AT SUPPER.
By the time we reach the dining-room, with its expanse of polished floors and high column-supported ceiling, seventy or eighty boys are seated at long tables, which present an inviting appearance with their white enamelled cloths, platters piled high with bread, and rows of capacious bowls steaming with fragrant tea.
What a busy scene it is for the time! the bread mountains diminish like snow before the sun, the tea fountains vanish like rain on thirsty soil, and the young women attendants, in their neat dresses and aprons, pass to and fro continually with their renewing bread trays and flagons of tea and syrup.
The majority of the boys laugh and chatter like magpies, but here and there sits a silent little news merchant, whose mind, absorbed with visions of "extras," hurries him on to the wished-for future.
See, there they go, half a dozen of them, with quick steps and anxious faces; they will notify the watchmen that they must keep late hours, and pay the required trifle for retaining their locker keys beyond time. Up to midnight their shrill cries will ring through the gas-lighted thoroughfares of the great city, while many—or, indeed, most—of the young readers of this paper are dreaming happy dreams in bed.
It is now nearly eight o'clock, supper is over, and the boys disperse for the short evening left them before bed-time; for all must be within-doors at half past nine, or pay a fine.
THE GYMNASIUM.