And then suddenly, when the revel is at its height, some chance incident or conversation forces a boy to realise that he has not so much time as he had thought, that the weeks are passing, that, already, the end has drawn close to him. Clifford Bax, in one of his many beautiful poems, has described a man's first appreciation of the approach of age. 'There is a certain mid-way hour in life Which startles every man, when the tide turns And, wave on wave, we hear death coming on.' In the same way the boy discovers that the half of his schooldays are at an end, that he has put them to little use. And, as the temporal quality of life drives the epicurean to gather with what eager haste he may, flowers that for him will soon have blossomed, the sense of passing days defines and directs for the schoolboy the course of ambition. It is perhaps the first moment of conscious thought, of objective reasoning. The days of unreflecting action are at an end. He is no longer a child playing in a nursery. He is a man, subject to the laws of time and space, a mortal man aware of his mortality. Now this sudden change, which partakes of the nature of a conversion, owes its existence, as often as not, to some perfectly trivial occurrence. The stage is not set appropriately. There is no long heart to heart talk with a schoolmaster, a parent, or a friend at the end of which the boy leaps to his feet, claps his hand to his forehead, and exclaims: 'I see the evil of my ways.' Such dramatic moments, I suppose, take place occasionally, but they are the exception. The boy has reached that stage of his development when the idea of time can become an actuality to him, and some quite casual incident will bring this actuality before him.