squander emotion on her if he wished; what roused the Alley to arms, so that they loaded themselves with “sarc,” as with hand grenades, was that he affected to despise all who were not enslaved by some pretty-faced maiden. Then, as was right, he found hairpins mysteriously appearing on his carpet, and heard his Christian name called in faint girlish falsetto from a neighbouring study, and discovered notes with passionate declarations of love and a wealth of suggestive allusions that I would no longer “pollewt” my pen with describing nestling in his coat-pocket. But such was the innate depravity of his amorous heart that he really didn’t seem to mind the most withering “sarc.”... Games were not compulsory in the sixth, and in consequence, though athletes were in the majority, athleticism was no longer automatic, and now a boy would suffer no loss of esteem, or offend any sense of decency, if he chose not to play any game whatever. A wide tolerance for your fellows was the first lesson of the Alley; liberty, equality, and fraternity were its admirable guides to life. Next year, when, by another intervention of Providence, I suddenly found myself head of my house, with a magnificent apartment next the bathroom for my habitation, the snowstorm of scholarship examinations burst over me. For a suitable inducement in the shape of a scholarship or exhibition, I was prepared to go to New, Magdalen, or Worcester at Oxford, or to King’s College, Cambridge; but not a single one of these ancient (or shall we say antiquated?) seats of learning would, after examining me, put their hands in their pockets in order to secure me. I was very busy at the time, for I was editing _The Marlburian_ and conducting the school “Penny Readings,” and playing football for them and rackets, and not being able to find time for everything I let my school-work slide altogether and, when the depressing results came out, bore failure with admirable fortitude. In other words, I did not care at all; if anything, I was rather pleased, because I began dimly to conceive the possibility of being allowed to stop at school for an extra year, whereas I should normally have left in the summer. But Marlborough was now to me the most amiable of dwellings; there were friends there whom I could not bear the thought of parting with; there were schemes that I could not bear to leave unfulfilled, and I directed all the ingenuity of which I was capable to secure my remaining here for an unheard-of year longer. From being resigned to failure I passed, as my plans matured, into being enraptured with it. A false step, a misplaced interview, might spell ruin, and after much thought I went to the headmaster with a homily all about myself. It was clear that I had not attained a decent standard of scholarship yet; surely my coming years at the University would be more profitable if I was better prepared to take advantage of them? My father was bent on my having a career of some