This is worth living for--the whole sum of school-boy existence gathered up into one straining, struggling half-hour, a half-hour worth a year of common life.
The quarter to five has struck, and the play slackens for a minute before goal; but there is Crew, the artful dodger, driving the ball in behind our goal, on the island side, where our quarters are weakest.

Is there no one to meet him?
Yes; look at little East! The ball is just at equal distances between the two, and they rush together, the young man of seventeen and the boy of twelve, and kick it at the same moment.

Crew passes on without a stagger; East is hurled forward by the shock, and plunges on his shoulder, as if he would bury himself in the ground; but the ball rises straight into the air, and falls behind Crew's back, while the "bravoes" of the School-house attest the pluckiest charge of all that hard-fought day.

Warner picks East up lame and half stunned, and he hobbles back into goal, conscious of having played the man.
And now the last minutes are come, and the School gather for their last rush, every boy of the hundred and twenty who has a run left in him.
Reckless of the defence of their own goal, on they come across the level big-side ground, the ball well down amongst them, straight for our goal, like the column of the Old Guard up the slope at Waterloo.

All former charges have been child's play to this.