"HALT, FRIEND! WHO GOES THERE?"]

* * * * *

=THE HOUSE-MASTER.=

Four years I spent beneath his rule,
For three of which askance I scanned him,
And only after leaving school
Came thoroughly to understand him;
For he was brusque in various ways
That jarred upon the modern mother,
And scouted as a silly craze
The theory of the "elder brother."

Renowned at Cambridge as an oar
And quite distinguished as a wrangler,
He felt incomparably more
Pride in his exploits as an angler;
He held his fishing on the Test
Above the riches of the Speyers,
And there he lured me, as his guest,
Into the ranks of the "dry-flyers."

He made no fetish of the cane
As owning any special virtue,
But held the discipline of pain,
When rightly earned, would never hurt you;
With lapses of the normal brand
I think he dealt most mercifully,