Date, some time in the month of June, 1741.
The boys are of all ages, from five years upwards, and most of them are
sons of military and naval officers resident in the neighbourhood. One of
them, a sturdy little urchin of seven years, is a son of the Treasurer of
the great Marine Hospital down by the river's bank. He is destined by his
father for the legal profession, but has already begun to shew his contempt
for the law by breaking His Majesty's peace several times in the course of
every week. He has been at school only a few months, and hitherto he has
not displayed much aptitude for his lessons; but he has distinguished
himself in numberless hand-to-hand engagements with his fellow-scholars,
and has gained the reputation of being, for a youngster of his inches,
tremendously heavy about the fist. On this particular evening the school
has been dismissed barely five minutes before the pugnacious little rascal
contrives to get into an altercation with a lad several years his senior.
As to the precise nature, of the _casus belli_, history and tradition are
alike silent.
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