Two other fleeting impressions have been preserved.[2] ‘I can just remember young Churchill,’ writes a well-known Eton authority, ‘as a striking, whimsical personality, with full, large, round, astonished eyes and a determined bull-dog type of face. He was addicted to dressing loudly, and I vividly recollect his appearance one day in a daring violet-coloured waistcoat. Botham’s Hotel was in those days a favourite resort for Etonians, in the way of succession to Coningsby’s “Christopher,” where the friends entertained each other at sumptuous breakfasts and luncheons. A special feature of this hostelry, as well as a powerful attraction to the younger boys, was a spacious fruit-garden, celebrated for the size and flavour of its strawberries. During a certain summer this Elysian enclosure was so pillaged as to cause the proprietor to complain to the headmaster, Mr. Balston. As a consequence Mr. Austen Leigh was despatched to watch, and, if possible, to catch the offenders _in flagrante delicto_. That representative of the highest Eton authority very soon flushed a large covey of juvenile depredators. All of them, however, got away, except Randolph Churchill, who jumped as far as he could towards the road with his pursuer close upon him. They both fell together into the ditch, Mr. Austen Leigh uppermost. Lord Randolph, seeing that any further attempt at escape would be useless, crawled out, much scratched and bruised, into the middle of the road, where, incensed at his own discomfiture, he deliberately sat down, crossed his legs, glared at Mr. Leigh, and with all the vehemence of enraged fourteen, exclaimed, “You beast!” How he escaped the birch after this adventure tradition does not relate.’ ‘I can recall him at Eton,’ wrote ‘J. S.’ in the _Realm_ of March 1895, ‘but only for one amazing moment. It was a summer evening, just before “lock-up,” and the whole wall, the little old wall so fitted for the height of small boys, which separates the public road from the borders of Upper School, was thronged with youths, resting after the labours of the day. Even they felt the charm of the stillness. There was no drumming of heels on the wall, only chatter and occasional laughter. On the other side of the road, gathered at the top of Keate’s Lane, where in those days was an iron bar for the “seat of the scornful,” were the “Swells.” Between these awe-inspiring _aristoi_ and us urchins indiscriminate on the wall lay the empty road. Down the middle of that road alone, ringing discordant music from a Volunteer’s bugle, marched a boy in jackets. It was Churchill, wending homeward to Frewer’s. As I recall the “Swells” of that time, this progress of a boy in jackets, on his right a long line of his fellows, on his left, for one awful minute, that sublime group at the corner, I feel once more the breathless wonder at audacity so magnificent.’