The greedy lungs of fifty hot-blooded boys suck the oxygen from the air he breathes in his recitation-room.

In short, he undergoes a process of gentle and gradual starvation.
-- The mother of little Iris was not called Electra, like hers of the old story, neither was her grandfather Oceanus.

Her blood-name, which she gave away with her heart to the Latin tutor, was a plain old English one, and her water-name was Hannah, beautiful as recalling the mother of Samuel, and admirable as reading equally well from the initial letter forwards and from the terminal letter backwards.

The poor lady, seated with her companion at the chessboard of matrimony, had but just pushed forward her one little white pawn upon an empty square, when the Black Knight, that cares nothing for castles or kings or queens, swooped down upon her and swept her from the larger board of life.
The old Latin tutor put a modest blue stone at the head of his late companion, with her name and age and Eheu! upon it,--a smaller one at her feet, with initials; and left her by herself, to be rained and snowed on,--which is a hard thing to do for those whom we have cherished tenderly.
About the time that the lichens, falling on the stone, like drops of water, had spread into fair, round rosettes, the tutor had starved into a slight cough.

Then he began to draw the buckle of his black trousers a little tighter, and took in another reef in his never-ample waistcoat.
His temples got a little hollow, and the contrasts of color in his cheeks more vivid than of old.