To-day I hear persons discussing the Boat Race in railway-carriages, and in face of their dispassionate judgments I ask myself whether they can ever have sung for it and fought for it, and, let it be added, wept for it, as I have done. In truth, I suppose they have; for boys do not differ widely in these essential things. But these people do not fight; they do not even wear the ribbon! While it is open to a man to ignore the Boat Race altogether, I cannot understand his approaching the contest in so miserable a spirit. HAROLD I SUPPOSE that every one has made the acquaintance of the subject of this little biography at some time or other, though to others he may not have appeared as he has appeared to me, and, as I know, he has been called by many names. Indeed, when I consider that there have been men and women who have sought his society with a passionate eagerness, it is clear to me that his disguises must be extremely subtle, and that he employs them with a just regard for the personalities of his companions. For while some have found in his society the ultimate splendour of life, for me he has always been wearisome and ridiculously mean. Of course it may be that I have known him too long, for even as a child I was accustomed to find him at my side, an unwelcome guest who came and went by no law that my youthful mind could determine. Certainly in those days he was more capricious, and the method of argument by repetition, which he still employs, was only too well calculated to weary and distress a child. But for the rest, the Harold whom I knew then was materially the Harold whom I know now. Conceive a small man so severely afflicted with St. Vitus’s dance that his features are hardly definable, endow him with a fondness for clothes of dull colours grievously decorated with spots, and a habit of asking meaningless questions over and over again in an utterly unemotional voice, and you will be able to form a not unfair estimate of the joys of Harold’s society. There have been exceptions, however, to the detestable colourlessness of Harold’s appearance. I have seen him on occasion dressed in flaming red, like Mephistopheles, and his shrill staccato voice has pierced my head like a corkscrew. But these manifestations have always been brief, and might even be considered enjoyable when compared with the unrestful monotony of Harold’s society in general.