he could scarcely believe his own eyes, and did not write home about
it till next day, for fear that the good luck might turn to bad in the
night.

Unfortunately these successes left him little time for the sports
which should be a boy's most profitable form of idling. He ran no
races after he left Taunton, where he was known for the fleetest
pair of heels in the school; he played no games, neither cricket nor
football, not even bowls or rounders--but these amusements he probably
missed the less as they were not popular at Belfast, the College being
new and without muscular traditions, and the students chiefly young
men of narrow means and broad ambitions.

On the rare occasions when he had time for recreation, he either made
a few friends in the world of books--Emerson's "Essays" influenced him
most--or tried his own hand at literature. Once he even went so far as
to write a poem and send it to a Belfast newspaper, signing it "C'est
Moi." It was printed, and, being short of money at the time, he wrote
his father that his first published writing had appeared, and received
from his proud parent £10 by way of encouragement.

But his literary success was short-lived. When he tried the same
editor with another effusion signed with the same pen-name, the
unfeeling man actually printed in his columns: "'C'est Moi's' last is
not worth the paper it is written on." Alas! for the prophet in his
own country. Years afterwards he got another criticism just as harsh
from another Irish paper. It was a review of his book "These from the
Land of Sinim," and the Irish reviewer for some unknown reason rated
the book thoroughly, declared its opinions were ridiculous, its
English neither forcible nor elegant, and concluded with the biting