One afternoon, after three o’clock school, when there were only three birches available, six boys were up to be flogged. The Head flogged three of the culprits and adjourned the others till six o’clock, at the same time ordering the Sixth Form praepostor to be sure and tell Finmore that the cupboard must be replenished before six. Some Lower boys, however, getting wind of this, and hearing that Finmore was bound to come to the library between four and five, lay in wait for him, and in due course espied him hovering near the top of Keate’s Lane, empty-handed, but walking suspiciously near to a grocer’s cart making its way towards Weston’s Yard. Suddenly a shout was raised, and the crowd of boys, scampering off, stopped the cart just as it was turning into the yard, surrounded it yelling, and extracted from it six new birches wrapped in a cloth. Finmore, breathless and almost choking with emotion, vainly tried to save his rods. Half a dozen boys, however, soon ran off with one apiece, the unfortunate official being left to bewail his evil fate. In Dr. Hornby’s day the custodian of the birches was White, a spruce, neatly-dressed figure whom many old Etonians will still remember. He it was who, in consideration of a fee of a guinea, saw that the names of boys leaving Eton were cut in Upper School. For a consideration he would also supply birches tied up with blue ribbon to any one desirous of carrying away such grim mementoes. Whilst the block, for Lower boys at least, remains one of the features of Eton, fighting, once a characteristic institution of the school, has long disappeared, having seemingly fallen out of favour in the late fifties of the last century. In the period preceding Waterloo the combats were fierce and frequent; there was one nearly every day, and so determined were the Etonians of that era that there is a case on record of two boys rising at six in the morning to begin the conflict, and sparring away for three hours! [SN: “SIXPENNY CORNER”] Whilst the Oppidans, according to immemorial custom, settled their differences in “Sixpenny Corner,” the Collegers fought their battles in Long Chamber. An unwritten code decreed that when a King’s scholar wished to fight he must ask permission of the Captain of the school to be allowed to do so after Lock Up, and this, as may be imagined, was never refused. About nine o’clock a fairly spacious ring was formed just below the second fireplace, boys standing on bedsteads placed around, holding candles, which enabled the combatants to see one another. It would appear that in the old fighting days the Collegers fought fewer battles than the Oppidans,--the fights of the former were usually short and sharp, the boys being so well acquainted with each other’s strength and powers, that after a round or two the fight was discontinued and the quarrel made up.