Though the accommodation was not uncomfortable, the boys’ rooms were then, as a rule, smaller and less luxurious than is the case to-day, the windows being often barred like those of a prison or a lunatic asylum. The furniture was all of the commonest wood, and consisted of a table, two chairs (well carved by preceding generations), a bureau--a sort of _multum in parvo_ for books, clothes, and everything else--and a large press which turned into a bed; this, small boys always regarded with misgiving, it being a practice for raiding parties to shut the occupier up in it. In 1825 some of the rooms were as small as five feet by six, some were not carpeted, and a few of those on the ground floor were unpleasant owing to the contents of pails descending from the upper windows. On the fifth of November the Lower boys revenged their wrongs by making a bonfire of their Greek grammars in the school-yard; and later in the year, when the snow came, they would industriously collect it in the house, in order that in the evening they might overwhelm some little fellow and his books with a pile of it. Very early rising was then the rule, and in winter boys got up by candle-light. The Fourth Form had an infliction called “Long-morning.” They had to be in school by half-past seven, but when the masters overslept themselves there was a “run”--_i.e._ no school. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there was an earlier school still, at six o’clock. [SN: NICKNAMES] Nicknames have always been popular at Eton, many of them enduring in after-life. Thomas James, who in 1766 wrote an account of the school, was nicknamed Mordecai and Pasteboard, whilst the three brothers Pott were called Quart, Pint, and Gill. About the middle of the eighteenth century nicknames both for masters and boys were very common. Certain masters were then called Pernypopax Dampier, Gronkey Graham, Pogy Roberts, Buck Ekins, Bantam Sumner, and Wigblock Prior. The following are some boys’ nicknames:--Bacchus Browning (Earl Powis), Square Buckeridge, Tiger Clive, King Cole, Mother and Hoppy Cotes, Damme Duer, Dapper Dubery, Baboon FitzHugh, Chob and Chuff Hunter, Toby Liddell, Squashey Pollard, Codger Praed, Hog Weston, Gobbo Young, and Woglog Calley. In old days many Eton nicknames were superior, and often elegantly classical. At one time a boy named M’Guire was well known in the school, because, if prizes had been given for knock-knees he would have carried off the first prize anywhere. Homer has a stock of phrases with which he is apt to fill up his verse, just as lawyers use “common forms” for their prose. One of these, frequently occurring in the description of a hero, is _phaidima guia_ (beautiful limbs), and Paddy M’Guire bore the appropriate name of “Phaidima Guia.”