then and there administering to him the first
sound and genuine thrashing that he had
received in his life. Unpopular from that
moment, as a beaten boy, who belonged to
no side and was rejected by all parties, young
Idle soon lost caste with his masters, as he
had previously lost caste with his school-
fellows. He had forfeited the comfortable
reputation ot being the one lazy member of
the youthful community whom it was quite
hopeless to punish. Never again did he
hear the head-master say reproachfully to
an industrious boy who had committed a
fault, " I might have expected this in Thomas
Idle, but it is inexcusable, sir, in you, who
know better." Never more, after winning
that fatal prize, did he escape the retributive
imposition, or the avenging birch. From
that time, the masters made him work, and
the boys would not let him play. From that
time his social position steadily declined, and
his life at school became a perpetual burden
to him.

So, again, with the second disaster. While
Thomas was lazy, he was a model of health.
His first attempt at active exertion and his
first suffering from severe illness are
connected together by the intimate relations of
cause and effect. Shortly after leaving
school, he accompanied a party of friends to
a cricket-field, in his natural and appropriate
character of spectator only. On the
ground it was discovered that the players fell
short of the required number, and facile
Thomas was persuaded to assist in making
up the complement. At a certain appointed
time, he was roused from peaceful slumber
in a dry ditch, and placed before three
wickets with a bat in his hand. Opposite to
him, behind three more wickets, stood one of
his bosom friends, filling the situation (as he
was informed) of bowler. No words can
describe Mr. Idle's horror and amazement,
when he saw this young man—on ordinary
occasions, the meekest and mildest of human
beings—suddenly contract his eyebrows,
compress his lips, assume the aspect of an
infuriated savage, run back a few steps, then run
forward, and, without the slightest previous
provocation, hurl a detestably hard ball with
all his might straight at Thomas's legs. Stimulated
to preternatural activity of body and
sharpness of eye by the instinct of self
preservation, Mr. Idle contrived, by jumping
deftly aside at the right moment, and by
using his bat (ridiculously narrow as it was
for the purpose) as a shield, to preserve his
life and limbs from the dastardly attack that
had been made on both, to leave the full
force of the deadly missile to strike his
wicket instead of his leg; and to end the
innings, so far as his side was concerned, by
being immediately bowled out. Grateful for
his escape he was about to return to the dry
ditch, when he was peremptorily stopped, and
told that the other side was "going in," and
that he was expected to "field." His
conception of the whole art and mystery of
"fielding," may be summed up in the three
words of serious advice which he privately
administered to himself on that trying
occasion—avoid the ball. Fortified by this sound
and salutary principle, he took his own course,
impervious alike to ridicule and abuse.
Whenever the ball came near him, he thought
of his shins, and got out of the way
immediately. " Catch it! " " Stop it! " " Pitch
it up! " were cries that passed by him like
the idle wind that he regarded not. He
ducked under it, he jumped over it, he
whisked himself away from it on either
side. Never once, throughout the whole
innings did he and the ball come
together on anything approaching to intimate
terms. The unnatural activity of body which
was necessarily called forth for the
accomplishment of this result threw Thomas Idle,
for the first time in his life, into a perspiration.
The perspiration, in consequence of his
want of practice in the management of that
particular result of bodily activity, was
suddenly checked; the inevitable chill succeeded;
and that, in its turn, was followed by a fever.
For the first time since his birth, Mr. Idle
found himself confined to his bed for many
weeks together, wasted and worn by a long
illness, of which his own disastrous muscular
exertion had been the sole first cause.

The third occasion on which Thomas found
reason to reproach himself bitterly for the
mistake of having attempted to be
industrious, was connected with his choice of a
calling in life. Having no interest in the
Church, he appropriately selected the next
best profession for a lazy man in England—
the Bar. Although the Benchers of the Inns
of Court have lately abandoned their good
old principles, and oblige their students to
make some show of studying, in Mr. Idle's
time no such innovation as this existed.
Young men who aspired to the honourable
title of barrister were, very properly, not
asked to learn anything of the law, but were
merely required to eat a certain number of
dinners at the table of their Hall, and to pay
a certain sum of money; and were called to
the Bar as soon as they could prove that they
had sufficiently complied with these
extremely sensible regulations. Never did
Thomas move more harmoniously in concert
with his elders and betters than when he was
qualifying himself for admission among the
barristers of his native country. Never did
he feel more deeply what real laziness was in
all the serene majesty of its nature, than on
the memorable day when he was called to
the bar, after having carefully abstained from
opening his law-books during his period of
probation, except to fall asleep over them. How
he could ever again have become industrious,
even for the shortest period, after that great
reward conferred upon his idleness, quite
passes his comprehension. The kind benchers
did everything they could to show him the