were ignored by the seven clergymen who reaped fortunes by neglecting five hundred boys.  If more memories are wanted of those times, here are two; the planned famine on one occasion, when—­under monitorial inspiration—­all the juniors clamoured for “more, more,” seeing they had slabbed on the underside of the tables masses of bread and butter supposed to have been eaten-out; and on another, that lobsters, surreptitiously obtained from out-of-bounds by the big boys were sworn in the debris of their smaller claws to be pieces of sealing-wax! and nothing else:  at least a reckless young aristocrat declared that they were so,—­and the mean-spirited Andrew, fearful of giving offence in such high quarters, pretended to believe him.

Yet another trifle; for I find that such trivials are attractive to homeflock readers, by whose taste I feel the more public pulse, even as Rousseau did with his housekeeper.  We, that is Knighton and Ellis and I, used to return on Sunday night in my father’s carriage by the back way of Clerkenwell to Charterhouse in order to avoid the crowds of cattle; and I well remember that sometimes we would utilise apples and nuts from the dessert as missiles from our carriage window as we sped along.  Alas! on one occasion Knighton was skilful enough to smash a chemist’s blue bottle with an apple,—­and on another I am aware that an oil lamp in Carthusian Street succumbed to my only too-true cockshy:  “Et hoc meminisse dolendum.”

Another incident was amusing in its way.  Poor Mr. Irvine (who was going to be married) mended up a very much smashed greenhouse to greet his bride thereby with floral joy.  Unluckily, the boys preferred broken panes to whole ones, so nothing was easier than by flinging brickbats and even mugs over the laundry wall to revel in the sweet sound of smashed glass; moreover this would go to evidence the popular animosity against a wretched bridegroom.  Then, when he reappeared after some temporary absence before the wedding, it was after this ridiculous fashion.  There was a wooden staircase screened off one side of the long-room down which he would occasionally creep to listen at the door at bottom to the tattle of the boys about him.  He was heard creaking downstairs, and some active young fellow by a round-about byway managed to steal down behind and suddenly pushed him by the burst open door, spread-eagle fashion, into the laughing long-room!  The poor victim pretended it was an accident, “Ye see, Mr. Yates, I was coming down the stair, and me foot slipped.”  It seems that the luckless Andrew was coming, so he averred, expressly to expostulate with the boys, to throw himself on their generosity for a subscription towards his ruined greenhouse, and to ask Messrs.  “Punsonby,” Yates, & Co. to promote it.  This they promised to do, and did after an original fashion.  Several pounds worth of pence and half-pence were distributed through the house, so that when Andrew with his traitorous aides went round to collect monies,