I used to dread these walks together, much as I loved him, and I was so nervous I never ceased to answer unsatisfactorily; so my father, over-looking the possibility of my lack of interest in his observations, and the fact that life was a spectacle to me, for what I saw interested me far more than what I heard, decided I needed the rousing influence of school life, and after a little preparation, sent me to Chase's School at Salt Hill.
Salt Hill was so called from the ceremony of collecting salt in very ancient days by monks as a toll; and in later times by the Eton boys, who collected not "salt"--but money, to form a purse for the captain of the school on commencing his University studies at King's College, Cambridge. Soon after sunrise on the morning of "Montem," as it was called, the Eton boys, dressed in a variety of quaint or amusing costumes, started from the college to extort contributions from all they came across. "They roved as far as Staines Bridge, Hounslow, and Maidenhead, and when 'salt' or money had been collected, the contributors would be presented with a ticket inscribed with the words, '_Nos pro lege_,' which he would fix in his hat, or in some conspicuous part of his dress, and thus secure exemption from all future calls upon his good nature and his purse."
"Montem" is now a matter of history, and was discontinued in 1846, when the Queen turned a deaf ear to her "faithful subjects'" petition for its survival.
Amongst my school friends at Salt Hill, Wentworth Hope-Johnstone stands out as an attractive figure, as does that of Mark Wood (now Colonel Lockwood, M.P.). The former became in later life one of the first gentlemen riders of the day. At school he was always upon a horse if he could get one, and he would arrange plays and battle pieces in which we, his schoolfellows, were relegated to the inferior position of the army, while he was _aide-de-camp_, or figured as the equestrian hero performing marvellous feats of horsemanship. He became a steeple-chase rider, and coming to my studio many years after, I remember him telling me with the greatest satisfaction that he had never yet had an accident--ominously enough, for within the week he fell from his horse and sustained severe injuries.