Page:Two Sussex archaeologists, William Durrant Cooper and Mark Antony Lower.djvu/37

 glass; the schoolmaster apologised, promised punishment of the offenders, and offered to send in a glazier to repair the damage done. "No!" said the good-natured sufferer, "I will take that charge upon myself, and, by way of truce with your young scapegraces, I will send in a basket of pears annually, and they shall covenant to do my trees and windows no further harm!" The point of the story is, that when the pears were sent in, as agreed on, the ringleaders in the mischief claimed the greater share, on the ground that but for their pluck at the outset, the gift of fruit would never have been made!

Most dwellers in, and many sojourners at, Lewes, have witnessed, or heard of, the mad pranks of the self-styled "Bonfire Boys," who, on the Fifth of November every year, startle the quiet old town from its accustomed propriety, and, by their uproarious proceedings, put nervous wayfarers in fancied danger of their lives. Mr. Lower was much opposed to this "Saturnalia of the roughs" and, on one occasion, under the signature of "A Young Inhabitant," he issued a printed manifesto, very earnestly worded, deprecating the continuance of the irrational and mischievous custom; especially warning its perpetrators against the consequences of their reckless flinging about of squibs and other fiery missiles, and noting that, "in cases of fire happening on such occasions, the insurance companies are not responsible for the loss." The authorship of this broadside was soon bruited about, and the mob threatened to throw its writer into the river; but he prudently kept out of the mob's way, and to this day the Lewes Bonfire Boys, now recruited by reinforcements from the riff-raff of Brighton, make "night hideous" once a year on poor Guy Fawkes's Anniversary, to the terror of all peaceable folk within hail of their doings.

About 1853 or 1854 Mr. Lower removed to Saint Anne's House, his last and longest inhabited dwelling in Lewes, an old red-brick edifice, of somewhat irregular character, formerly occupied by, among other local celebrities, some of the Shelleys, by Sir Roger Newdigate, founder of the Newdigate prize at Oxford, and other locally distinguished persons. Still earlier it was