On one of the whitewashed walls of the huge schoolroom was an inscription conceived and illustrated as follows: “_Aut disce!_” and there followed a depicted book and inkstand; “_Aut discede!_” followed by a handsomely painted sword, as who should say, “Go and be a soldier!” (offering that as an alternative for which no learning was needed, after the fashion of a day before examinations for commissions were dreamed of!); and then lastly, “_Manet sors tertia cædi_,” followed by the portraiture of a rod. But this rod is of so special and peculiar a kind, and so dissimilar from any such instrument as used elsewhere, that I must try to explain the nature of it to my non-Wiccamical readers. A stick of some hard wood, beech I think it was, turned into a shape convenient to the hand, about a yard long, and with four grooves about three inches long and as large as a cedar pencil, cut in the extremity of it, formed the handle. Into these four grooves were fitted four slender apple twigs about five feet long. They were sent up from Herefordshire in bundles, cut and prepared for the purpose, and it was the duty of the “prefect of school” to provide them. These twigs, fitted into the grooves, were fixed by a string which bound them tightly to the handle, and a rod was thus formed, the four-fold switches of which stood out some foot--or more than that towards the end--from each other. The words “flog,” or “flogging,” it is to be observed, were never heard among us, in the mouth either of the masters or of the boys. We were “scourged.” And a scourging was administered in this wise. At a certain spot in the school--near the seat of the “informator,” when he was the executioner, and near that of the “hostiarius” or under master when he had to perform--in front of a fixed form, the patient kneeled down. Two boys, any who chanced to be at hand, stepped behind the form, turned the gown of a collegian or the coat tails of a commoner over his shoulders, and unbuttoned his brace buttons, leaving bare at the part where the braces join the trousers a space equal to the diameter of a crown-piece--such was the traditional rule. And aiming at this with more or less exactitude the master inflicted three cuts. Such was a “scourging.” Prefects, it may be observed, were never scourged.