Schools of the Three ''BY' 219 



positively, at this distance that some of these fine 

 old gentlemen desecrated the sanctity of the hall 

 of learning by burning incense in the form of to- 

 bacco in clay pipes, but I am reasonably sure it is 

 true. Peace to their ashes and may some small 

 boy of to-day think of me as kindly in years to 

 come as I do now of them. 



The big book that Mr. Caven handed me was a 

 collection of Shakespeare's tragedies finely illus- 

 trated with steel engravings and I gazed and gazed 

 spellbound at the picture of that hump-backed 

 King Eichard the Third, slaying Bichmonds by the 

 half-dozen in that history-making contest on Bos- 

 worth Field. 



If there is one subject that literary men and 

 women love to write on it is about their school- 

 days. Many of the great writers, and lesser ones, 

 too, in both poetry and prose, have set down lov- 

 ing, kindly thoughts on this theme. There are 

 poems by the hundred on the school and school- 

 days and many of them exquisitely tender and 

 beautiful. 



Thomas Dunn English, in that pathetic old song 

 "Ben Bolt" which George Du Maurier used with 

 such fine effect in his book "Trilby," did not for- 

 get the school, although his reference to his teacher 

 seems unkind. One of the verses runs thus : 



"And don't you remember the school, Ben Bolt, 

 With the master so cruel and grim, 

 And the shaded nook by the running brook, 

 Where the children went to swim? 



