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Instead of preparing my lessons steadily, I now began to put off preparation till the last moment, and then galloped them off as best I could. Instead of writing my exercises carefully, I drew skeletons on the blotting-paper; instead of learning off my tenses, I read Robinson Crusoe under the desk, and trusted to my next-door neighbour to prompt me when my turn came.

For a time my broken resolutions did not effect any apparent change in my position in the classes or in the eyes of my masters. I was what Evans (the boy who lent me the “crib”) called lucky. I was called on to translate just the passages I happened to have got off, or was catechised on the declensions of my pet verb, and so kept up appearances.

But that sort of thing could not go on for ever, and one day my exposure took place.

I had dawdled away my time the evening previously with one thing and another, always intending to set to work, but never doing so. My books had lain open before me untouched, except when I took a fancy to inscribing my name some scores of times on the title-page of each; my dictionary remained shot and unheeded, except when I rounded the corners of the binding with my penknife. I had played draughts clandestinely with Evans part of the time, and part of the time I had lolled with my elbows on the desk, staring at the head of the fellow in front of me.

Bedtime came, and I had not looked at my work.

“I’ll wake early and cram it up,” thought I, as I turned in.

I did wake up, but though the book was under my pillow I let the half- hour before getting up slip away unused. At breakfast I made an effort to glance at the lesson, but the boy opposite was performing such wonderful tricks of balancing with his teaspoon and saucer and three bread-crusts, that I could not devote attention to anything else. The bell for classes rang ominously. I rushed to my place with Caesar in one hand and the “crib” in the other. I got flurried; I could not find the place, or, when I found the place in the Caesar, I lost it in the “crib.”

The master, to add to my misery, was cross, and began proceedings by ordering Evans to learn twenty lines for laughing in school-time. I glanced at the fellows round me. Some were taking a last peep at their books. Others, with bright and confident faces, waited quietly for the lesson to begin. No one that I could see was as badly off as I. Every one knew something. I knew nothing. Just at the last moment I found the place in the “crib” and in the Caesar at the same time, but scarcely had I done so when the awful voice of the master spoke:

“Stand up!” All dictionaries and notes had now to be put away; all except the Latin books.

I had contrived to get off the first two lines, and only hoped the master might pitch on me to begin. And he did pitch on me.

“Charles Smith,” I heard him say, and my heart jumped to my mouth, “stand forward and begin at `jamque Caesar.'”

“Please, sir, we begin at `His et aliis,'” I faltered.

“You begin where I tell you, sir,” sternly replied he.

A dead silence fell over the class, waiting for me to begin. I was in despair. Oh, if only I had not dawdled! I would give all my pocket- money for this term to know a line of that horrid Caesar.

“Come, sir, be quick,” said the master.

Then I fetched a sigh very like a sob, and began–

“Que, and–” I heard the master’s foot scrape ominously on the floor.