An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

20 AUTOBIOGRAPHY at King's College, taking as subjects Latin, Mathematics, and Arithmetic. I kept up these evening classes for several years, and found them of the utmost service to me. In two consecutive terms I got first in the Arithmetic and Book-keeping Classes, and received a good many certificates of merit in other subjects such as History and German. The determination to learn on the part of nearly all the students was probably accounted for by the fact that we paid for our tuition ourselves, and naturally wanted to get some– thing for our money. Among my fellow students were Clarke, afterwards Attorney-General, then a warehouseman's clerk; Professor Arber, murdered by a motor car in 1912 ; and Isaac Seaman, a very clever and able man, afterwards editor of Public Opinion, and still living. Later on when I had a little more leisure, I was one of the helpers at a very rough night school at Paradise Row, Chelsea,1 and still later after my marriage was manager of a Wandsworth Night School, see later. In September I went with my father to Winchester, Southampton, St. Cross Hospital, where I took a purple hair streak, Portsmouth, the'' Victory," Netle r Abbey, &c., and shortly after my return, the first symptoms of cacoethes currendi seized me, being then not 17, and I beat all my school contemporaries, chiefly at sprints. At the evening classes being renewed in October, I took English, History and Geography, Arithmetic and Mathemetics, as subjects, and went down, as far as I remember, from 6 to 9 p.m. four nights a week. During 186r, the athletic madness was still very strong in me. In January, I walked 15 miles fairly fast, doing the first 7 miles in 75 minutes in my clothes over a hilly road, and the next month, 3½ miles (King's College home) in 31 minutes. In February I had the satisfaction of again coming across a man called Veitch, who had always bullied me at school, and, having in the interim acquired a competent knowledge of sparring, inducing him to come home, put 1 It was held in au old Baptist Chapel, and some of the pupils having discovered there was an old bath below, put a little boy into it, replaced the cocoa nut matting and covered the spot up with forms. Puusfer, the paid master, and I luckily noticed the matting heaving up and rescued the victim, and then took drastic measures with tbe culprits. He afterwards got Orders and was a parson near Lynn.