"Be Senectuter 223 



words : *' If men will quarrel and fight, nature has provided 

 them, with the proper weapons ; and, prisoner, you have no 

 excuse." 



Looking back to an old school roll I picked out the 

 names of a few fellows older than myself, who really were 

 good at boxing when I was a little boy. Every one of 

 them was kind to me and never bullied ; two are very 

 known clergymen, one of whom is immortalised by his 

 fighting and beating the town bully named Jupe, in 

 1836, who was a man of five and twenty, in five 

 rounds, at Twyford cross-roads. I held his clothes and 

 saw it. The fight is recorded in Adams' " Wykehamica.'' 

 For a wonder the boys were in the right, as the roughs, of 

 v>'hom Jupe was one, had cruelly beaten some little college 

 boys. To do the roughs justice, they kept a fair ring, and 

 their man fought fair, and was knocked clean out of time. 

 Another bowled in Gentlemen v. Players when a boy at 

 school ; another is a very distinguished retired cavalry 

 oflicer, a fifth is a well-known church architect, who pulled 

 in the Cambiidge boat, and the sixth was a fine steeple- 

 chase rider and rare good officer, who fell by the colom\s 

 of the 23rd at the Alma in 1854. The best man I ever 

 knew in London died last year : he was one of young Reed's 

 best pupils (ranking with Billy Duff and Thomas Knox 

 Holmes, and amateurs of that stamp), as was each of his four 

 sons. His theory was that all boys should swim like otters, 

 and be igorant of fear, and from the time they were little 

 boys his sons learned the noble art thoroughly. The 

 eldest was in the army, and died after the West African 

 campaign ; the second passed an admirable staflT examina- 

 tion, and now is on active service ; the third has a high civil 

 appointment in India, and the fourth is in an irregular 

 cavalry regiment now. One son received a medal from the 

 Eoyal Humane fSociety for swimming out in a heavy sea 



