h a crowd of children, all talking at the same time, I entered the
torture chamber. My first impression was one of astonished disgust
because of the hideousness of the ink-stained walls, and of the old
benches of shiny wood defaced by the penknife carvings of countless
school-boys who had been so inexpressibly miserable in this place.
Although I was a stranger to my new companions they treated me with the
greatest familiarity (they used thee and thou in addressing me) and gave
themselves patronizing airs that were almost impertinent. Although I
observed my school-mates timidly and furtively I thought them, for the
most part, exceedingly ill-mannered and untidy.

As I was twelve and a half I entered the third class; my tutor
considered me advanced enough to keep up with it if I chose to do so,
although I myself felt that I was scarcely equal to the task. The first
day, for the purpose of qualifying, we had to write Latin exercises, and
I remember that my father awaited, with some anxiety, the outcome of the
examination. When I told him I was second among fifteen I was surprised
that he attached so much importance to a matter of so little interest
to me. It was all one to me! Broken hearted as I felt, how could I be
affected by such a trifle?

Later, indeed, at no time, did I feel the impetus that the desire to
excel brings with it. To be at the foot of the class always seemed to me
the least of the ills that a school-boy is called upon to endure.

The weeks following my entrance were extremely painful to me. I felt my
intellect cramping rather than expanding under the multiplicity of the
lessons and the tasks imposed; even the realm of my young dreams seemed
closing against me little by little. The first dismal, foggy weather,
and the first gray days added a greater desolation and sadness to my
already overwrought feelings. The uncouth chimney-sweeps had returned,
and their yearly autumn cry was again heard in the streets. Theirs was a
cry that in my earlier years wrung my heart and caused my tears to flow.
When one is a child the approach of winter, with its killing gloom and
cold, seems to awake in him inexplicable forebodings bespeaking the end
of all bright and beautiful things; time goes so slowly in childhood
that we appear not to be able to anticipate the inevitable reawakening
that comes in the spring to all things.

No, it is only when we are older, and would seem, therefore, to be more
impressionable to the