This, with most men, would have been a settler, but S——’s vanity was water and bullet-proof both. He dispatched the whole affair, to his _own_ satisfaction, in a sonnet; and the next day, at two, strode past the school with the step of a conqueror, the mark of a score of quizzing-glasses and laughing faces. S—— bore the infliction _this once_ with a nerve that would have taken any man to the cannon’s mouth. But he grew fiery and retaliatory under its repetition. “I will settle this business with a twenty-four pounder,” said he; and he did. The next day S—— begged the spy-glass of an old pilot, and walking calmly down with his dexter-eye on the enemy, surprised his forces by a cool, steady, deliberate gaze through his blunderbuss with glasses. The mistress ended the flirtation and supposed conquest by a threat, delicately conveyed, that “any future conduct of the kind would be intimated to the police.” S—— determined to “die game,” and marched by with his Spanish mantle on each particular cold day, with the step of a grenadier; but fate, jealous of his valor, tripped him up one exceedingly wintry afternoon, when boys were experimenting with skates upon the side-walk. Poor S——, who had given his cloak an extra turn over his shoulders, fell at full length exactly opposite the window of the boarding-school, and floundered in his vain attempts to extricate himself, like a salmon thrown upon the land, his “Oakford” most ruinously crushed by a passing omnibus; and to crown his confusion, in the midst of a dozen windows suddenly thrown up, an Irish cabman hastened to his rescue, and having unrolled him and placed him on his feet, considerately asked, within hearing of two score of ears, “_whether he had been long there?_” The glory of the conqueror was gone! “So fades, so languishes, grows dim, and dies, All that this world is proud of.” The bright faces, laughing eyes, and happy hearts of our youth, with its early friendships, have been replaced with sadder views of life, and you and I, Jeremy, are older—the world would say, wiser—but are we happier, Jeremy, think you? G. R. G. * * * * *