SCHOOL DAYS
it was the thing to have an old manuscript book descended from some departed hero in which they were all carefully written out.
The sixth-form boys had not yet appeared; so, to fill up the gap, an interesting and time-honored ceremony was gone through. Each new boy was placed on the table in turn and made to sing a solo, under the penalty of drinking a large mug of salt and water if he resisted or broke down. However, the new boys all sing like nightingales to-night, and the salt water is not in requisition; Tom, as his part, performing the old west-country song of The Leather Bottèl with considerable applause. And at the half-hour down come the sixth and fifth form boys, and take their places at the tables, which are filled up by the next biggest boys—the rest, for whom there is no room at the table, standing round outside.
The glasses and mugs are filled, and then the fugleman strikes up the old sea-song,
"A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
And a wind that follows fast," etc.,
which is the invariable first song in the School-house, and all the seventy voices join in, not mindful of harmony, but bent on noise, which they attain decidedly; but the general effect isn't bad. And then follow the British Grenadiers, Billy Taylor, The Siege of Seringapatam, Three Jolly Postboys, and other vociferous songs in rapid succession, including The Chesapeake and Shannon, a song lately introduced in honor of old Brooke; and when they come to the words,
"Brave Broke he waved his sword, crying, Now my lads, aboard,
And we'll stop their playing Yankee-doodle-dandy O!"
you expect the roof to come down. The sixth and fifth know that "brave Broke" of the Shannon was no sort of relation to our old Brooke. The fourth form are uncertain in their belief, but for
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