WHEN WE OLD FOGEYS 

 WEEE BOYS. 



DoiSr'T let us ask how many years ago it was, but we fogeys 

 of the present once were boys ; were flogged, learnt impo- 

 sitions, went through the rugged channels of grammar- 

 navigation, had hopes and fears, fights and friendships — 

 and, strange to say, those friendships at intervals of many 

 decades grow again stronger than ever when old school- 

 fellows meet. Many sketches of school-life have been 

 written with more or less exaggeration and colour, occa- 

 sionally with no little cant and goody-goody stories, in all 

 of which the preponderance of good on the one side, and of 

 evil on the other, are quite out of proportion to the balance 

 of character in real life ; just as in our nursery-books the 

 wicked boy who went out sliding on a Sunday was always 

 drowned, and his companions whom he tempted to the 

 awful crime of Sabbath-breaking were rescued by the good 

 boy, who appeared to have been a combination of the 

 Beckwith family. Captain "Webb, an otter, a Royal Humane 

 Society man, a Hercules, and a Low Church parson, all in 

 one. 



Public schools proper were very few and far between in 

 196 



