Adventures among Books [96]
The anecdote is in Gillis's, "Recollections of Sir Walter Scott," p. 170. The vision of Lord Byron standing in the great hall of Abbotsford is described in the "Demonology and Witchcraft ." Scott alleges that it resolved itself into "great coats, shawls, and plaids"--a hallucination. But Lockhart remarks (" Life," ix. p. 141) that he did not care to have the circumstance discussed in general. The "stirs" in Abbotsford during the night when his architect, Bullock, died in London, are in Lockhart, v. pp. 309- 315. "The noise resembled half-a-dozen men hard at work putting up boards and furniture, and nothing can be more certain than that there was nobody on the premises at the time." The noise, unluckily, occurred twice, April 28 and 29, 1818, and Lockhart does not tell us on which of these two nights Mr. Bullock died. Such is the casualness of ghost story-tellers. Lockhart adds that the coincidence made a strong impression on Sir Walter's mind. He did not care to ascertain the point in his own mental constitution "where incredulity began to waver," according to his friend, Mr. J. L. Adolphus.
CHAPTER XVII: THE BOY
As a humble student of savage life, I have found it necessary to make researches into the manners and customs of boys. Boys are not what a vain people supposes. If you meet them in the holidays, you find them affable and full of kindness and good qualities. They will condescend to your weakness at lawn-tennis, they will aid you in your selection of fly-hooks, and, to be brief, will behave with much more than the civility of tame Zulus or Red Men on a missionary settlement. But boys at school and among themselves, left to the wild justice and traditional laws which many generations of boys have evolved, are entirely different beings. They resemble that Polynesian prince who had rejected the errors of polytheism for those of an extreme sect of Primitive Seceders. For weeks at a time this prince was known to be "steady," but every month or so he disappeared, and his subjects said he was "lying off." To adopt an American idiom, he "felt like brandy and water"; he also "felt like" wearing no clothes, and generally rejecting his new conceptions of duty and decency. In fact, he had a good bout of savagery, and then he returned to his tall hat, his varnished boots, his hymn-book, and his edifying principles. The life of small boys at school (before they get into long-tailed coats and the upper-fifth) is often a mere course of "lying-off"--of relapse into native savagery with its laws and customs.
If any one has so far forgotten his own boyhood as to think this description exaggerated, let him just fancy what our comfortable civilised life would be, if we could become boys in character and custom. Let us suppose that you are elected to a new club, of which most of the members are strangers to you. You enter the doors for the first time, when two older members, who have been gossiping in the hall, pounce upon you with the exclamation, "Hullo, here's a new fellow! You fellow, what's your name?" You reply, let us say, "Johnson." "I don't believe it, it's such a rum name. What's your father?" Perhaps you are constrained to answer "a Duke" or (more probably) "a solicitor." In the former case your friends bound up into the smoking-room, howling, "Here's a new fellow says his father is a Duke. Let's take the cheek out of him." And they "take it out" with umbrellas, slippers, and other surgical instruments. Or, in the latter case (your parent being a solicitor) they reply, "Then your father must be a beastly cad. All solicitors are sharks. MY father says so, and he knows. How many sisters have you?" The new member answers, "Four." "Any of them married?" "No." "How awfully awkward for you."
By this time, perhaps, luncheon is ready, or the evening papers come in, and you are released for a moment. You sneak up into the library, where you naturally expect to be entirely alone, and you settle on a sofa with a novel. But an old member bursts into the room, spies a new fellow, and
CHAPTER XVII: THE BOY
As a humble student of savage life, I have found it necessary to make researches into the manners and customs of boys. Boys are not what a vain people supposes. If you meet them in the holidays, you find them affable and full of kindness and good qualities. They will condescend to your weakness at lawn-tennis, they will aid you in your selection of fly-hooks, and, to be brief, will behave with much more than the civility of tame Zulus or Red Men on a missionary settlement. But boys at school and among themselves, left to the wild justice and traditional laws which many generations of boys have evolved, are entirely different beings. They resemble that Polynesian prince who had rejected the errors of polytheism for those of an extreme sect of Primitive Seceders. For weeks at a time this prince was known to be "steady," but every month or so he disappeared, and his subjects said he was "lying off." To adopt an American idiom, he "felt like brandy and water"; he also "felt like" wearing no clothes, and generally rejecting his new conceptions of duty and decency. In fact, he had a good bout of savagery, and then he returned to his tall hat, his varnished boots, his hymn-book, and his edifying principles. The life of small boys at school (before they get into long-tailed coats and the upper-fifth) is often a mere course of "lying-off"--of relapse into native savagery with its laws and customs.
If any one has so far forgotten his own boyhood as to think this description exaggerated, let him just fancy what our comfortable civilised life would be, if we could become boys in character and custom. Let us suppose that you are elected to a new club, of which most of the members are strangers to you. You enter the doors for the first time, when two older members, who have been gossiping in the hall, pounce upon you with the exclamation, "Hullo, here's a new fellow! You fellow, what's your name?" You reply, let us say, "Johnson." "I don't believe it, it's such a rum name. What's your father?" Perhaps you are constrained to answer "a Duke" or (more probably) "a solicitor." In the former case your friends bound up into the smoking-room, howling, "Here's a new fellow says his father is a Duke. Let's take the cheek out of him." And they "take it out" with umbrellas, slippers, and other surgical instruments. Or, in the latter case (your parent being a solicitor) they reply, "Then your father must be a beastly cad. All solicitors are sharks. MY father says so, and he knows. How many sisters have you?" The new member answers, "Four." "Any of them married?" "No." "How awfully awkward for you."
By this time, perhaps, luncheon is ready, or the evening papers come in, and you are released for a moment. You sneak up into the library, where you naturally expect to be entirely alone, and you settle on a sofa with a novel. But an old member bursts into the room, spies a new fellow, and