remark is not so irrelevant and Horace
Greeley-like as it may appear. I have just had a demonstration of its
truth on the coach coming down here. Two very nice little French boys
of cropped hair and restless movements were just in front of us and
my pater having discovered that the book they had with them was a
prize at a Paris school, some slight conversation arose. Not thinking
my French altogether equal to a prolonged interview, I took out a
scrap of paper and began, with a fine carelessness to draw a picture
of Napoleon I, hat, chin, attitude, all complete. This, of course,
was gazed at rapturously by these two young inheritors of France's
glory and it ended in my drawing them unlimited goblins to keep for
the remainder of the interview.

In May 1891, the Chairman of the J.D.C. attained the maturity of
seventeen.

The Secretary then rose and in a speech in which he extolled the
merits of the Chairman as a chairman, and mentioned the benefit which
the Junior Debating Club received on the day of which this was the
anniversary, viz., the natal day of Mr. Chesterton, proposed that a
vote wishing him many happy returns of the day and a long continuance
in the Chair of the Club should be passed. This was carried with
acclamations. The Chairman replied after restoring Order. . . .

Naturally this question of order among a crowd of boys loomed large.
At the beginning a number of rules were passed giving great powers to
the Chairman, "which that gentleman," he says of himself, "lenient by
temperament and republican by principles, certainly would never have
put in force. . . . It was seldom enough," he continues:

that a boy of fifteen* found himself in the position of the
Chairman, an attitude of command and responsibility over a body of
his friends and equals, and it was not to be expected that they would
easily take to the state of things. Nor was the Chairman himself,
like the Secretary, protected and armed by any personal aptitude for
practical proceedings. But solely by the certain degree of respect
entertained for his character and acquirements. This respect, sincere
and even excessive as it frequently was, contrasted somewhat
humorously with the common inattention to questions of order, nor
could anything be more noisy than the loyalty of Fordham and Langdon
Davies, with the exception of their interruptions. It may then fairly