As everything we saw was solid and at right angles, so everything we did was by rules. We undressed by order, got into bed by order, the light went out by order, we washed, dressed, played, studied, sang, prayed according to rule. I had an abundance of pocket money, but could not use it except by rule. We all had to take steps, to march by order. This monotonous grind by order, day and night for weeks and months and years, as if we were so many prisoners in a tread-mill, was one of the grievances of my school life. I had all I needed and more, to add to my comfort. Many of the boys were scantily supplied. Their fathers had perhaps never been boys and gone away to school, or perhaps they never had fathers as I had none, and they never found such a friend as I had. I pitied them and aided them often, and so gained many a friendship. I had plenty of good, warm, soft bedding, and many a night my extra blankets were loaned to those shivering near me. The principal was a great solid, ruddy, beefy sort of a man, so plump and enshrined with flesh, that if he had slept on the rocks they would not have come near his bones. He wore “parson clothes,” and was always mousing around, not to do any work himself, but to see that the teachers did their’s and that the boys obeyed the rules. He read the prayers and flogged the boys, and from what we could hear some of them required his services very often, or he thought they did. The result was the same. I do not remember, during my whole four years, of ever receiving a kind word from him. If he ever spoke to me it was just what was required, of course, and by rule. We never came in contact for good or ill except once. Whether this was arranged by the decrees or by the rules, or what, I do not know or ever cared, but have since suspected—as I have stated that I am rather of a suspicious, inquisitive nature, wanting a reason or giving a reason for everything—that I was not worthy of his profound attention, but having been sent by the well-known magistrate and collector of Muggerpur, a man of considerable influence, who paid well, I was not to be interfered with, though I was unnoticed and unfavored. Though in birth I was nothing, as I well knew, and he I am sure knew it as well as I did, for such men can tell by a sniff what rank a boy or man is of, yet my patron, by his position, had raised or put me in the rank of the higher class. It was not long before I came to the conclusion that my position was fixed, not by my own merit, but by some arbitrary rule or something, I knew not what.