Crabbe, the poet, whose Village Tales were the delight of a past generation, was sent to a boarding school whilst still so young that he had not even learnt to dress himself.

When he awoke in the morning after his first night away from home, he saw the other boys dressing, and was much disturbed. He whispered to his bedfellow (for all schoolboys slept at least two in a bed in those days), 'Master George, can you put on your shirt? for—for I'm afraid I cannot!'

This school, though only for small boys, seems to have been a very severe one, for Crabbe and his friends were punished for simply 'playing at soldiers.' He was condemned, with his friends, to be shut in a large dog-kennel, known by the terrible name of 'the Black Hole.' Little Crabbe was the first to be pushed in, and the rest were crowded in on top of him, till at last the kennel was so full of boys that they were all but suffocated. Crabbe in vain cried out that he could not breathe, but no notice was taken of him until, in despair, he bit the lad next to him violently in the hand.

'Crabbe is dying! Crabbe is dying!' roared the sufferer, and the sentinel outside at length opened the door, and allowed the boys to rush into the air.

Crabbe, when telling this story to his children in after years, always added, 'A minute more and I must have died!'

X.