Next arises the vision of "the big boy," the lout--the butt of every
one, even of the masters, who, when any little imp did a thing well,
always made the appropriate laudation tell to the detriment of the big
boy, as if he were bound to be as superfluous in intellect as in flesh.
He has sufficiently dinned into him to make him thorough