I was shown into the small drawing-room that I remembered so well. There was the same tablecover, the same things on the mantelpiece, the same books, the same pictures as when I went into that room to meet Hostler, and to be told I must give up all chance of Woolwich, as I had no head for mathematics or Euclid. It flashed across me that probably scores of other boys had had their prospects ruined in consequence of being put under the charge of selfish and bigoted men, who had only one system of teaching, and whose method was unsuited to the mind of the boy on whom they acted. In that room a straw would have turned the scale, and I might have left that place with a stamp of stupidity on me which I should never have had the chance of removing all my life, unless, as really happened, I had gone to Mr. Rouse's, and had passed my examinations well.

As I was thus meditating, the door opened and Mr. Hostler came in.

"Ah, Shepard!" he exclaimed, "I am very glad to see you. How are you?" "Quite well, Mr. Hostler. young Barnes. Is he in ?"

I've called to see

"Oh yes, he's in. I hope you'll come into the school-room and see him; it does the boys good to

see a cadet there who has been prepared for the Academy by me, and who has distinguished himself as you have done. I feel very proud of it I can tell you!"

"You forget, Mr. Hostler; you didn't prepare me for the Academy, but gave me up as too stupid to learn mathematics."

“Oh, nothing of the kind, Shepard, you're quite mistaken. I gave you all the groundwork, and you only wanted just a little polishing up, which could be better done by a private tutor like Rouse than in a large school like mine, where we work in classes. No, don't think I'm going to be robbed of the merit of preparing you; besides, you were not three months with Rouse, and here you were over a year. Facts speak for themselves. Depend on it, you passed and got on so well just because you were well grounded here, and saw my system of preparing, which is good."

I was not then old enough to answer these misrepresentations of Hostler's, but I knew how false they were, and yet how firmly they would convince the majority of outsiders that to Hostler was due the merit of having trained me for Woolwich. I found afterwards that he had told his boys that I was his special pupil, and that he had also claimed

me, in his sort of advertisement list, as one who had been trained by him. Such men succeed in the world as a rule, for the general public judge from superficial evidence, and rarely have the time, if they had the inclination, to look closely into matters that do not specially affect their interests.

The case would appear thus:-
:-

"Shepard, a cadet who stood second in mathematics at the Academy, was prepared by Mr. Hostler for twelve months, and then sent to finish details at Mr. Rouse's for three months, during part of which time he was ill with hooping-cough. He passed in well, and came out well. Honour, then, is due to Mr. Hostler for his excellent training, and great credit is reflected on his school."

I saw my young acquaintance, who was sent for at my request, as I declined to be made a parade of in the school-room, and bidding Mr. Hostler farewell, I left his establishment, which I never entered again, and never saw Mr. Hostler again, though the scenes through which I passed at his school even now sometimes haunt me in the form of nightmares, when I dream I am again a boy at that place, who has failed in his Euclid, and cannot make the three sides of a triangle join, and who is waiting for his three cuts on the hand.

CHAPTER XVII.

FINALE.

My career at what may be termed the Academy (proper) terminated with the examinations named in the last chapter. I returned home to rest as it were on my laurels, for I had to pass no further examinations in order to obtain my commission, and had merely to go through a practical course connected with the various branches in the Arsenal, and also a course of surveying, after which there was the public examination, which was a mere farce, and we were then commissioned in the order in which we stood.

Before finally leaving the Academy I once more paid a visit to Mr. Rouse and dined with him, where I met a Cambridge man who had just left Cambridge and had taken a Master of Arts degree. When I left Woolwich my course in mathematics consisted of plane and spherical trigonometry, conic

sections, statics and dynamics, properties of roofs and arches, hydrostatics, projectiles, and the deferential and integral calculus. In this course I had obtained a very good decimal, and therefore might be said to have a fair knowledge of the subjects. I was, therefore, anxious to compare my mathematical knowledge with that of a Master of Arts of Cambridge, and discover, if possible, how much longer it would take me to work up to the extent requisite to become M.A. To my surprise I found that the gentleman from Cambridge knew only as much mathematics as I did when I was in the second class, and, in fact, if I had been at Cambridge instead of at Woolwich, I should have been distinguished all my life as M.A., and should, of course, have been looked on as an authority on such matters as mathematics by people who had no other means of testing one's qualifications than by the literary annex after one's name.

I suggested to Mr. Rouse that this system of conferring distinguishing honours on men from one or two Universities, which honours carried weight with the public, seemed unfair to those men who were trained at other well-known places, such as Woolwich, where no honours were given, but where they had gone beyond the course required to gain the honours at the Universities.