Athletics, of course, took precedence of all intellectual pursuits. The _Etonian_, in our time, was but a dim legend of the past, and the genius of Praed and Moultrie had left no direct line of succession; nevertheless among the upper boys there was not an entire dearth of literary aspiration, and we had a school magazine, the _Adventurer_, which existed from the later ’sixties for about five years. One of its editors, a Colleger named C. C. Thornton, was the author of some extremely good verse; and among other contributors, towards the latter part of the _Adventurer’s_ career, were Arthur A. Tilley, now a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge; E. C. Selwyn, afterwards headmaster of Uppingham School; J. E. C. Welldon, the popular Dean of Durham; Herbert W. Paul; George Campbell Macaulay; J. C. Tarver; and Sir Melville Macnaghten, who wrote as M^{2}; also, if I mistake not, the _nom de plume_ of “Tom” covered some early poems of Mr. F. B. Money-Coutts, now known as Baron Latymer. One of the best essays in the _Adventurer_ was that on “Arbitration as a Substitute for War,”[6] by Mr. Herbert Paul. Another noteworthy contribution, which has some historical interest for Etonians of that period, was a poem by Bishop Welldon, entitled “Adventurer Loquitur”[7] in which the Magazine was represented as giving some description of the several members of its “staff,” whether in recognition of their services or in reproof of their remissness. Among those clearly indicated, though unnamed, were A. A. Tilley, R. C. Radcliffe, G. R. Murray, Bernard Coleridge (now Lord Coleridge), H. G. Wintle, G. C. Macaulay, C. C. Lacaita, J. E. C. Welldon, E. C. Selwyn, and the writer of these reminiscences. The cause of the _Adventurer’s_ decease was that it ran counter to Etonian sentiment, in acting on the perilous principle that “it is only those who truly love Eton that dare to show her her faults.”[8] Apart from the _Adventurer_, the literary ambition of some of the Collegers sought irregular expression, in those far-off days, by supplying the Windsor press, when opportunity occurred, with exaggerated and absurdly inflated accounts of any exciting incident such as the outbreak of a fire. Nor was it only the local papers that allured us; for I remember how G. C. Macaulay and I once had a daring wager as to which of us should more egregiously hoax the _Field_ with some story of a rare bird. He tried a too highly coloured anecdote of a bee-eater, and failed to win credence; while I, with a modest narrative of a supposed stork in Windsor Park (“can it have been a stork? I shall indeed feel myself lucky if my supposition be correct”), not only saw my letter inserted, but drew the gratifying editorial comment: “Most probably it was a stork.” Thus we made natural history and beguiled the idle hours.