LIFE AT RUGBY.

Dr. Lyman Abbott in a recent article on Rugby, gives a description of life at this popular English school so well known to every reader of "Tom Brown's School Days." "The public school is divided into different 'houses.' The pupil enters a house just as at Oxford or Cambridge he enters a 'college.' He becomes a member of that house. At Rugby there are eight of these different houses, and about the same number at Eton. Each of these houses is under the charge of its own house master. He carries it on as a boarding-house, takes the fees and furnishes the table, and pockets the profits or the loss. It is always a profit, and generally a good one. Teaching is a much more remunerative business in England than in America. The master's salary will ordinarily range from $1200 or $1500 a year to $7000 or $8000. No one knows exactly what the income of a successful house or head master is, for he is paid not a salary by a board of trustees, but in fees and perquisites. But well-informed Englishmen credit the head master of Eton with an income of $15,000 a year, and probably it is not less in the case of the head master at Rugby."

One marked difference between the smaller schools of America and those of England is in the arrangements for study. In many American private schools a large room is set aside for a study room, where, at certain hours, all the students are required to gather for purposes of study. In England this is almost unknown. Even the practice of "chumming," so common in American colleges, is a rare one in England. "In Rugby there are dormitories in which the boys sleep, and sitting-rooms in which they gather for social life, but each boy has his room for study, usually without even a single room-mate. In Eton, at least in the 'college,' the study room and bed-room are all one, each boy having his own solitary apartment."

Another striking difference between the systems of the two countries is in the arrangements about meals. In England the student is thrown more upon his own resources. "His 'house' gives him a breakfast of tea and bread and butter; he markets for himself for what else he wants - eggs, marmalade, jam, potted meats. In school, as out of it, the American breakfast of fish, beefsteak, hot cakes, or what not, is unknown. The boys breakfast in small rooms, twenty or twenty-five together, each eating such breakfast as his means, his tastes, his skill in marketing, or the liberality of a wealthier friend may afford him. The school is divided into classes or 'forms.' The sixth-form boys breakfast in their own rooms, as they do afterwards when they enter the universities. . . . The boys of each house dine together in a common hall; no soup; roast beef or mutton, bread and dessert of 'sweets.' The school provides each boy with beer; wines are not allowed. There is a very simple tea at six, and supper of bread and cheese and, I believe, cold meat, if one wants it, before going to bed."

The services which we commonly expect of a janitor are rendered for seniors or sixth-form men at Rugby, by the boys in the lower forms. The first-form boy blacks his senior's shoes, runs his errands, prepares his breakfast and holds himself in readiness to do almost anything that his senior wishes. This is called "fagging." "The sixth-form boy may be a tailor's son, the first-form fag the son of a duke; school distinctions take precedence of all others." This custom of fagging is gradually dying out, however, much to the disgust of the conservative fathers who have been through it themselves.