“I was much pleased by your writing so openly to me. It will make me very happy if you will treat me with perfect confidence in all matters. You need have no fear that I shall not understand and sympathise with you, for although (as we have said in joke) I was a Rugbeian in the time of the ancient Britons, when we had no breeches, and painted ourselves blue for decency’s sake, it seems to me a very short time since I was as you are, and I have a very vivid recollection of my youth, feelings, prejudices, faults, and all the rest of it.” And then, after some advice about his matriculation at Oxford, his father goes on:— “I am not going to preach to you about billiards. If there had been a table at Rugby in my time (there was none), I might very possibly have played myself; although, like you, I should certainly not have made a habit of it, preferring, as I did and do, more active amusements. Don’t play again at Rugby; it would be childish, as well as wrong, to risk leaving the school under a cloud, for such a paltry gratification. I don’t agree with you in comparing billiards to your school games: billiards (public) generally involve smoking, and a certain amount of drinking, and losing money (or winning, which is worse); and engender a sort of lounging habit. I am afraid you have rather a fast lot at Rugby, and what you tell me about card-playing makes me rather anxious about Jack. It is altogether abominably bad form, and I wish you would get up an opposition to it. It ought to be put down for the credit of the school. I must say that there was no such card-playing in my time. Having said my say, I must leave you to do what you can, in concert with any other big fellows in the house, who may be brought to see the matter in my light.” The “Jack” referred to in the last letter was his third boy, who was now in his first term at a preparatory school for Rugby. This chapter may fitly close with his letters to this, the youngest of his boys whom he lived to see launched at school. He was a favourite subject of study to his father, who writes of him at Pau, years before: “Jack will be, I think, the strongest of the lot. He always clears his plate, fat and all, and always clears his lesson, however disagreeable;” and again, to his sister, who was the boy’s godmother:—