However, things taste well in one's
school-days.)
Leo Damer was one of those people who seem able to do everything just
a little better than his neighbours, without attaining overwhelming
superiority in any one line. The masters always complained that he did
not do as much in school as he might have done, and yet he stood well
with them. His conduct was of the highest. I may say here that,
knowing him intimately in boyhood and youth, I am able to assert that
his moral conduct was always "without reproach." His own freedom from
vice, and the tight hand he kept over me, who lived but to admire and
imitate him, were of such benefit to me in the manifold temptations of
school-life as I can never forget. His self-respect amounted to
self-esteem, his love for other people's good opinion to a failing, he
was refined to fastidiousness; but I think these characteristics
helped him towards the exceptional character he bore. A keen
sensitiveness to pain and discomfort, and considerable natural
indolence, further tended to keep him out of scrapes into which an
adventurous spirit led many more reckless boys. He had never been
flogged, and he said he never would be.
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