128 MORE POT-POURRI 



perform an anachronistic miracle and find him as he 

 then was, to give him a hundred times the value of his 

 poor little book. 



' From Stoton's, at the age of fourteen, I went to the 

 Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and Augustus 

 must have gone to the Military Academy at Woolwich 

 about a year later. My father took me to the college, 

 and we slept the night before the entrance examination 

 at the "Tumble-down Dick" inn at Farnborough, 

 which was then the nearest station. The examination 

 was a farce, of course. I suppose they ascertained that 

 one could read and write, and the doctor satisfied him- 

 self you were not deformed, but I don't believe it went 

 much farther.' (Here the fragment ends.) 



December 5th. — The weather is wonderfully mild. I 

 have a bunch of Tea Roses flowering in the room that 

 were picked out of doors yesterday. Have seasons 

 changed, or have the Roses ? I used to think Owen 

 Meredith's allusion to the Rose of October so true: 



If Sorrow have taught me anything, 

 She hath taught me to weep for you ; 



And if Falsehood have left me a tear to shed 

 For Truth, these tears are true. 



If the one star left by the morning 



Be dear to the dying night. 

 If the late lone rose of October 



Be sweetest to scent and sight, 



If the last of the leaves in December 



Be dear to the desolate tree, 

 Eemember, belov'd — O remember, 



How dear is your beauty to me ! 



December 10th. — I have again been away. At last it 

 is quite winter, and everything is at rest outside. But 

 if all the outdoor Chrysanthemums, or even the hardiest 

 indoor ones, had been moved in October or November 



