The door in every chamber was well screened from the beds. There was a huge fireplace with heavy iron dogs, on which we burned in winter large faggots about four feet long. Four of such faggots was the allowance for each evening, and it was abundantly sufficient. It was the duty of the bedmakers, whose operations were all performed when we were in school, to put four faggots in each chamber, which we used at our discretion--_i. e._ at the discretion of the prefects in the chamber. As the eighteen prefects were distributed among the seven chambers, there were three prefects in each of the larger, and two in each of the smaller chambers. By the side of each bed was a little desk, with a cupboard above, which was called a “toys,” in which each boy kept the books he needed for work “in chambers,” and any other private property. For his clothes he had also by his bedside a large chest, of a make contemporary with the bedstead, which served him also for a seat at the desk of the “toys.” In the middle of the chamber was a pillar, around which were hung our surplices. Over the huge fireplace was an iron sconce fixed in the wall, in which a rushlight, called by us a “functure” was burned all night. And the “prefect in course” was responsible for its being kept duly burning. The nightly rounds of the “hostiarius” were not frequent, but he might come at any minute of any night. Suddenly his pass key would be heard in the door--for it was the rule that every chamber door should be kept locked all night; he came in with a lanthorn in his hand, and if all was right, _i. e._ if the functure was duly burning, every boy in his bed, and his candle put out, he merely looked around and passed on to another chamber. If otherwise, the “prefect in course” had an interview with him on the following morning. These chamber doors, which, as I have said, it was the rule to keep always locked during the night, were exceedingly massive, ironbound, and with enormous locks and hinges. Now there was a tradition in college that a certain former “senior prefect in third” (_subaudi_ chamber) had carried the door of that chamber round the quadrangle. The Atlas thus remembered was a minor canon of the cathedral, when I was “senior prefect in third,” and the tradition of his prowess excited my emulation. So I had the door in question taken from its hinges and laid upon my bent back, and caused the door of “fourth” to be carefully placed on the top of it, and so carried both doors round the quadrangle, thus outdoing the minor canon by a hundred per cent. In due proportion the feat should surely have made me in time a canon! But it has not done so. I think, however, that I might challenge any one of my schoolfellows of the present generation, whose constitutions are cared for by the early breakfasts, which we did not get, to do likewise--supposing, that is, the old doors to be still in existence, and _in statu quo_. From