Who shot the Dog? A shot! a yell! silence! Such, as soon as I could collect myself sufficiently to form an idea at all, were my midnight sensations as I sat up in my bed, with my chin on my knees, my hair on end, my body bedewed with cold perspiration, and my limbs trembling from the tips of my fingers to the points of my toes. I had been peacefully dreaming—something about an automatic machine into... more...

Dry-Rot. Bolsover College was in a bad temper. It often was; for as a rule it had little else to do; and what it had, was usually a less congenial occupation. Bolsover, in fact, was a school which sadly needed two trifling reforms before it could be expected to do much good in the world. One was, that all its masters should be dismissed; the other was, that all its boys should be expelled. When these... more...

Twice Accepted. The reader is requested kindly to glance through the following batch of letters, which, oddly enough, are all dated September 9th, 18—: Number 1.—William Grover, M.A., Grandcourt School, to Mark Railsford, M.A., Lucerne. “Grandcourt, September 9th. “Dear Railsford,—I suppose this will catch you at Lucerne, on your way back to England. I was sorry to hear you had been seedy... more...

Preface. The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic’s is a story of public-school life, and was written for the Boy’s Own Paper, in the Fourth Volume of which it appeared. The numbers containing it are now either entirely out of print or difficult to obtain; and many and urgent have been the requests—from boys themselves, as well as from parents, head masters, and others—for its re-issue as a book. Of the... more...

My First Football Match. It was a proud moment in my existence when Wright, captain of our football club, came up to me in school one Friday and said, “Adams, your name is down to play in the match against Craven to-morrow.” I could have knighted him on the spot. To be one of the picked “fifteen,” whose glory it was to fight the battles of their school in the Great Close, had been the leading... more...