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Latin elegiacs in particular, posted himself at the window of the sick-room (which, as I mentioned before, was above the poultry yard), let down scientific nooses, thrown with practised skill, not like the lassos of North American Indians over the necks of buffaloes and wild horses, but under the feet of ducks and fowls. Into these nooses, lying curled up like "whip-snakes" on the grass, small pieces of bread were cautiously thrown. The greedy poultry incontinently rushed into the snare, and with a dexterous jerk were hoisted up fluttering and screaming into the sick-room, whence they were hurled into an adjoining plantation, that they might descend to their haunts uninjured.

This sport went on for some days uninterrupted, when some of the more thoughtless youngsters afflicted with grammar-phobia, joined the party, now reduced by the absence of the fisherman, who was attracted back to health and lessons by a muddy wet day: the very thing for the sport he was devoted to. The new "piscatores," wanting in the skill which had rendered lasso-throwing so amusing, successful, and harmless a diversion, let

down hooks baited with buttered toast, and drew up every fowl and duck hungry enough to gorge the bait, till the room resembled the shop of a poultry fancier, rather than the infirmary of a public school. A monitor, entering mal-apropos, discovered half-a-dozen ducks lying on the sofa, with fish-tackle depending from their beaks, and several fowls strutting about the room with an air of great satisfaction, while "Paterfamilias" (not the one who writes to the Times about the price of coals, but he of the poultry-yard, a venerable barn-door cock,) was being slowly hoisted up, in a state of furious remonstrance, to complete the felicity of his feathered family.

This occurred during the "moral half-year," mentioned a few chapters back; and, as cruelty to animals must be put down (even at the expense of cruelty to boys), the sick-room had three patients during the next ten days, suffering severely from a painful affection of the back, the reality of which was testified by unmistakeable indications; while our fisherman only escaped a more severe licking by demonstrating that his plan was peculiarly satisfactory to the old cock, inas

much as it had fallen into the snare eight or ten

times running.

Such were our illnesses, and such our remedies,

in the sick-room of our house at Harby.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE PARTING BREAKFAST.

"This night I hold an old accustomed feast,
Whereto I have invited many a guest,

Such as I love; and you among the store

One more, most welcome makes my number more."
SHAKSPEARE.

It was "an old accustomed " rule, that on leaving Harby a "feast" should be "held," to which all the fellows, "such as we love," should be invited; and, as my greatest friend was leaving at the end of the half which was to terminate my career at Harby, we decided to join our purses, and assemble our friends at such a parting breakfast as Harby had never before witnessed.

It was a summer evening, such as existed years ago, before summer had finally decided that England was no place for her-for I write in the dog

days, yet a fire burns briskly and with a wintry glow in the grate, while the new number of Punch on my writing-table facetiously announces that "the hot weather has been postponed, like many other good things, in consequence of the war." But I remember that during the last summer of my boyish days, no garment, not even white trowsers and white waistcoat, could keep us cool enough. My friend and I strolled out together, for the last time as Harbeans, to visit our old haunts, and to smoke a quiet cigar under the grateful shade of some well-known trees. Examinations being over, we felt privileged now, on our last walk, to break a rule which, for the last year or two, we had religiously observed.

A melancholy feeling pervaded us both, and we stopped almost every moment, with a sentimentalism not expected from schoolboys, to point out some view, often before unheeded, or some ivycovered farm-house now seen for the last time.

"How happy I have been here, to be sure!" exclaimed my friend. "I feel sorry, and as if I could give way to boyish tears, when I think I am to leave."

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