s has been said, is a great long high room, with two large
fires on one side, and two large iron-bound tables, one running down
the middle, and the other along the wall opposite the fire-places.
Around the upper fire the fags placed the tables in the form of a
horse-shoe, and upon them the jugs[7] with the Saturday night's
allowance of beer. Then the big boys used to drop in and take their
seats, bringing their song-books with them; for although they all knew
the songs by heart, it was the thing to have an old manuscript book
descended from some departed hero, in which they were all carefully
written out.

[7] #Jugs#: pitchers.

The sixth-form boys had not yet appeared; so to fill up the gap, an
interesting and time-honored ceremony was gone through. Each new boy
was placed on the table in turn, and made to sing a solo, under the
penalty of drinking a large mug of salt and water, if he resisted or
broke down. However, the new boys all sing like nightingales to-night,
and the salt water is not in requisition; Tom, as his part, performing
the old west-country song of "The Leather Bottel," with considerable
applause. And at the half-hour down come the sixth and fifth-form
boys, and take their places at the tables, which are filled up by the
next biggest boys; the rest, for whom there is no room at the table,
standing round outside.

BROOKE'S HONORS.

The glasses and mugs are filled, and then the fugle-man[8] strikes up
the old sea song:--

"A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
And a wind that follows fast," etc.,

which is the invariable first song in the School-house, and all the
seventy voices join in, not mindful of harmony, but bent on noise,
which they attain decidedly, but the general effect isn't bad. And
then follow the "British Grenadiers," "Billie Taylor," "The Siege of
Seringapatam," "Three Jolly Post-boys," and other vociferous songs in
rapid succession, including the "Chesapeake and Shannon,"[9] a song
lately introduced in honor of old Brooke; and when they come to the
words:--

"Brave Broke he waved his sword, crying, Now, my lads, aboard,
And we'll stop their playing Yankee-doodle-dandy, oh,"

you expect the roof to come down. The sixth and fifth know that "brave
Broke" of the Shannon was no sort of relation to our old Brooke. The
fourth form are uncertain in their belief, but for the most part hold
that old Brooke _was_ a midshipman then on board his uncle's ship. And
the lower-school ne