with the oldest lead, and the wind came, sharp as Shylock's knife,
from the Minories. But those happy boys ran and jumped, and hopped,
and shouted, and--unconscious men in miniature!--in their own world
of frolic, had no thought of the full-length men they would some day
become; drawn out into grave citizenship; formal, respectable,
responsible. To them the sky was of any or all colours; and for that
keen east wind--if it was called the east wind--cutting the shoulder-
blades of old, old men of forty {1}--they in their immortality of
boyhood had the redder faces, and the nimbler blood for it.

And the writer, looking dreamily into that playground, still mused on
the robust jollity of those little fellows, to whom the tax-gatherer
was as yet a rarer animal than baby hippopotamus. Heroic boyhood, so
ignorant of the future in the knowing enjoyment of the present! And
the writer still dreaming and musing, and still following no distinct
line of thought, there struck upon him, like notes of sudden
household music, these words--CURTAIN LECTURES.

One moment there was no living object save those racing, shouting
boys; and the next, as though a white dove had alighted on the pen
hand of the writer, there was--MRS. CAUDLE.

Ladies of the jury, are there not then some subjects of letters that
mysteriously assert an effect without any discoverable cause?
Otherwise, wherefore should the thought of CURTAIN LECTURES grow from
a school ground--wherefore, among a crowd of holiday school-boys,
should appear MRS. CAUDLE?

For the LECTURES themselves, it is feared they must be given up as a
farcical desecration of a solemn time-honoured privilege; it may be,