So, if it does not fall to the lot of every man to have an alma mater dating back to the time of the crusades (the school was founded in 1137, or very soon after), the fact of having it is not necessarily a warrant of saintliness. It was not with us. I have recounted some of our pranks. For them, if they went beyond the limit, there was still the rod. That and the big book with red letters and the iron chain riveted to it that lay in the school library were the visible survivals of a past day. Concerning the latter there was a belief current among the untaught that it was in fact Cyprianus, the book with which the priest could cast a spell and bid the devil come and go as he saw fit, but which the hand of no unlearned man might touch without instant peril to life and soul. It was, as a matter of fact, the Bible that was held in such regard. The chain that gave it its grewsome aspect was testimony merely to its rarity and the cost of paper and printer’s ink in the day that made so sure it would not get lost. All of which made little or no impact upon the belief that the devil was firmly chained between its pages, and that it was a good plan to give it a wide berth. No mediæval superstition was needed to convince us of the wisdom of that plan when it came to the rod. Its ceremonial use, so to speak, had fallen into disuse. I mean by that the great capital occasions when, for hopeless breach of discipline or for disgracing the school before the world, a pupil was flogged by the janitor in the presence of the assembled school, after a lecture by the Rector, and publicly expelled. No such emergency arose in my day. But in a more private and sufficiently intimate way it was still part of the curriculum. The daily cudgelling of dull heads was supposed to have a stimulating effect upon the intellect. It was the custom of the day, but its sun was setting even then. Is it merely harking back to personal experience that I sometimes think a boy is just pining for a whipping and won’t be happy till he gets it; and that, having got it, he feels justified, squared as it were, and ready for a new and better start? Or, is it faith in the boy’s fundamental love of fair play that sizes up the offence and its deserving? I will let the teacher decide. Somewhere I have told of my first introduction to the “kids’ school,” kept by an old “she-wolf,” and its educational equipment. I was dragged all the way to it by an exasperated housemaid, hammering the pavement with my heels and yelling at the top of my voice. Forbearance at home had, it seems, ceased to be a virtue. There was none in the ogre who received me at the door and forthwith thrust me into a barrel down in the cellar, where it was dark, and putting on the lid, snarled through the bung-hole that that was the way bad boys were dealt with in school. Good boys were given kringler to eat. When from sheer fright I ceased howling, I was set free and conducted to the yard, where there was