most miserably, through unchecked faults of temperament.  Some had declined with a sort of unambitious comfort, some had fallen into the trough of Toryism, and spent their time in holding fast to conventional and established things; one or two had flown like Icarus so near the sun that their waxen wings had failed them; and yet some of us had missed greatness by so little.  Was it to be always so?  Was it always to be a battle against hopeless odds?  Was defeat, earlier or later, inevitable?  The tamest defeat of all was to lapse smoothly into easy conventional ways, to adopt the standards of the world, and rake together contentedly and seriously the straws and dirt of the street.  If that was to be the destiny of most, why were we haunted in youth with the sight of that cloudy, gleaming crown within our reach, that sense of romance, that phantom of nobleness?  What was the significance of the aspirations that made the heart beat high on fresh sunlit mornings, the dim and beautiful hopes that came beckoning as we looked from our windows in a sunset hour, with the sky flushing red behind the old towers, the sense of illimitable power, of stainless honour, that came so bravely, when the organ bore the voices aloft in the lighted chapel at evensong?  Was all that not a real inspiration at all, but a mere accident of boyish vigour?  No, it was not a delusion—­that was life as it was meant to be lived, and the best victory was to keep that hope alive in the heart amid a hundred failures, a thousand cares.

As I walked thus full of fancies, the boys singly or in groups kept passing me, smiling, full of delighted excitement and chatter, all intent on themselves and their companions.  I heard scraps of their talk, inconsequent names, accompanied with downright praise or blame, unintelligible exploits, happy nonsense.  How odd it is to note that when we Anglo-Saxons are at our happiest and most cheerful, we expend so much of our steam in frank derision of each other!  Yet though I can hardly remember a single conversation of my school days, the thought of my friendships and alliances is all gilt with a sense of delightful eagerness.  Now that I am a writer of books, it matters even more how I say a thing than what I say.  But then it was the other way.  It was what we felt that mattered, and talk was but the sparkling outflow of trivial thought.  What heroes we made of sturdy, unemphatic boys, how we repeated each other’s jokes, what merciless critics we were of each other, how little allowance we made for weakness or oddity, how easily we condoned all faults in one who was good-humoured and strong!  How the little web of intrigue and gossip, of likes and dislikes, wove and unwove itself!  What hopeless Tories we were!  How we stood upon our rights and privileges!  I have few illusions as to the innocence or the justice or the generosity of boyhood; what boys really admire are grace and effectiveness and readiness.  And yet, looking back, one has