Now, though I have told you that the Rugby game is different from the foot-ball usually played, I shall not attempt to describe that difference. It would be more than useless, when Tom Brown, who knew the game so well, has already given his enthusiastic and glowing account of a great schoolhouse match. He has made Rugby classic ground in the annals of foot-ball. And still to be seen there are the "beautiful line of elms," and "the island in the farthest corner," and the "gigantic gallows," and the three trees which are such a " tremendous place when the ball hangs there," as East said to his new friend Tom. You remember, too, how,

and last year a fellow had his leg broken!"

their white trousers come trooping out to the

play-ground for "punt-about," or practice-kicking; how, after "calling-over," at three o'clock, there is heard the cry "To the goals!" and how, the next minute, all fall to with good-will. "And then follows rush upon rush and scrimmage upon scrimmage, the ball now driven through into the school-house quarters, and now into the schoolgoal." And any boy, who, after reading all that eloquent description, can not understand what the game is like, will not be helped by any words of mine. The only thing for him to do is, to go to Rugby on a Saturday afternoon and see a match for himself.

The principal matches of the year are, those between the sixth form and the whole school, and that between the "Old Rugs" and the "Present," when old Rugbeians, some grayhaired men, go to Rugby to meet their young successors in the game they have not ceased to love. The next most important amusement-or

shall I say work? -is hare-and-hounds. Every boy is obliged to go on these runs just as he is obliged to play foot-ball, unless, of course, his physician has forbidden him to take this exercise. There are what are called "house" runs and "Big Side" runs, or those in which the whole school is represented. In the former, the smaller boys are helped by the older, so that they have an easy enough time; but on the latter, "every man for himself" is the rule of the day. The ambitious little fellows who on these occasions think they can keep up with the older and bigger runners, are almost certain to share the fate of Tom Brown and East and the Tadpole. And Tom's experience is, I think, that of every Rugbeian. The runs are necessarily made every year over the same ground, and in whichever direction the boys go, they must cross plowed fields or green meadows, with sheep scattering to every VOL. XIII.-8.

side; they must leap over hedges and brooks, mount little hills and jump ditches. And fortunate they are indeed, if the sun shines and the grass is dry and the roads hard; for, in rainy England, in the winter and the early spring, the chances are that rain or fog will add to the trials of a run. These are

It is hard work, of course. Tiresome as the runs still are, the boys find real pleasure and satisfaction in them. There is, for example, all the pride of coming in first, of gaining a reputa

me it always suggests the famous race around Barnum's circus ring, which comes off at the end of the performance, when hurdles to be jumped and bags to be crept through and high fences to be climbed are put in the way of the runners. In the steeple-chase at Rugby, the course lics over the deepest places in brooks and the roughest bits in hedges, and he who wins the race must be not only a good jumper, but must have great powers of endurance. He must not mind soaked clothes and scratched legs, and he must be able to put up with great cold. For as the race is usually run in March, not even the exercise can take away the chill of a thorough ducking in the brook.

Racquet

not take as much interest in cricket as in football. Only those need play who like it, so that the number of cricketers is not always very large, as there are many other ways of finding amusement during the summer term. and fives-courts have their attractions. And then there are "botanical" and "geological," and "entomological" and "archæological" societies, the members of which make them an excuse for lovely long rambles, supposed to be in pursuit of flowers, or butterflies, or fossils, or old churches. Then there are bicycles to be ridden, or walks to be taken through beautiful country, and between sweet hedge-rows, with perhaps the spires of Cov

entry or the towers of Warwick Castle rising in the distance; there are strolls by the "peonied and lilied brim" of the Avon, Shakespeare's river; and there is excellent swimming in the fine new bath in school close, or else in a shady secluded pool of the little river, where, however, there is always danger of its being interrupted by the present "Velveteens" - (you remember how the old one caught Tom Brown at his swimming). And there, too, is Rugby town itself to be explored, though this last amusement, I must add, is not very exciting. A little stir and bustle there is in it once in a while, however, for it holds no less than fourteen cattle fairs during the year, and any young Rugbeian who has a taste for live stock has a good chance to develop it. Besides these pleasures, there are the Library and the Museum, the Gymnasium and the Workshops to be visited. The only limit to the independence of summer half-holidays is the "calling-over" at five.

Do you remember how East, the old boy of six months' standing, made Tom Brown buy a new hat as soon as he arrived at Rugby, so the boys would not make fun of him? Well, Rugbeians

scarlet coats. But now they are only required to appear in dark suits of clothes, tall hats on dress occasions-for all English boys begin to wear tall hats as soon as they leave off skirts - and black and white straw hats at other times. For a boy's first three terms, the ribbon around this hat must be black; after that it can be of whatever color the wearer prefers. These little details, I can assure you, are quite as important in the eyes of Rugbeians as the division of the school into "forms." It is the same with the house colors for foot-ball. A boy would think it as great an offense to wear the colors of any other house than his own as to take his place in a form to which he did not belong.

Another very important custom in which newcomers have to be instructed is that of fagging. They are purposely allowed a fortnight's grace that they may carefully study the duties exacted of them. It is with fagging as with foot-ball and hareand-hounds. Its greatest days are past. Think of a boy having to warm three or four beds on a cold night by lying in them until the heat of his body had destroyed their chill, and then having to rise at four o'clock in the morning to run

tors of the Four-in-hand Club, and compelled to make flower-beds for the same mighty beings, having halfa pewter spoon and a whole fork for his only garden tools, and the flowers to be supplied by fair means or foul! Yet these were a few of the services expected of fags in the days when "there were giants in the land," as a Rugby song says. Now they are treated with much more leniency. Only the sixth-form boys are allowed to have fags. The younger boys must wait on them at breakfast, tea, and supper, run their errands to the nearest pastry-cook

shops, clean out their studies,

attend to their wants in

the dormitories, and

sometimes "field"

for them at

cricket. As

boys must run, the last to arrive having to do the work. It is but for a short time, fortunately, that fagging is really a serious and perhaps tiresome duty. For the rule is that during a boy's first term, he must run at the first call; during his second, he need only answer the second, and so on; so that at the end of his second school year he has comparatively little to do as a fag.

Of course, I have not been able to say all that there is to be said about Rugby. A Rugbeian, indeed, would declare my sketch very imperfect. I have not even referred to the Debating and Shakespeare Societies, nor to the school magazine; I have not described the great day in June when the sixth-form heroes of learning act Latin and Greek plays and the prizemen recite their compositions; nor the school concerts, nor the March Athletic Sports, nor the singing nights. Indeed, if I were to write about all those things, I should fill a volume. And so I have simply tried to give to my young readers, both American and English,

in several other public schools, when the sixthform boy or præpostor wants anything, he calls out "F-a-a-g!" in answer to which call all the fagging

a general idea of Rugby, which all Rugbeians will tell you, in the well-known words of old Brooke, is the "best school in England!"