114 LEAVES FEOM A GAME BOOK. 



deserved all I received, but tlie Eeverend Joseph lost 

 his temper with me one day when delivering a science 

 lecture to a large class, for during its progress I made 

 a nice little pellet of blotting paper about the size of 

 an S.S.G. shot, which, being impaled on the end of a 

 pen and well soaked in ink, was flicked with the fore- 

 finger as a sign of contempt at a boy I had agreed to 

 fight as soon as the class was over. Alas ! the missile 

 went wrong, for instead of passing behind the lecturer, 

 it lodged on his white shirt front. He was a strong, 

 active man, a first-class fives player, who, instantly 

 detecting from whence the black matter came, stooped 

 low, with his left leg well in advance of his right, and 

 struck me two blows on the ear with all his might, 

 and just as if he had been hitting at a fives ball. 

 These blows reduced me to such a dazed and stupid 

 condition that my fight had to be put off", and it was 

 not for some days afterwards that I recovered from 

 their effect. The condition of helplessness I was then 

 reduced to came back to me as these thirteen pellets 

 struck me ; it happened, however, to be the last drive 



