The second memorable whipping I received was during the autumn of 1851, the year of Rhuddlan Eisteddfod. Cholera was reported to be in the country, and I believe we were forbidden to eat fruit of any kind. Some weeks, however, after the edict had been issued, I and the most scholarly boy in the school were sent on an errand to the Cathedral town. When returning, we caught sight of a bunch of blackberries on the other side of a hedge, and, wholly oblivious of the consequences, we climbed over a gate into the field and feasted on the delicious fruit, and, of course, stained our fingers and lips. On reporting ourselves to Francis, it was evident by the way he gazed at us both that he guessed what we had been doing, but he said nothing, and we retired from him with a sense of relief. About half an hour after we all had been dismissed to our dormitory, and we were all quiet abed, the master’s tramp was heard on the stairs, and when he appeared at the door he had a birch as large as a broom in his hand. He stood long enough to remind us all that he had expressly forbidden us to eat any fruit from stall or hedge because of the sickness that was in the country; then, giving a swishing blow in the air with his birch, he advanced to my bed and with one hand plucked me out of bed, and forthwith administered a punishment so dreadful that blackberries suggested birching ever afterwards. He next went to the bed of the scholar George, who hitherto had escaped the experience he was now to undergo, because of his remarkable abilities. George, being new to the exquisite pain of flagellation, writhed and struggled to such an extent that he exasperated the master, and received double punishment, and his back, breast, and legs were covered with wounds. The hard tasks imposed upon us, such as sweeping the play-ground with brooms more suited to giants than little children, the washing of the slated floors when one was stiff from caning, the hoeing of frost-bound ground, when every stroke on it caused the nerves to quiver, the thinly-clad body all the while exposed to a searching wind; the compelling us to commit whole pages to memory during the evening; in these, and scores of other ways, our treatment was ferocious and stupid. Under such treatment as these examples describe, who could have supposed that any of the St. Asaph waifs would ever have developed into anything resembling respectable manhood? Yet several of these poor lads have since risen to receive a large measure of respect from Society. One of them has become a wealthy merchant, another is a vicar, a third is a colonial lawyer, and a fourth is a person of distinction in a South African State.