He was much better at a drop- kick than he had been last year, and Railsford himself had said he was not as bad at his Latin verses as he had been.

Was not that improvement--self-improvement?
Then he was conscious of having distinctly improved in morals.

He had once or twice done his Caesar without a crib, and the aggregate of lines he had had to write for impositions had been several hundred less than the corresponding term of last year.
Thus the son gently reasoned with his parent, who replied that what he would like to see in his boy was an interest in some intellectual pursuits outside the mere school routine.

Why, now, did he not take up some standard book of history with which to occupy his spare time, or some great poem like the _Paradise Lost_, of which he might commit a few lines to memory every day, and so emulate his great-uncle, who used to be able to repeat the whole poem by heart?
Both Arthur and Dig had landed for the term with hampers more or less replete with indigestible mementoes of domestic affection.

Arthur had a Madeira cake and a rather fine lobster, besides a small box of figs, some chocolate creams, Brazil nuts, and (an enforced contribution from the cook) pudding-raisins.
Dig, whose means were not equal to his connections, produced, somewhat bashfully, a rather "high" cold chicken, some gingerbread, some pyretic saline, and a slab or two of home-made toffee.