"OLD" POWELL 81 



And so on, Latin and English, to further explanation 

 of Batley's contract. 



That is all I can charge my memory with in connection 

 with the Rev. " Plug's " tuition, but I know I made several 

 good friends that term. 



I had a study with Frederick York Powell, who was 

 my senior by more than a year, and was reputed to be 

 of Spanish extraction, solely I dare say because he 

 adorned the study with one or two Spanish knives, and 

 was of a very hasty temper. Charles Beilby Stuart 

 Wortley was my contemporary in the same house, and he 

 had a study with a youth named Kynnersley. I somehow 

 engineered a feud between them and Powell which caused 

 me great diversion, until one day, in a hasty moment, 

 Powell jabbed me in the leg with one of his Spanish knives, 

 not meaning it, I am sure, but the mark remains to this 

 day. Poor " old " Powell ! he was much upset by what he 

 had done, and, of course, it didn't matter. Shortly after- 

 wards he hit a Vlth form fellow, Leigh Bennett, on the 

 head with a broom handle, as he entered our study, the 

 only excuse being that he (Powell) thought it was Kynners- 

 ley. Needless to say, that excuse did not avail him. 



Powell later on rose to distinction as Regius Professor 

 of Modem History at Oxford, in succession to J. A. Froude, 

 and there is a record of him in the Encyclopedia Britannica. 



How it is that boys at school become intimate friends 

 no one ever knows, and they themselves do not, as a rule, 

 remember. I am sure I don't know how it was that I 

 first came to know Stuart Wortley, and he is even less 

 likely to remember when he first regarded me except 

 as one of the other fellows ; but somehow we did become 

 friends throughout all the time at school and later, at 

 Oxford, and later still, on the N.-E. Circuit, until our 

 paths diverged he to Parliamentary duties and I to 

 horse-breeding and journalism. It is a strange world, 

 but I know well that the old friendship is not 

 forgotten. 



There remained always at that time and later the 



