I am glad nothing could make me do Latin and Greek verses; I am glad
Skinner could never get any moral influence over me; I am glad I was idle
at school, and I am glad my father overtasked me as a boy--otherwise,
likely enough I should have acquiesced in the swindle, and might have
written as good a copy of Alcaics about the dogs of the monks of St
Bernard as my neighbours, and yet I don't know, for I remember there was
another boy, who sent in a Latin copy of some sort, but for his own
pleasure he wrote the following--
The dogs of the monks of St Bernard go
To pick little children out of the snow,
And around their necks is the cordial gin
Tied with a little bit of bob-bin.
I should like to have written that, and I did try, but I couldn't. I
didn't quite like the last line, and tried to mend it, but I couldn't."
I fancied I could see traces of bitterness against the instructors of his
youth in Ernest's manner, and said something to this effect.
"Oh, no," he replied, still laughing, "no more than St Anthony felt
towards the devils who had tempted him, when he met some of them casually
a hundred or a couple of hundred years afterwards.
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