hen I breathed
after my victories, and began to look round.

"So long as I had considered the throng about me but in the light of so
many adversaries to be beaten by main force, and their rude and
insulting ways only as provocatives to the fray, I had cared little for
their manners or their proceedings, their coarseness and vulgarity,
their brutality and their vices. But now, seated in peace upon the
eminence to which I had fought my way, I had time to breathe and to
observe. I can not describe to you how shocked, how sickened, how
disgusted I became. _Par parenthese_, I will say that it has always been
an astonishment to me, how parents so tender as mine could send a frank,
honest-hearted, well-meaning little fellow into such a place. But the
school had a high reputation. I was then a fourth son, and had to make
my way as best I could in the profession chosen for me. So here I came.
I was about ten or eleven years old, I must add, in excuse for my
parents, though I called myself so young, I felt younger, because this
was my first school. To resume. When I had vanquished them, it is not in
words to describe how I despised and detested the majority of my
schoolfellows--for their vulgar pleasures, their offensive habits--their
hard, rough, brutal manners--their vicious principles, and their vile,
blasphemous impiety. I was a warm lover and a still more ardent hater,
and my hatred to most of them exceeded all bounds of reason; but it was
just such as a straightforward, warm-tempered fellow, is certain to
entertain without mitigation in such a case.

"It is a bad element for a boy to be living in. However, I was saved
from becoming an utter young monster, by the presence in the school of
this very boy, James St. Leger.

"In the bustle and hurry of my early wars, I had taken little heed of,
scarcely observed this boy at all. But when the pause came, I noticed
him. I noticed him for many reasons. He was tall for his age, slender,
and of extremely delicate make, but with limbs of a symmetry and beauty
that reminded one of a fine antique statue. His face, too, was extremely
beautiful; and there was something in his large, thoughtful, melancholy
eyes, that it was impossible ever to look upon and to forget.

"I no sooner observed him at all, than my whole boyish soul seemed knit
to him.

"His manner was extremely serious; the expression of his countenance sad
to a degree--deeply, intensely sad, I might say; yet through that