He fled from the school, and it was discovered upon inquiry that
he had fled from his home also.
I never expected to see him again; yet it is one of the two
or three odd coincidences of my life that I did see him.
At some public sports or recreation ground I saw a group of
rather objectless youths, one of whom was wearing the dashing
uniform of a private in the Lancers. Inside that uniform was
the tall figure, shy face, and dark, stiff hair of Simmons.
He had gone to the one place where every one is dressed alike--
a regiment. I know nothing more; perhaps he was killed in Africa.
But when England was full of flags and false triumphs, when everybody
was talking manly trash about the whelps of the lion and the brave
boys in red, I often heard a voice echoing in the under-caverns
of my memory, "Shut up... O, shut up ... O, I say, shut it."
Cheese
My forthcoming work in five volumes, "The Neglect of Cheese in
European Literature" is a work of such unprecedented and laborious
detail that it is doubtful if I shall live to finish it.
Some overflowings from such a fountain of information may therefore
be permitted to springle these pages. I cannot yet wholly explain
the neglect to which I refer. Poets have been mysteriously
silent on the subject of cheese. Virgil, if I remember right,
refers to it several times, but with too much Roman restraint.
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