develop in me antiquarian inclinations, and my own discovered
hunting-ground for Roman numismatics in the south of England, long
afterwards expanded in "Farley Heath" near Albury. At Charterhouse
there was a great slope or semi-mound which had in old times been
utilised as a wholesale grave for the victims of plague and other
epidemics. It strikes me now as most perilous, but we boys used to dig
and scratch among bones and other _débris_ for on occasional coin or
lead token, whereof I found several; it is only a wonder that we did not
unearth pestilence, but mould is fortunately very antiseptic. Another
playground peculiarity was that after the hoop season, usually driven in
duplicate or triplicate, the hoops were "stored" or "shied" into the
branching elms, from which they were again brought down by hockey-sticks
flung at them; a great boon to the smaller boys who thus gratuitously
became possessed of valuable properties. And for all else, there were
fights behind the school, in those pugilistic days scientifically
conducted with seconds and bottleholders, and some "claret" drawn, and
other like fashionable brutalities; also in its season came football,
but not quite so fiercely fought as it is now; and there was Mr.
Rackwitz, the man of sweets and pastries at the corner; and another sort
of rackets in the tennis court; and for another sort of court there was
then extant a bit of ruinous Gothic in old Rutland Court, a ghostly
entrance from Charterhouse Square, some thought haunted, and long since
cleared away.

And now crossing the Square we come to No. 41, the Queen Anne fashioned
mansion where Mr. Andrew Irvine (another Reverend Master, who like all
the rest, except Churton, almost never "did duty," and when he did
manifestly could neither read, preach, not pray) had a houseful of
pupils, whereof the writer was one. That long room is full of ancient
memories of past and gone Carthusians, though it is now humiliated into