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My school-days were hardly over when my uncle and guardian, M. Brutus Mouillard, solicitor, of Bourges, packed me off to Paris to go through my law course. I took three years over it: At the end of that time, just eighteen months ago, I became a licentiate, and "in the said capacity" as my uncle would say took an oath that transformed me into a probationary barrister.
We roamed the neighbourhood talking old school-days over, visiting houses, hunting and dancing, declaring every day we would write for Heriot to join us, instead of which we wrote a valentine to Julia Rippenger, and despatched a companion one composed in a very different spirit to her father.
"With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She remembered the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns.
As this learned and estimable man has, within the last few weeks, left a void in the world which will not be easily filled up, I feel that it would be unjust to my readers not to give, in his own words, the particulars of Sheridan's school-days, with which he had the kindness to favor me, and to which his name gives an authenticity and interest too valuable on such a subject to be withheld: "Hatton, August 3, 1818.
I wonder why," she continued more seriously, "we did take examinations, and lessons, too, so weightily. Children don't in these days. The school-days of the week are so full of holiday spirit for them that, actually, Saturday is not much of gala day. Think of what Saturday was to us! What glorious times we had! Why, Saturday was Saturday, to us! Do you remember the things we did?
In this regard, also, it might be said that the young graduate, following a habit become almost second nature with him in his school-days, must keep a note-book covering his activities throughout each working-day, a book wherein he will jot down everything of value to him which comes up in the day's work.
Four years at one school give opportunities which are illimitable, but the present writer knew neither of them in the bread-and-butter period, and was properly reproved by the one and snubbed by the other when, in the supposed superiority of his years and co-extensive views on the frangibility of feminine friendship, he had sought to raise the veil of the past and peer into the archives of those school-days.
The love for music, which he had shown in school-days, he continued to keep up, and indulged in it merrily with his fellow-students. He had a high-pitched voice, not strong, but audible at a distance. Besides singing, he learned also to play the lute, and this without a master, and he employed his time in this way when laid up once by an accident to his leg.
He felt what a reproof lay in the remark of the child; he looked ashamed and kissed the little one. All this wounded me; but I had, since my school-days, become somewhat timid, and that caused me to take it all quietly: I was morbidly sensitive, and I was good-natured to a fault. Everybody knew it, and some were on that account almost cruel to me.
I cried, seizing him fiercely, a nameless suspicion getting possession of me. "Why don't you answer?" The spell was broken. He turned to me nonchalantly, as he used to face accusers in the school-days of long ago, and spoke almost gently, with downcast eyes, and a quiet, deprecating smile. "You know, Rufus," he answered, using the schoolboy name. "We should have told you before.
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