We were yclept every morning punctually at eight (and arose punctually at nine thirty) throughout the year. ZEUGMA I suppose you thought I couldn't do X. Y. Z. Well, this is just to show you. In the ordinary way, of course, I should have referred to the zeugma under music. We ordered a low-strung one last month, but it has not yet been delivered. * * * * * * * So much for my record of the past year. Reading it over now I feel that I have not spent the last twelve months in vain. At the end of them I can say truthfully that I am, if not a year wiser, at least a year older, a year fatter. And still a happy bachelor. LETTERS TO CHARLES I DEAR CHARLES,--Can you lend me a penny? I have just been making up my accounts for the day (the idea occurred to me suddenly; it's a thing I have never done before) and I am seven shillings and a penny out. The seven shillings I don't mind, but the penny worries me dreadfully. I think that if you lent me another one I should gradually be able to settle down again. I lie when I say I have never made up accounts before--I did it on one memorable occasion years and years ago. When John and I were at school we had certain expenses, such as subscriptions to the mission and to various house competitions, train fares, masters' wedding presents, haircutting and so on, which did not come out of our pocket money or tips, but which were specially sent to us from home. To save the trouble of this we were given, at the beginning of one term, five pounds to see us through all these expenses, with the understanding that we were to account for it afterwards. "Afterwards" meant the holidays, which (to begin with) were a long way off. As they came nearer we consoled ourselves with the thought that the required "account" was a mere formality which would probably not be insisted upon; the actual money had been spent--which after all was the main thing, the idea of the whole proceeding, so to say. To wish to linger over the details of its gradual dissolution would be morbid. However to our horror a day did come in the holidays when we were peremptorily ordered to provide our account and to hand over the balance. There is, as you know, Charles, never any difficulty about providing an account--the trouble is to hand over the balance. In our case the balance was exactly nothing, we had not a penny in our pockets. The money had been spent all right, an unusual number of masters having been married that term (some of them for the third or fourth time in the year), but we could not possibly make up our accounts so that to a farthing the two sides balanced. It would look so unnatural. How could we march solemnly into the library and say "By a perfectly amazing coincidence the money you gave us was just precisely the amount which the circumstances demanded. There is no balance."