JVhen IV e Old Fogeys to ere Boys. 201 



life make the lives of club servants unbearable, and who 

 are a terror to those under them, in whatever station of 

 life they may be, and make servants, clerks, governesses, 

 and sometimes, if parsons, even curates tremble before 

 them. These were the kind of boys who had three fags 

 to wait on them at breakfast ; that meal consisting of 

 College rations and a pot of jam from home, which was tied 

 down and lasted a week; who were always finding a speck 

 of dirt on a knife or on a cloth, for which they thrashed the 

 unfortunate junior. Juniors delighted to be one of a 

 number of fags who waited on a breakfast mess of three 

 good fellows — good at football and cricket — who had a dish 

 of kidneys, a dozen eggs, fried potatoes and chops for 

 breakfast, with endless toast and coffee. A fag might get 

 a flea in his ear sometimes for clumsiness or carelessness, 

 but masters and fags formed a little family party of their 

 own. 



Then as regards the inmates of the school generally. 

 Winchester being one of the capitals of the West was easy 

 of access to West of England men, many of whose sons 

 came there ; and the advantage of having a boy under the 

 discipline of one of the oldest public schools w^as thought 

 more of in many cases than education, and sons of many 

 country gentlemen would go there, and be perfectly content 

 to remain in the lower forms until they left at seventeen or 

 eighteen years of age. So much w^as this the case that one 

 year an eleven from the three lowest forms played all 

 Commoners at cricket and beat them. It looked funny to 

 see big fellows in tail coats and more than incipient whiskers 

 standing up by the side of little fellows of twelve years old, 

 in an awful fog over an easy passage in Ovid, which, though 

 easy to the youngsters, was a terrible stumbling-block to 

 them; but so it was. On the other hand, it was for 

 nobody's good when a very young fellow with immense 



