gave it perfectly. Grim, who had his ears glued to the exit door, vowed he
could almost hear the swell drop his eyeglass.

Sharpe stepped on to the stage amid the polite attentions of his natural
enemies. "Be a man, Sharpe." "Don't cry." "You'll see mamma soon." "Speak
up." "He did it all alone, remember." "No help." "Oh, dear no!"

"When on the bosom of the sleeping pool,
That's shaded o'er by trees in greenest dress,
Upon its breast of snow its gem of gold
The water lily swims--"

The juniors howled with dismay at this commencement, and Corker juniors
instantly began to keep time to Sharpe's delivery in the organ-grinder's
fashion. But Sharpe toiled remorselessly on. He compared Biffen's house to
a water lily growing in a muddy pond, and again as a Phoenix risen from
the ashes; and he gave us, with circumstantial details, every round of the
footer housers, their two eleven caps, and the Perry Exhibition, and
darkly hinted at Acton's exclusion from the eleven.

He wound up his awful farrago in one glorious burst of solemn fury--

"And even Fate girds on her sword, and her right arm she stiffens,
As thunders to the icy pole the glorious name of Biffen's."

When Sharpe finally made his bow, according to the invariable custom,
every junior except a Biffenite imitated with rare fidelity the mixed
sensations of channel passengers after a stormy passage.

Sharpe, cheered to the echo by the Biffenites on the front row, went