have been flogged oftener than any human being alive. It was just
possible to obtain five scourgings in one day at Winchester, and
I have often boasted that I obtained them all. Looking back over
half a century, I am not quite sure whether the boast is true; but
if I did not, nobody ever did.

And yet when I think how little I knew of Latin or Greek on leaving
Harrow at nineteen, I am astonished at the possibility of such
waste of time. I am now a fair Latin scholar,--that is to say, I
read and enjoy the Latin classics, and could probably make myself
understood in Latin prose. But the knowledge which I have, I have
acquired since I left school,--no doubt aided much by that groundwork
of the language which will in the process of years make its way
slowly, even through the skin. There were twelve years of tuition
in which I do not remember that I ever knew a lesson! When I left
Harrow I was nearly at the top of the school, being a monitor, and,
I think, the seventh boy. This position I achieved by gravitation
upwards. I bear in mind well with how prodigal a hand prizes used
to be showered about; but I never got a prize. From the first to
the last there was nothing satisfactory in my school career,--except
the way in which I licked the boy who had to be taken home to be
cured.





CHAPTER II

MY MOTHER