nths after I did; no one
could be in the College without knowing him. He was always very much in
evidence, very popular among his school-fellows. He played many pranks
of a very peculiar and imaginative kind. He was full of fun, wrote very
respectable verses for a boy, was an omnivorous reader, worshipped
muscle, had his note-book full of brawny arms, etc.

"As a student he shone only in English writing; he was first in his
class the first time he composed in English, and kept first, or nearly
first, all the time he was here, and there were several in his class who
were considered very good English writers--for boys. In other subjects,
he was either quite middling or quite poor. I do not suppose he exerted
himself except in English.

"I should say he was very happy here altogether, had any amount to say
and was very original. He was not altogether a desirable boy, from the
Superior's point of view, yet his playfulness of manner and brightness,
disarmed any feeling of anger for his many escapades.... He was so very
curious a boy, so wild in the tumult of his thoughts, that you felt he
might do anything in different surroundings."

Most of the accounts given by his school-fellows at the time repeat the
same as to his wildness and his facility in writing English. In this
subject he seems to have excelled all his school-fellows, invariably
getting the prize for English composition. Later, at Cincinnati,
Lafcadio told his friend Mr. Tunison that he remembered, as a boy, being
given a prize for English literature and feeling such a very little
fellow, when he got up before the whole school to receive it.

His appearance seems to have been somewhat ungainly, and he was
exceedingly shortsighted. When reading he had to bring the book very
close to his eyes. He had a great taste for the strange and weird, and
had a certain humour of a grim character. There was always something
mysterious about him, a mystery which he delighted in increasing rather
than dissipating. The confession which he is supposed to have made to
Father William Wrennal that he hoped the devil would come to him in the
form of a beautiful woman, as he had come to the anchorites in the
desert, was worthy of his fellow-countryman Sheridan, in its Celtic
mischief and humour.

Mr. Achilles Daunt, of Kilcascan Castle, County Cork, seems to have been
Lafcadio's principal chum at Ushaw. Mr. Daunt has considerable literary
talents himself, and has written one or tw