use to me, and I hate them."

At this moment the conversation between the boys was abruptly broken
off by Archer being called up by the class master.

"Archer," he said, looking up from the papers on the desk before him,
"these verses are disgraceful. Of all in the holiday tasks sent in,
yours appears to me to be the worst."

"I'm very sorry, sir," Jack Archer said, "I really tried hard to do
them, but somehow or other the quantities never will come right."

"I don't know what you call trying hard, Archer, but it's utterly
impossible, if you had taken the trouble to look the words out in
the Gradus, that you could have made such mistakes as those here."

"I don't know, sir," Jack answered. "I can do exercises and
translations and all that sort of thing well enough, but I always
break down with verses, and I don't see what good they are, except
for fellows who want to write Latin verses for tombstones."

"That has nothing to do with it," the master said; "and I am not going
to discuss the utility of verses with you. I shall report you to Dr.
Wallace, and if you will not work in your holidays, you will have to
do so in your play-hours."

Jack retired to his seat, and for the next ten minutes indulged in a
diatribe against classical learning in general, and hexameters and
pentameters in particular.