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proceeding, far from breeding resentment, would be treated as an excellent joke. A group sped past me; I caught a scrap of their conversation. So I told him I wouldn't have any of his beastly cheek. These small boys ought to be jolly well spanked." The speaker was not large, but he was evidently larger than some other boy, and that other boy had cheeked him. There was a familiar sound about the words, and something in me seemed to acknowledge that once in the long ago I might possibly have used them myself. No doubt twenty-two years are grande mortalis ævi spatium; they bring their hateful and inevitable changes, and the accursed tailor may, perhaps, have spoken the truth when he hinted, a few weeks ago, that he thought he would have to allow an inch or so more round the waist.

OUTSIDE the gate, with a table in front of him, sat an old gentleman at the receipt of custom. "Admission, Sir? Sixpence; programme, threepence. Thank you, Sir." Heavens! It was my old friend Mr. ROGERS, the hatter, from the High Street, whose tall form and brilliant auburn beard had been my boyish admiration. But now the snows of twenty-two years lay thick upon the auburn though his voice was still hearty. It's a long time since we met, Mr. ROGERS," I ventured to say. "Yes, Sir, time will keep going; we're both getting a bit older than we were," and upon this somewhat painful aphorism I passed into the field. A grave, but kindlylooking gentleman came towards me, leading by the hand a rosycheeked little fellow of ten or eleven. He looked at me in a scrutinising way and paused as if intending to address me. Evidently he knew me; but where had we met? The face of the little boy seemed familiar enough yes, of course, I knew the little boy; it was HARRY ROSS: we were in the same form, we got flogged on the same day, we learnt dancing together in the holidays, he swore he would marry my sister, in fact, wrote the vow down on a piece of paper and sealed it with black sealing-wax, "I sware that when I grow up and have one hundred pounds a year of my own I will mary your sister ALICE: signed and seeled, HARRY ROSS." I was about to shake him warmly by the hand and congratulate him on looking younger than ever when I woke with a start from my dream and realised that this was HARRY Ross's son, and that the grave but kindly parent was indeed my old friend HARRY Ross.

WE walked about the field together and managed to knit many old memories as we walked. In the pavilion a long table groaned under a gorgeous array of prizes. Here were clocks, dressing-bags. bats, cups, toast-racks, and even (with a pleasing anticipation of coming years of freedom) silver cigarette-cases-the trophies of the victors in the games then proceeding.

"My dear HARRY," I said, "do you remember that race in the hundred yards?" "I remember I beat you." "Yes, that's just it; you did beat me, but if I hadn't had the cramp"Cramp be blowed; I always could run a hundred yards faster than you." "You couldn't." "I could. I'll run you now."

But at this proposal the younger HARRY was taken with so violent a fit of laughter, that we went no further with it. Poor little boy! of course he couldn't realise how young we both felt at an age which to him, no doubt, seemed of an unattainable antiquity. Still a look at the pavilion wall might have justified him, for on the board of honour there the names of more than twenty School Elevens were painted after the Eleven that contained his father's name and mine.

Ar Easter time as at Christmas and towards the end of July there are feast-days and revellings and high solemn occasions at the various schools in which the youth of England faithfully learns the ingenuous arts which, according to Colonel NEWCOME, emollunt mores nec sinuisse feros. Easter is the season specially set apart in the school calendar for the holding of athletic sports, and from far and near streams of pleased and prosperous parents flow towards the IN the field the sports proceeded merrily. Long boys flung themschool cricket-field to behold the efforts of their sons struggling for selves into contortions over the high jump, short boys toppled in supremacy with the cricket-ball, over the hurdles, in the jumps, and heaps over hurdles, panting boys wore down opposition, and raced in the various other competitions appointed for the testing of swift- gallantly home in the mile; and in the School Handicap countless ness, strength, and endurance. Thither, too, come the old boys, little boys, dotted about the grass like stars, awaited the firing of some but lately released from the school fetters, others grey-headed the pistol, and then sprang forward for the race. Need I say and portly, to applaud the prowess of their young successors and to that all my sympathies went with the diminutive limit-boy. He spend an hour or two in converse with old friends. Pleasant struggled gallantly, but, alas! he was overborne at last by a gatherings are these of men, parted by time and circumstance and sturdier and bigger rival, and was forced to subside into the the cares of life, who thus for a brief space renew their happy youth, ruck. Finally came the glorious presentation of the prizes. How fight the old fights over again, and tremble once more as they repeat those boys cheered and shouted as the heroes of the day stepped the tale of their peccadilloes, and of the scrapes over which the modestly forward to receive their prizes, how they cheered familiar birch cast its baleful but undeterring shadow. (as though to show there was no trace of ill-feeling left in their minds) when the head-master stepped out and congratulated I BRACED myself the other day to climb the Northern height where the victors in a few hearty, well-chosen words. Nor did we omit my own school-days were passed. It was the day of the athletic to praise and cheer "the mens sana in corpore sano," words not unsports, and a sense of things dimly remembered, seen as through a known, indeed, at school athletics, but true and welcome notwithveil, came over me as I made my way down the lane and neared the standing. It was a right pleasant day, and we wound it up not old gate. Boys in caps and flannel shorts and stockings were hurry- ingloriously with a dinner in the evening, a dinner for the old boys ing along. They all seemed absurdly young, and there was about who had graced the occasion. Yet, as I stood on the station platform, them a boniness (if the word may be pardoned) and kind of angular awaiting the last train, I seemed to have had a few years added to falling short of full development which has, I suppose, always my tale. But another "old boy" who had come from Cambridge, felt marked the genus boy. Could it have been that I, too, once hurried no such qualms. He had enjoyed his dinner, and he was now singing as did these eager competitors; was I indeed so young, so bony, so up and down the platform. "Isn't it splendid, old fellow," he angular, so eager; I who, with sober air and measured step, was remarked to a friend, "why, I've been proctorised for much less pacing down the lane? Surely the boys of my time were older, than this at Cambridge." Oh, daring and tremendous old boy, the fuller in build, less prone to rush up behind other boys and slap melancholy time must come when even proctors will cease to be a them violently on their backs, with the certainty that the outrageous | terror.

THE ALLIANCE TRIPLE TRICYCLE.

G-rm-n Emp-r-r (inflating Italian wheel). "I THINK IT'LL RUN A LITTLE WHILE LONGER NOW ! "

Still, I shall venture to express the opinion that the pleasurability of such railway journeys is largely dependent upon the person who may be our travelling companion, and that some of the companies are not quite careful enough in the exclusion of undesirable fellow-passengers. In proof of which I now beg to submit an exemplary instance from personal experience.

I was recently the payer of a ceremonial visit to a friend of my boyhood, namely, BABOO CHUCKERBUTTY RAM, with whom, finding him at home in his lodging in a distant suburb, I did hold politely affectionate intercourse, for the space of two hours, and then departed, as I had come, by train, and the sole occupant of a second-class dual compartment divided by a low partition.

At the next station the adjoining compartment was suddenly invaded by a portly female of the matronly type, with a rubicund countenance and a bonnet in a dismantled and lopsided condition, who was bundled through the doorway by the impetuosity of a porter, and occupied a seat in immediate opposition to myself.

When the train resumed its motion, I observed that she was contemplating me with a beaming simper of indescribable suavity, and, though she was of an unornamental exterior and many years my superior, I constrained myself from motives of merest politeness to do some simpering in return, since only a churlish would grudge such an economical and inexpensive civility.