beside their fathers in their "resting-graves"! And again, how
many of these last have not found their way there, all too early,
through the stress of education! That was one thing, at least,
from which my truantry protected me. I am sorry indeed that I have
no Greek, but I should be sorrier still if I were dead; nor do I
know the name of that branch of knowledge which is worth acquiring
at the price of a brain fever. There are many sordid tragedies in
the life of the student, above all if he be poor, or drunken, or
both; but nothing more moves a wise man's pity than the case of the
lad who is in too much hurry to be learned. And so, for the sake
of a moral at the end, I will call up one more figure, and have
done. A student, ambitious of success by that hot, intemperate
manner of study that now grows so common, read night and day for an
examination. As he went on, the task became more easy to him,
sleep was more easily banished, his brain grew hot and clear and
more capacious, the necessary knowledge daily fuller and more
orderly. It came to the eve of the trial and he watched all night
in his high chamber, reviewing what he knew, and already secure of
success. His window looked eastward, and being (as I said) high
up, and the house itself standing on a hill, commanded a view over
dwindling suburbs to a country horizon. At last my student drew up
his blind, and still in quite a jocund humour, looked abroad. Day
was breaking, the cast was tinging with strange fires, the clouds
breaking up for the coming of the sun; and at the sight, nameless
terror seized upon his mind. He was sane, his senses were
undisturbed; he saw clearly, and knew what he was seeing, and knew
that it was normal; but he could neither bear to see it nor find
the strength to look away, and fled in panic from his chamber into
the enclosure of the street. In the cool air and silence, and
among the sleeping houses, his strength was renewed. Nothing