active, everyday concern, however, was to become a sportsman; he wished
to be the best cricketer, the best footballer, the fastest runner of his
school, and he had not--even then faintly he knew it--the remotest
chance of doing any of these things even moderately well. He was bullied
at school until his appointment as his dormitory's story-teller gave
him a certain status, but his efforts at cricket and football were
mocked with jeers and insults. He could not throw a cricket-ball, he
could not see to catch one after it was thrown to him, did he try to
kick a football he missed it, and when he had run for five minutes he
saw purple skies and silver stars and has cramp in his legs. He had,
however, during these years at Mr. Lasher's, this great over mastering
ambition.

In his sleep, at any rate, he was a hero; in the wide-awake world he
was, in the opinion of almost every one, a fool. He was exactly the type
of boy whom the Rev. William Lasher could least easily understand. Mr.
Lasher was tall and thin (his knees often cracked with a terrifying
noise), blue-black about the cheeks hooked as to the nose, bald and
shining as to the head, genial as to the manner, and practical to the
shining tips of his fingers. He has not, at Cambridge, obtained a rowing
blue, but "had it not been for a most unfortunate attack of scarlet
fever-----" He was President of the Clinton St. Mary Cricket Club, 1890
(matches played, six; lost, five; drawn, one) knew how to slash the ball
across the net at a tennis garden party, always read the prayers in
church as though he were imploring God to keep a straighter bat and
improve His cut to leg, and had a passion for knocking nails into walls,
screwing locks into doors, and making chicken runs. He was, he often
thanked his stars, a practical Realist, and his wife, who was fat,
stupid, and in a state of perpetual wonder, used to say of him, "If Will
hadn't been a clergyman he would have made _such_ an engineer. If God