use for them. I wonder even now why Mr. Sandsome equipped me
with them. Yet he seemed to be in deadly earnest about this learning,
and I still go in doubt. In those early days he impressed me, chiefly in
horizontal strips, with the profoundest respect for his mental and
physical superiority. I credited him then, and still incline to believe
he deserved to be credited, with a sincere persuasion that unless I
learnt these things I should assuredly go--if I may be frank--to the
devil. It may be so. I may be living in a fool's paradise,
prospering--like that wicked man the Psalmist disliked. Some unsuspected
gulf may open, some undreamt-of danger thrust itself through the
phantasmagoria of the universe, and I may learn too late the folly of
forgetting my declensions.

I remember Mr. Sandsome chiefly as sitting at his desk, in a little room
full of boys, a humming hive whose air was thick with dust, as the
slanting sunbeams showed. When we were not doing sums or writing copies,
we were always learning or saying lessons. In the early morning Mr.
Sandsome sat erect and bright, his face animated, his ruddy eyes keen
and observant, the cane hanging but uncertainly upon its hook. There was
a standing up of classes, a babble of repetition, now and then a crisis.
How long the days were then! I have heard that scientific
people--Professor C. Darwin is their leader, unless I err--which
probably I do, for names and dates I have hated from my youth up--say
the days grow longer. Anyhow, whoever says it, it is quite wrong. But as
the lank hours of that vast schooltime drawled on, Mr. Sandsome lost
energy, drooped like a flower,--especially if the day was at all
hot,--his sandy hair became dishevelled, justice became nerveless,
hectic, and hasty. Finally came copybooks; and yawns and weird rumblings
from Mr. Sandsome. And so the world aged to the dinner-hour.

When I had been home--it was a day school, for my aunt, who had an
appetite for such things, knew that boarding-schools were sinks of
iniquity--and returned, I had Mr. Sandsome at another phase. He had
dined--for we were simple country folk. The figurative suggestions of
that "phase" are irresistible--the lunar quality. May I say that Mr.
Sandsome was at his full? We now stood up, thirty odd of us altogether,
to read, reading out of books in a soothing monotone, and he sat with
his reading-book before him, ruddy as the setting sun, and slowly,
slowly settling down. But now and the