CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD 17 



against the treachery encouraged by this system. A 

 boy with a " mark " in his pocket would sidle up and 

 encourage you as he best could to say a word of 

 English, then forthwith he clapped his "mark" into 

 your hand, and went away rejoicing at the riddance. 

 S The school was an old convent near to and within 

 the Calais gate of the upper town ; the playground 

 was the paved square of the convent, in which we 

 used the flat gravestones for playing marbles. It is 

 now partly overbuilt by the large church whose dome 

 is conspicuous from afar. 



We were daily marched off in a long row of pairs, 

 usually for a walk round the ramparts, sometimes 

 to Napoleon's Column, then in process of building, and 

 in the summer, not infrequently, to bathe by rocks near 

 the old fort. We prepared ourselves for the latter 

 grateful occasions by saving bread from breakfast ; 

 then, after having gathered mussels, we spread their 

 delicious contents on it to eat. An opportunity was 

 then afforded of inspecting with awe the marks of 

 recent birchings, which were reckoned as glorious 

 scars. The birchings were frequent and performed 

 in a long room parallel to, and separated from, the 

 schoolroom by large ill-fitting doors, through which 

 each squeal of the victim was heard with hushed 

 breaths. In that room was a wardrobe full of school- 

 books ready for issue. It is some measure of the 

 then naivete of my mind that I wondered for long 

 how the books could have been kept so fresh and 

 clean for nearly two thousand years, thinking that the 

 copies of Caesar's Commentaries were contemporary 

 with Caesar himself. 



An occasional walk was to a wet plantation on the 



