The life of Walter Pater Author:Thomas Wright Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XII JULY 1856 TO DECEMBER 1856. A SERIOUS ILLNESS. In the autumn of this year there occurred to Pater a serious misfortune. As we have seen, he ha... more »d never been popular at school, and one day. for 42. Pater ' ' , , , " injured in a a reason not known—perhaps for no par- scuffle, ticular reason—a number of the boys set (probably UpOn him near the Norman Staircase; and ' k ' in the midst of the scuffle a ruffianly boy, whose name may be omitted, gave Pater a dreadful kick, with the result that he had at once to be conveyed home, where he lay ill for many weeks. Mr. Wallace, having been informed of the name of the offender, not only took the matter up, but expressed his determination to expel him from the school. From Pater, however, on his sick bed came an earnest request that the boy might be forgiven, and the affair passed over. This magnanimity affected Mr. Wallace even to tears, and as late as two years after, when bidding Pater farewell, he told him that he had not forgotten "that beautiful act of Christian Charity ;"(1 while Pater's magnanimity became one of the prized traditions of the school. From the results of this lamentable occurrence, however, he never, it has been assumed, really recovered, and the peculiarity of his gait which marked him all the rest of his life is attributable to it. (l See Chapter XVII. In the meantime Speech Day had come round again, and Pater, McQueen and Dombrain, all in Form 5, obtained rewards for Classics. As Pater 43 The lay ill at Harbledown, Dombrain received school the prize for him; and Mr. Wallace, when Speech Day, handing the book, made the observation : jjj "I am sorry for his absence, still more leaves, sorry for the cause." McQueen won the Tenterden Prize for History, and he and Dombrain obtained various o...« less