It was just after the Battle of Balaclava, and the heroism of the combatants on that hard-fought field was in everybody's mouth.

So the mischievous young imps divided themselves into two opposing camps--Britons and Russians.

The Russian division was just inside the door, behind ramparts formed of old folios and quartos taken from the bottom shelves and piled to the height of about four feet.
It was a wall of old fathers, fifteenth century chronicles, county histories, Chaucer, Lydgate, and such like.

Some few yards off were the Britishers, provided with heaps of small books as missiles, with which they kept up a skirmishing cannonade against the foe.

Imagine the tableau! Two elderly gentlemen enter hurriedly, paterfamilias receiving, quite unintentionally, the first edition of "Paradise Lost" in the pit of his stomach, his friend narrowly escaping a closer personal acquaintance with a quarto Hamlet than he had ever had before.