Progenerant aquilæ columbam."


It is not a pleasant epoch in one's life, the first forty-eight hours at
a large public school. I have known strong-minded men of mature age
confess that they never thought of it without a shiver. I don't count
the home-sickness, which perhaps only affects seriously the most
innocent of _débutants_, but there are other thousand and one little
annoyances which make up a great trouble. If there were nothing else,
for instance, the unceasing query, "What's your name?" makes you feel
the possession of a cognomen at all a serious burden and bar to
advancement in life.

A dull afternoon toward the end of October; the sky a neutral tint of
ashy gray; a bitter northeast wind tearing down the yellow leaves from
the old elms that girdle the school-close of ----; a foul, clinging
paste of mud and trampled grass-blades under foot, that chilled you to
the marrow; a mob of two hundred lower boys, vicious with cold and the
enforcement of keeping goal through the first football match of the
season--in the midst, I, who speak to you, feeling myself in an
eminently false position--there's the _mise en scène_.

My small persecutors had surrounded me, but had hardly time to settle
well to their work, when one of the players came by, and stopped for an
instant to see what was going on. The match had not yet begun.

There was nothing which interested him much apparently, for he was
passing on, when my despondent answer to the everlasting question caught
his ear. He turned round then--