The Ring O' Bells Etc

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886. Excerpt: ... DETAILS. I Once had a friend who was a dramatic author. I have generally remembered the proverb, 'A man is known by the company he keeps, ' because I once had to write it out five hundred times as a punishment for holding conversations over the playground wall of my school with a stable-boy who used to borrow Bell's Life for me from the village ale-house, and tell me all about the fights between the Birmingham Chicken and Jem Mace's novice. We were all very interested in prize-fighting in those days at my school; it was about the time that Sayers and Heenan had brought the noble art to the height of its popularity. One of our boys, the most religious boy in the school, always went up to his bedroom a quarter of an hour before the others, because he liked to read the lesson for the day and study devotional works by himself before the other boys came up and began bolster-matches and comic stories and conundrums. One night the head-master went up unexpectedly and found the lesson for that day a special edition of Bell's Life, containing a particularly lively account of a fight which had just come off in the Home Districts. The good little boy was never allowed an extra quarter of an hour to his devotions again. But I am rambling. I repeat that I have always borne in mind the necessity of being particular about the company I keep, and in allowing myself to be friendly with a dramatic author I fully calculated the dangers of the situation. A dramatic author, if he is successful, is a man any respectable person may be seen with without loss of dignity. An unsuccessful dramatic author is--well, for further particulars see the notices of the unsuccessful one's plays. The worst crime a man can perpetrate is to fail in anything which challenges public attention, and...