Twelve o'Clock struck, and the Fourth Form at St. Dunstan's left its class-room with a rush. The old hour of leaving off the morning's studies was still preserved. Yet, in conformity with the spirit of the times, the venerable foundation of St. Dunstan's had recently witnessed great changes. The Governing Body had taken the matter in hand, and had gone to work with a will. The teaching of Greek and Latin had been entirely suppressed, polite literature eliminated, and the whole curriculum of the school arranged solely to the provision of that glaring want of the times, a sound commercial education. To effect this, some radical changes had been necessary. The Rev. +Jabez Plumkin+, D.D., Oxford Prizeman, through whose unwearied exertions, for the past five-and-twenty years, St. Dunstan's had been gradually acquiring an increasing fame in the Class-lists of both Universities, had been forcibly ejected from the Head-Mastership, and his place filled by a leading member of a well-known firm of advertising stock-jobbers, and the Assistant-Masters had all been selected on similar lines. "Company-floating," was taught by a late Promoter, who had had much experience in the creation of many bubble concerns, and "Rigging the Market" was entrusted to a Professor who was known, in his capacity as Accountant to a wholesale City Cheese Warehouse, to have contracted a thorough familiarity with this important subject of the new commercial education. Everything was done to foster a spirit of keen speculative enterprise in the boys. The whole traditions of the school were changed. The old idea of honour had died out. How to over-reach each other by sharp practice was the one idea that animated every youthful breast from the senior in the Sixth to the junior in the Under Third. The tape was always working at the Principal's desk. The study-tables were covered with Stock and Mining Journals. Even the playground was turned into a Money Market. Cricket had been banished to make way for the more exciting game of "Bulls and Bears," and the Principal passing through occasionally, would sometimes stop and say, "That's right, my boys, learn to do each other, and remember the motto of your School, 'Monies maketh man.'" Posted up upon the gates, communicated by telegraph hourly from the City, were every day to be found the latest prices. And it was to get a first look at this that the Fourth Form had just left its class-room with a rush. A crowd of eager faces were anxiously scanning the latest quotations, and notes were being taken in a score of pocket-books, whipped out for the purpose. +Tom Brown & Co.+--he had earned this _sobriquet_ from his companions for his shrewd business capacity--did not, however, join the throng, but stood a little way off, looking on, and waiting for the excitement to abate. Gradually it calmed down, and the boys broke up into little knots and groups, discussing the state of the market. Then he spoke:--