For the rest, I cannot say that the ingenuous art of Greek, though we learnt it faithfully, softened our manners much, or forbade us to be savages. One peculiar custom may stand for many as an instance of the primitive barbarity which stamps upon any abnormal member of a herd. Since the last Pancratium was fought at Olympia, no such dire contest has been seen among men as our old steeple-chase. Clad in little but gloves--a little which grew less with every hundred yards--the small band of youths tore their way through bare and towering hedges, wallowed through bogs, plunged into streams and ponds, racing over a two miles of country that no horse would have looked at. The start was at the Flash side of the Severn, and if I had cleared the first stream and the hedge beyond it with one clean bound, as my young brother did, I would have it engraved on my tombstone: “He jumped the Flash ditch, R. I. P.” The winner of the race was, of course, the boy who came in first; but the hero of the school was he from whom the most blood was trickling at the finish, and who showed the bravest gashes on his face as he walked down the choir of St. Mary’s at next morning’s service. The course for the display of all this heroism was marked by the new boys, whose places as “sticks” were allotted by the huntsman the day before, the whole school accompanying them, and by immemorial custom the most unpopular new-boy of the year was always set at the last post,--a slippery stump of ancient tree projecting in the very midst of a particularly filthy pond. As we drew nearer and nearer the place, all of us advancing at a gentle trot, one could see the poor creature growing more and more certain that he was the boy. We all exchanged smiles, and sometimes his name was called out, for all, except himself, had agreed who it would probably be. At last the pond was reached, and we stood round it in a thick and silent circle, awaiting the public execution of a soul. The boy’s name was called. He came sullenly forward and made a wild leap for the stump. Invariably he fell short, or slipped and plunged headlong into the stagnant water, whilst we all yelled with satisfaction. Wallowing through the black slush and duckweed, he clambered on to the tree at last, and stood there in the public gaze, declared the most hateful boy in the school. Upon himself the ceremony had not always the elevating effect at which, I suppose, we aimed. For I remember one disappointed moralist in the fourth form remarking, “Frog’s pond doesn’t seem to have done that fellow any good. He wants kicking again.”