ON a day in last December I was feeling my way like Spencer's whale "sea-shouldering" through a dense ocean of fog up Piccadilly. By the clock it should have been noon; by the cold and the darkness it might have been midnight. Somewhere about Burlington House there came through the gloom two voices like muffled bells on my ear. "Good calx," said one; "I'll take my dic!" "Bad calx," said the other; "I'll bet sixpence !" Both the voices and the language were familiar to me, nor was the relative value of the asseverations unappreciated. The speakers were evidently close to me, and stretching out an arm I arrested their progress. Hurriedly explaining that my intentions were not bad, I drew them into the comparative light of a contiguous gaslamp, and we exchanged mutual and friendly salutations. Presently we were seated round a roaring fire in a cheerful room not very remote from the tranquil cloisters of the Albany, and then I learned the cause and purpose of my companions' conversation. One of them had been lately down to Eton, where he had just launched a little son, to see the great football match played annually at the Wall between the Collegers and the Oppidans. He had been describing it to his friend, also an Etonian, and the description naturally led their memories back to a famous match in which they had both played no undistinguished part many

years ago.

An Etonian and a Colleger myself, I had never borne a more active part in this annual tournament than that known as Twelfth Man. It was the part for which I am conscious to have been best fitted both by nature and art. I did not like that Wall game-a

game, I may add, peculiar to Eton, and to be made intelligible to no one who has not played it. No form of football was ever at any time an overmastering passion with me; but for this particular form I entertained at all times a deep aversion. Truth to tell it is a savage game, where brute force has the best of it, and the delicate play and agile graces which count for so much in our Field game are of little, if any avail. And yet that occasion on which I figured (not, let me hope, without adequate dignity) as Twelfth Man was productive of perhaps the most unalloyed joy that my schooltime brought me, the one moment which like Faust I could have implored to stay for its fairness.

It was in this wise. The two elevens were never finally composed till the evening of the day before the match. It had been commonly supposed that I should make one of the College team, in the responsible but not lively capacity of Goals. When the list of the possible heroes of next day was read out by the captain after evening prayers, my name was read only as Twelfth Man. After so many and such long years I may confess without shame that a thrill of joy ran through my heart at the knowledge. But I dissembled it and counterfeited a suitable chagrin. Indeed I earned golden opinions for the manly resignation with which I bore what was by the majority of course regarded as a bitter disappointment; especially when I offered my successful rival (who was something of my stature and bulk, though better framed for feats of activity) the trousers that I had caused to be carefully washed against the eventful day. They were wrought of moleskin, soft and snowy;

white flannels and ducks being only permitted to certain proved heroes of the cricket-field and the river. It was a nasty day for football, I remember, to play it or watch it played; a bitter wind driving right down the wall, and the ground in a woful state, though it had been strewn thick with sawdust as the custom was, fair and clean to the eye before the game began, but in a very few minutes naturally making matters ten times worse for the players. Precisely as the clock struck half-past twelve, the first bully was formed. After a few minutes' swaying to and fro it was violently rent asunder, the ball emerged amid a chaos of contending legs, wild shouts of triumph went up to the gray skies from several hundred throats as a lusty kick sent it bounding down the wall towards the Collegers' goal (or calx, to speak after the strict letter of the game), and eight pair of well-booted legs sped after it.

All eyes were now turned on my supplanter. Spes ultima, the last hope of his side, there he stood in my snowy cords, while the ball came hopping, twisting, spinning along over the sawdust with a motley crowd, pursuers and pursued, hard on its devious tracks. "Look out, Goal!" rose the College captain's warning voice. Poor devil! As though he were not looking out with every eye, nerve, muscle, and limb of his body! Closer and closer came the accursed ball, nearer and nearer drew the yelling savages behind it. He took two steps forward; he raised his right leg; when-his left slipped on the treacherous ground, down he fell heavily on his back, and over his prostrate form hopped the ball and galloped the triumphant Oppidans into the Collegers' calx!

But for the mercy of Providence I had been that unhappy boy!

When old schoolfellows come together after long separation, they rarely fail for something to talk of, especially when, as in this case, Past and Present are united by a little human link. In the experiences of

my friend's son-experiences, to be sure, only some three months old-we recalled our vanished youth, comparing the Eton of to-day with that we knew -how many years ago! Let us not be too particular; we will fix the date in that old familiar Consulship we all of us know, a fluctuating and most convenient period. Every age has its Plancus.

Of course we grumbled. To grumble at change is the last, and the first, enchantment of the Middle Aged. Who were the boy's particular friends in College? we asked of Paterfamilias, thinking perhaps to hear names whose owners in the last generation had played Davids to our Jonathans. But Paterfamilias could not tell us. He had asked, but his boy had answered that they were all "so beastly polite" to each other that he really could not say. Well, politeness is an excellent thing, and a boy should wear it as naturally as a man. But for a pack of boys to be uniformly what the sailors call "politeful" (with an epithet) to each other doth somewhat smack. It seems unnatural. There was no uncouthness, nor brutality in the school we remembered, or at least we did not remember it. Our Eton was certainly not the Eton of Lady Bridget's godson as depicted in "a page of the Windsor Express." But assuredly there was never any difficulty in distinguishing those we liked from those we did not like, nor was there ever any scruple in marking the distinction. I don't know that it is wise for a boy always to wear his heart on his sleeve for those who will to throw stones at; but to keep it always close buttoned in his jacket pocket is not in the order of boyish nature. Too much soft speaking is no better, I think, than too much soft lying for young folk. Perhaps, however, our little friend will have another tale to tell when the next holidays come round.

Some ancient usages we had been glad to know included among the many changes we were told of, but the march

of civilization has not reached them apparently, or perchance has passed them by. One vile custom I remember, and regret to find it still flourishes-a noxious weed on the fair ample bosom of Alma Mater. This is the custom known as Holding Down. 'Tis a difficult one to describe delicately. When a culprit is to suffer the extreme penalty of the law, the penalty of the Block, it is surmised that he may not always be inclined to take it in the patient manner recommended by Colonel Quagg to his victims. Two lower-boys are therefore appointed to restrain his possible struggles, and arrange his garments conveniently for the stroke of Fate. From time immemorial -at all events from a time whereof no memory to my knowledge runs counter -this custom has devolved upon the Collegers. I have myself played the part of one of these black-robed ministers of doom, and can well recall the bitter sense of humiliation it inflicted on me,-far bitterer than when subsequently I played another, and, as one may say, more directly personal, albeit passive, part in the same tragedy. Surely it is a degrading, a brutal custom, not to be imposed on young boys. I would hesitate to say-for the comparison would for obvious reasons be unfortunate that it would be more honoured in the breach than the observance. But I do not hesitate to say that it should be abolished at once and for ever. And I think no one who has ever Held Down will disagree with

me.

Another service which used to annoy me much at that time was that required from our young hands at dinner. The Lower Servitors, as they were called, no longer, I believe, exist in the economy of College. The Upper Servitor, who combined the offices of Præpostor and general superintendent of the dining-hall, still plays his part, but his colleagues now, I am told, eat their meals among their comrades in peace. But in my time two of us, week by week about, if my memory be correct, used to wait upon our lords and mas

ters of the Sixth Form at their dinner, to pour out their beer, to hand the vegetables and the glittering canisters with bread, to hold up the long sleeves of their cumbrous stuff gowns as they carved, in short to perform whatever menial offices were required from us while the Olympians sat beside their nectar, which was poured out of heavy tin cans, and, if the thirsty Olympian was exacting, poured maybe many times till the proper head of froth was attained. Afterwards we dined with our upper colleague, and I must in justice say that we dined none the worse. Perhaps my youthful sensibilities were too delicate; perhaps I was not really so squeamish at the time as my memory represents me to have been. After all we were only rendering the service ordained by the laws of chivalry on all young lads of gentle blood who aspired to knighthood.

The Captain marked his altered look,
And gave a squire the sign;
A mighty wassail-bowl he took,

And crowned it high with wine.

Still this waiting at dinner was, or at least seems now to me to have been quite distinct from those services a Fag was expected to pay to his Master, against which I never felt inclined to rebel. To call him on a cold dark winter's morning and fetch his hot water from the kitchen, entailing a visit into the outer air which bit our thinly-clad limbs pretty shrewdly, went no doubt sometimes against the grain of young inclinations; and to be sent to some shop uptown when one wanted to do something else on one's own account was of course not always pleasing. But for the rest, I never grudged Fagging. Indeed the preparation of breakfast and tea rather interested me. My affections, if not my talents, ever had a leaning kitchenwards; and, if I may say so without vanity, I was reckoned to broil a mushroom, fry a sausage, poach an egg, and make toast better than most of our young cooks; nor was I unversed in the mysteries of spicing beer.

But why-excuse me, but-their hinder quarters

Why are they stuck so oddly up in the air?

Is Hanging still practised, I wonder? There is a barbarous sound about the word, but the sound was the worst part of it. On the eve of the great football-match aforesaid, it was the custom among the Collegers to sling a boy by his gown from the iron gratings in the floor between the two passages, and thus suspended horizontally he was set twirling like a joint of meat before a fire, while the rest assailed, with their hands only, that portion of his person which his attitude left best exposed to their attacks. The boy might kick out with his legs as vigorously as he pleased, and was held free from any damage thus inflicted on his assailants, who were strictly prohibited from using any weapon but their open palms. How the custom originated, or when, I have never heard. But rough as it undoubtedly was, no harm ever came from it within my recollection, nor have I ever heard of any. No boy who very strongly protested against being hanged, or was considered unfit for it by ill-health or general feebleness, was forced to submit to it, nor was any one kept up for more than a minute or two. not, I think, so brutal or so dangerous a custom as tossing in a blanket, and certainly not nearly so alarming to the victim. I do not remember that the attitude suggested any Socratic thoughts to the suspended one. The Clouds of Aristophanes was not a familiar book to the Lower Forms. But a stranger might certainly have

It was

One old custom I know has gone, and over this we laid our three heads together not more in sorrow than in anger, borrowing the fat knight's wail: "Banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins, but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff-banish plump Jack, and banish all the world." Banish Holders-Down, banish Servitors, banish Hanging—but why should Bever go? Bever, it should be explained, was a light collation of bread, butter, cheese, and beer, which was spread in the College hall on half-holidays during the summer term. The boys might come and go, or stay away altogether, as they pleased. It really offered no opportunities for excess, afforded a light and salutary refreshment in the midsummer heats, and also enabled the upper Collegers to show a not ungrateful hospitality to their Oppidan friends. For three hundred years or more has the generous custom flourished, and never harm came from it that I could read or hear of. They tell me that it has been abolished for the sake of economy; but surely the College has not grown so poor that it can no longer afford this simple dole out of its stores. Bread, butter, and beer, with water for those who wished it; that was all; the cheese was our ownevery Colleger in Doctor's Division presented the two upper messes with a Stilton cheese on his departure; and if dainty palates craved the titillation of a radish or a bunch of watercresses they could be gratified, at their own charges, as I think, but even if the College supplied these harmless, if superfluous, delicacies, it can have laid no heavy tax upon their revenues. We owe a certain reverence to old customs however useless so long as they are harmless. "It can be no false or foolish sentiment," wrote an

Etonian in these pages some years ago, "which prays those whose high privilege it is now and may hereafter be to sway the destinies of this great school so far to keep her beauty undimmed and her memories green as the inevitable shocks of time and man's needs will suffer." The destruction of inoffensive Bever seems surely one of those needless acts of meddling, those removals of antique landmarks in which our busy irreverent age is so prolific.

And yet, I do not know; I do not like to turn from these old memories with any feeling of bitterness against those who sit in the high places of the fair and stately shrine which has evoked them, and who, after all, must know her needs better than I can. And I remember what Will Waterproof has said:

I hold it good, good things should pass :
With Time I will not quarrel :
It is but yonder empty glass

That makes me maudlin-moral.

Perhaps it is but the thought of many an emptied glass never to be filled again at Bever that has made me maudlin, if not moral.

OF DESKS AND WRITING.

There seem to be three writingdesks about the world each laying claim to be the one in which Walter Scott discovered the lost manuscript of the first seven chapters of Waverley. The one belonging to Mr. John Murray, Jun., has certainly the best pedigree. It was given by Miss Anne Scott, on her father's death, to the widow of his friend Terry, the actor. Mrs. Terry left it to her brother James Nasmyth, and from him it came to its present owner. Mr. Murray has told us (in The Athenæum of January 3rd) that Nasmyth once showed him the very partition in which the precious leaves had been found.

concerning the subsequent history and present whereabouts of which I am not clear. Finally there is a third desk said, according to another writer to the Athenæum, to be shown at Abbotsford as the genuine original. Concerning this, I can only say that I have been three times to Abbotsford (in the character of a pilgrim only) and was never shown any such desk, though on two of my visits, being fortunately almost alone, I was able to ask as many questions as I pleased of my most intelligent and courteous guide. In Sir Walter's study, the little den off the big library in which his work was always done till in his last years he moved from the summer heats into the larger and cooler room, two desks are shown. There is the mahogany table of the knee-hole pattern, but rather small according to our liberal modern notions, which opens at the top disclosing the necessary apparatus beneath, and on this stands a little writing-desk of the ordinary schoolboy's pattern made from the wood of one of the wrecked galleons of the Neither of these Spanish Armada. was ever named in my hearing as the repository of the missing treasure.

But was it in a desk at all that the great discovery was made? What does Scott himself say? In the general preface to the Magnum Opus, as he used laughingly to call the collected edition of the Novels made in 1829-33, he tells us that the manuscript was found when searching for some fishing-tackle in the drawers of an old writing-desk in which he used to keep such things, and which on his first coming to Abbotsford had been stowed away in a lumber-garret and entirely forgotten. But in a letter written to Morritt of Rokeby on July 9th, 1814, when the novel was just off his hands, he talks of finding the manuscript as he was rummaging the drawers of an old cabinet. Now a cabinet is a much likelier receptacle both for fishing tackle and manuscripts than an ordinary writing-desk, in which, even of the older and roomier