d as killing
anybody else. So he said--is stealing from yourself as bad as stealing
from anybody else? And we had a regular _argue_. Some of the boys
argle-bargle on Sundays, he says, but most of them fight. When they
differ, they put tin-tacks with the heads downwards on each other's
places on the forms in school, and if they run into you and you scream,
old Snuffy beats you. The milkman brings them, by the half-ounce, with
very sharp points, if you can pay him. Most of the boys are a horrid
lot, and so dirty. Lorraine is as dirty as the rest, and I asked him
why, and he said it was because he'd thrown up the sponge; but he got
rather red, and he's washed himself cleaner this morning. He says he has
an uncle in India, and some time ago he wrote to him, and told him about
Crayshaw's, and gave the milkman a diamond pin, that had been his
father's, and Snuffy didn't know about, to post it with plenty of
stamps, but he thinks he can't have put plenty on, for no answer ever
came. I've told him I'll post another one for him in the holidays. Don't
say anything about this back in your letters. He reads 'em all.

"----_Monday_. I've caught the milkman at last, he'll take it this
evening. The lessons here are regular rubbish. I'm so glad I've a good
knife, for if you have you can dig holes in your desk to put collections
in. The boy next to me has earwigs, but you have to keep a look-out, or
he puts them in your ears. I turned up a stone near the sink this
morning, and got five wood-lice for mine. It's considered a very good
collection."

CHAPTER X.

"But none inquired how Peter used the rope,
Or what the bruise that made the stripling stoop;
None could the ridges on his back behold,
None sought him shiv'ring in the winter's cold.
* * * * *
The pitying women raised a clamour round."
CRABBE, _The Borough_.

A great many people say that all suffering is good for one, and I am
sure pain does improve one very often, and in many ways. It teaches one
sympathy, it softens and it strengthens. But I cannot help thinking that
there are some evil experiences which only harden and stain. The best I
can say for what we endured at Crayshaw's is that it _was_ experience,
and so I suppose could not fail to teach one something, which, as Jem
says, was "more than Snuffy did."

The affection with which I have heard men speak of their school-