A great while ago! Say, courteous and gentle--nay, uncourteous and ungentle reader--can you so far travel back in your recollection as to recall your first parting from all that was homely and kindly and familiar? Do you remember the first separation from the half-score of faces that to you had peopled the earth and represented the whole sum and mystery of living? Can you now realise that desolate night, closing in upon the blank, colourless day, the lonely stages, the harsh grating of the wheels, all the impressions in fact of that long, pitiful journey that once came as a barrier between you and childish innocence? And then the arrival at that strange school; how hollow the laughter of the men, how shrill the chirp and twitter of the women! Do you remember the comfortless morrow that brought the first contact with your boy associates? They were probably harmless and good-natured enough, those uncouth, ill-fashioned boys, and doubtless there were among them many who would have been quick to requite a wrong and eager to soothe any injury. But how they pained you with their jests; how they bruised you in their boisterous play; how old they looked to your young eyes; how full of wiles and intrigue and savagery! And then their talk! not the mild caressing talk of the lips you loved, of the forms you knew, but loud and brazen, and savouring of cunning and high-handedness. And in their quarrels and their games, they swore--those boys swore; not all of them be it hoped, but the great giants and paladins among them who seemed to bear rule and mastery with whips and thongs. Many a time before, perhaps, you may have been seized with faintness and aversion at some imagined evil, that might as well have been enacted in some distant planet. But now the horror was no longer slumbering or remote; it was awake and crying at your door. Now, and within a few hours, were disclosed the sources of all the aimless brutalities, all the self-asserting iniquities that have played such havoc in an erring world. And, as these knowing fellows chattered over their scraps of worldly wisdom, and as their puny curses were bandied round, it seemed as if some great treason were being poured out, a trespass alike against God in heaven and the folks at home.