Elspeth and I have been amusing ourselves looking at all the vacant houses in the town to find somewhere larger: it is rather a good game going over other people's houses and comparing them with one's own.
We had a fortnight of deep snow and spent the time in tobogganing, which took me right back to boyhood's days. For that fortnight I was quite easy in my mind and irresponsible again, forgetful of the myriad worries that beset me. We find it very hardto keep going. I get agonies of apprehension just before each post comes in, wondering what manuscripts are going to be returned, hoping against hope that at last something will be accepted. If only I could get a series commissioned, I should be happy. It's a fiendish business thinking out subjects to amuse people, only to be turned down by one editor after another. I spend a small fortune in stamps alone. All the same I ought not to grumble: I make on an average about £100 a year by writing. When editors do pay, they pay handsomely, quite out of proportion to the trouble of writing the one article that finds acceptance. What stupefies me is the enormous drawer full of writings all sent back too often to submit again, or else topical and hence dead. I find that I can't write on the war. I want to be definitely literary or definitely educational. My colleagues dislike my doing the latter, and there is very little market for the former.
May 4, 1916
Wespent the Easter holidays near a munitions works in Essex and had our first taste of Zeppelins. I was acting in some amateur theatricals to amuse the workers in the factories, and while we were driving home afterwards immediately above us sailed gracefully along the grey cigar-shaped beautiful engine of destruction. The noise of the bursting shells and the bombs she dropped was terrific: but none of the people who live here seemed to worry at all. I was frightened considerably, but there was nothing to be done except go to bed, so we did. I don't care about seeing any more Zeppelins: it would take a considerable time for me to take them all as part of the day's work. I went over the factories and saw the whole business, from danger buildings to the most elementary innocuous part of the concern. It is a colossal undertaking and one that gives a man some slight inkling of the gigantic conflict in which we are engaged. The workers seemed all very cheery and were of all types, from parsons to bricklayers, domestic servants to duchesses.
We were staying with some extremely pleasant people. The daughter of the house, Sybil Grant, is to live with us for a term because she is unhappy at school. Her mother likes my system of education:the household is one of the best I have ever stayed in. They are all interested in modern movements, in poetry, science, ethics, everything pertaining to the intellect, and at the same time they are athletic. Like the people in "Mr. Britling" they play strenuous and humorous games of hockey every Sunday afternoon, recruiting from local Belgian refugees, service men at home on leave, nurses, and all the local girls for their sides. I have rarely enjoyed a holiday more. Yet even here the bad side of my character came out at times. I grew restless and morose some days and dashed off to London for no purpose except that I wanted to keep moving. The suburbs of London on the north-east side depress me frightfully. Coming back from Liverpool Street through Hackney Downs and Enfield is like going through the Inferno.
June 25, 1916
It is rather jolly having Sybil Grant in the house: she gives me a special human interest. It is the first time I have come into contact with an absolutely "slack" person. She disliked school because she could not get on with her work. I don't wonder. She is incapable of tackling any subject unless she loves it. She reads a great deal of poetry and likes writing it. But her art is quite formless. Like the boy Coningsby she always writes of sea-gulls and desolate cliffs. All her topics are as morbid as youthful topics always are: she delights in death-bed scenes and lonely suicides, deserted lovers, and murderers. In her way she is something of a mystic. She rather thinks that she is gifted with "second sight," which spoils her a good deal, because it leadsher to imagine herself as a sort of divine prophetess. She makes many friends among the boys, which is good both for them and for herself.
I spend most of my time in being exceedingly rude to her and putting her down to work out mathematical problems, which she loathes. In spite of this, however, we understand one another pretty well and get on admirably. We have to-day had a great lunch at the Castle Hotel, two Sixth Form boys and two young but thoroughly intellectual masters. For two hours we sat and discussed educational ideals. Maltby is all for the many being sacrificed to the few: brains alone matter: he would have all games "bloods" disregarded entirely unless they were in the Sixth, but all members of the top forms privileged in every possible sort of way in order to act as an incentive to others to emulate them; intellectual and not athletic prowess is his creed, and of course I agree to a large extent. Our object is to show boys that nothing matters in comparison with the growth of the brain, that hard work leads to competence, honour, and a full understanding of life, and that nothing but hard work will bring out the best and most laudable faculties in man. In order to achieve this we should have to destroy the whole existing system, for the love of beef and muscle is at present ingrained in boys from their earliest years and hero-worship is apparently as rampant as ever it was. In my own small way I always try to instil into my boys the necessity to open and use all the brain-cells instead of just ten or twenty per cent, of them, but my influence alone doesn't count for much. We try to teach the lesson that games are only a recreation and not the serious business of life. I believe the attitude which boysadopt towards the Corps is the right one. They work hard enough at the book work, they try to become as efficient as possible on parade, but they revel in field-days. We have had two splendid ones this term. One day last week we marched down to Welham Heights and fought a great fight across the heather against heavy odds. It is a wonderful place. It was a very clear day and in the intervals of fighting we got a chance of taking in the beauties that lay before us, the winding valleys, the furze-clad downs, the distant white cliffs and the green of the open sea. Few of those who took part in this manœuvre will quickly forget the impression which this superb view of Sussex made on their minds. Such a day fills us all with renewed energies for our work: we fill our lungs with fresh air and our minds with fresh and invigorating thoughts: we go back to work revivified and full of determination. Incidentally we seem to get to know each other better. On the way home in the train we discuss all sorts of subjects nearest to our hearts, which we do not normally give voice to.
We have very much more chastened Speech Days in war time than we used to have. There is no cricket match, no prize-giving, no luncheon, only the Priory service is retained and to that is added the ever-lengthening list of Old Boys who have given their lives for England.
July 12, 1916
A red-letter day in the history of the family of Traherne. Elspeth gave birth to a daughter this afternoon at half-past one. For months past I have been trying to look after her in view of this greatevent, for the last weeks I have myself been in a state of frenzy lest anything should go wrong and I should lose her. To-day has been a ghastly ordeal. I had to spend most of it in school, which was a good thing, because it kept my mind from brooding. From nine to one I taught, speaking all the time, trying my hardest to concentrate on quadratic equations and Army English. I went up at lunch-time and was told to disappear till four o'clock. I went for miles on my bicycle seeing nothing, my mind a blank, except for one ever-recurring sentence: "O God! grant that it may be all right." I couldn't face the thought of her going under. Elspeth is the whole world to me. She has gradually weaned me from my love of schoolmastering and now I think of nothing at all but her. I went back at four and was told that everything was all right and that I was the father of a daughter. I thought of nothing but Elspeth's health and I was taken up to see her: she looked dreadfully frail and ill. I forgot the baby: I didn't even want to see her until I had seen Elspeth—then I was shown the wee morsel of humanity in its cot. Its cry sounded to me quite uncanny. It seemed so hard to realize that another life had entered the world since I was last in the house. Every one at the school has been up to congratulate me: hundreds of telegrams had to be dispatched, flowers and presents of all sorts began to arrive. I begin to feel really important, but the fact that I am a father will take a long time to realize. I had no idea how strung up I had been all the term before: the presence of a nurse in the house for the last week had worried me and kept me in a state of continual torture. The courage of a girl having to face such anordeal in cold blood is positively wonderful. I only hope that she will quickly recover.
August 1, 1916
It has been a fortnight of great trial. Elspeth was left very weak and ill and is by no means well yet. She has had a very hard time. The infant is as good as gold and amazingly healthy. She cries very seldom. I had always imagined that children cried through the entire night, but this kid never cries at all: she is one big smile by day and contentedly sleepy at night. She is beautifully proportioned and has large blue eyes and regular features. I had always thought men rather fools who raved about their children's looks: all babies used to look alike to me. Now I know that there never was such a baby as mine: I look anxiously into "prams" along the road and compare the babies whom I see there with mine. I have managed to hide my affection for her from all the people who ask me silly questions. I'm not going to be classed with all the other fathers there ever were as a blind worshipper of my own child. Her hands and feet give me undiluted pleasure. It is amazing to watch her moving them about: her suppleness ought to be a sign of healthy activity in the future. Her head is small and splendidly proportioned. I hope she does not grow up a fool. She gives Elspeth a wonderful, never-ending interest in life: she thinks of nothing else. It is the best thing that could possibly have happened to her: we ought to have had a child at the very beginning. I am more proud of her than I dare acknowledge to any one except myself. I should like to write a book just jotting down her daily growth, her recognitionof her mother, of the nurse, of me, of strangers, of things in a room. At present she loves looking at her hands and she keeps her thumb in her mouth most of the day and night. She has an extraordinary amount of individuality: unluckily, she is terribly frightened of any sudden noise. This must be inherited. I hope to Heaven that she does not inherit her father's dementia as well. At present she has got, I am told, exactly the expression of my eyes, the far-away, detached look varied by a piercing, questioning, quizzical gaze that so disconcerts strangers. Elspeth's mother is extraordinarily attached to her and would give her life for her: it is a joy to see the delight which the infant takes in her grandmother and vice versa.
We have christened her Prunella after my mother. I had the luck to get Tony down to the christening to be her godfather. Elspeth is going to spend the first part of the holidays in Bath while I take Tony for a walking tour in Devon and Cornwall during his convalescence. He has been wounded in both arms. He, like everybody else, thinks her perfect. I only hope that she will grow up loving us and finding us worthy of her love. We must try to make life easier for her than it has been for us.
September 20, 1916
Tony and I had a wonderful holiday together. Now that Elspeth has Prunella and her mother she is happy and I, for some strange reason, feel that I am leaving some part of myself behind with her in the person of the kid, so I did not feel the separation so acutely as I should otherwise have done.
I always return from a holiday in the West Countrya different man. On this occasion as the result Tony wrote some wonderfully descriptive verses and three short stories, and I was inspired to begin my first novel. I am not satisfied with it, because as usual I have hurried through it far too quickly, my characterization is not sound, my protagonists have simply run away with me. I start off by meaning to say one thing and then end up by saying something quite different. I cannot visualize scenes accurately: I give a hazy, vague impression like a man who never keeps his eye on the object. I have often, for instance, tried since I have been at Marlton to describe the school, the Priory, or the town, but I have never succeeded in pleasing myself with the result. The town to me is just a cluster of beautiful old houses set in a picturesque valley flanked with wooded hills; the Priory which stands in the midst defies description. I know that when I get inside I gaze at the thin perpendicular pillars, the ornate ceiling, the many coloured stained-glass windows, the slender beauty of the whole, but I cannot get the impression it makes upon me into words: the school is simply an Oxford College with lime-trees in the quadrangle and latticed windows to its studies and no more. I can't paint what it looks like on a clear moonlight night, or when the lights shine through the rain on to the puddles in the main courts.... So it is with Devon and Cornwall: their very names ring in my ears like some magic phrase, but I can't explain the fascination these counties have for me.
It is all rather a tragedy for me, for a man who cannot see or describe accurately can scarcely expect to become a writer, and I am almost as keen to bring out a great book as I am to be a great schoolmaster.The tragedy lies even deeper, for I fail even in my calling. I want to be able to plant my finger on abuses and rid the world of them, and I find I am simply in my hurry destroying the wheat with the tares and bringing the whole edifice of education about my ears with no definite constructive theory about the rebuilding. I love boys but I don't attract many but the outcasts. During the time that I have been at Marlton I have only got to know at the outside a dozen intimately, and I don't know that my influence on these has been wholly good. I rouse in them a spirit of criticism and get them to refuse to believe anything until they have proved it for themselves. I have made enemies of practically all the staff, all of whom are better fellows than I am and do more good with less effort. I seem to be the Martha of my profession, cumbered about with too much serving, always thinking that I am the only one who is really working because I kick up such a fuss about it.
I seem to have been like this in everything that I have undertaken. When I was married, I considered that I was the only man who had ever had to learn by experience the laws that govern marriage, when Prunella was born I imagined myself to be the only father in the world. I suppose I do feel joys and miseries more acutely than most people. The smallest kindness shown me makes me almost worship the doer of it; the least hint of inimical criticism and I am up in arms in a moment and consider myself the most badly treated man on the face of the earth. It is awful to have to face oneself and write oneself down as self-centred, narrow, anarchical, selfish, and all the rest of it. At any rate those friends I have,have clung to me through thick and thin, and Elspeth has been a brick to stick to me as she has. I made her come up to town to see Tony before he went back to France and to buy some new clothes. I am so proud of her these days that I want to dress her smartly, give her none but the best things to wear, entertain her to all the amusements that are going. She loves London; the shops and restaurants and theatres all provide her with a never-failing source of interest. Besides which it is necessary to have a fling in the big world before we retire to our backwater at Marlton: it is all very well for me, but there is nothing for her to do there but tend Prunella.
December 19, 1916
This Christmas term has passed all too quickly. Elspeth has been wrapped up in Prunella and watches her growth with ever-increasing delight. I see the infant in the early morning and talk to her while I am shaving: she is now cutting teeth and doing her level best to talk. Her remarks at present consist of "Gug-gug-Da-da," and incomprehensible noises pitched high and low in the scale: she laughs like a grown-up person: she only cries when the piano is being played or the gramophone put on. She lies and kicks in her cot, her pram or arm-chair by the hour: she is quite contented crooning and laughing to herself. She wriggles her hands and toes about incessantly and is as bad as any animal about her bottle: her eyes dilate with fury if it is delayed, and with pleasure when it appears. Her interest in everything that goes on is positively comic: she is afraid of nothing except sudden noises and allowsherself to be handled by any stranger. All the masters' wives love her: she must be really a beauty because every one is agreed about it. I think her eyes are lovely and her contentment is a thing to marvel at. The patience required for lying for months trying to learn to talk, with teeth slowly coming, hair slowly growing, strength gradually being built up, must be immense. Her intuition is perhaps the most noticeable thing about her: she knows when she is being "ragged," she knows somehow exactly what it is that people are trying to convey to her, and she answers any one's smile with a beautiful grin which is entirely her own. She is, however, a complete deterrent to work. I always want to be with her, to have her on my lap and pet her, but I curb my desires strictly. After all, I've got my writing to attend to, Sybil to teach, the boys' work to correct and games to referee. My novel appeared in the autumn and to my intense surprise went into a second edition almost at once: the critics were unanimous and loud in their praise, which astonished me, for it seemed to me to lack any kind of pretensions to style, clarity, cohesion, or even sense. None the less the writing of books is not a paying game. An article brings in quick returns, costs very little energy, and is not at all wearing to the nervous system. After finishing my first book I was a wreck.
Spurred on by the success of this I have already written another in imitation of the younger novelists of the day, in which I have portrayed a horrible character obsessed by sex: I don't quite know why: the writing of it affected me greatly and I am as limp as a rag now it is done, and want to burn it, but my publisher is delighted with it and wants to bringit out in the spring. For the sake of the money I suppose I must let it go. Fortune seems to be smiling on me. Another publisher has already made me sign contracts for two novels and a volume of my collected poems, so I have my work cut out in the near future to cope with the demand. Added to this, the best-known literary agent in the country has now approached me and asked me to let him place all my work. All the agents I have tried hitherto have failed me hopelessly, but it is an honour to have Harrod for an agent, I am told, so I have signed his agreement too. The only fly in the ointment is that there is a great scarcity of paper and trouble in the printing trade; still, people are reading books more than ever. I shall never forget the day when I first saw a book of mine in the window of a London book-shop. Fame (of a sort) I felt had at last reached me. Three years ago I should never have dreamt such a thing possible, and my little notoriety has already brought me great friends.
When the Christmas term is over we are to spend some days with quite a number of leading literary lights, to whose conversation I am looking forward. Common Room were incensed at my book because they thought that they detected pictures of themselves. I can't for the life of me think where, for the characters were all weaved entirely out of my own brain. Apparently some of the opinions I put into the mouths of my worst characters have been taken literally as my own, which is pernicious nonsense. I should have thought after all this time that most people here would know what ideals I stand for. As a matter of fact no one has lately taken much trouble to cultivate the acquaintance either of Elspeth ormyself. They look on me as eccentric, they have not worried to sympathize with me over my troubles and I am afraid that they think that Elspeth does not want to know them because she goes out so seldom. We live very much to ourselves. It is hard to see how we could do otherwise when one realizes how we spend each day. I have to go on writing most of the time to earn our daily bread: we haven't a penny private means. We are not very economical, though we try hard to be so, and prices are steadily rising.
I have had one bit of luck, however. I have been appointed Examiner for the Oxford and Cambridge Locals in Mathematics and English, and though the work entails a good deal of drudgery, it also makes an appreciable difference to our income. Incidentally I very much like going through English essay and literature questions. I like to compare all the different methods of teaching English that obtain throughout the country.
The term has passed without incident: Sybil has learnt a good deal of history and written some excellent short stories. Boys come up to borrow books and to discuss problems that worry them. I have had no occasion to punish any boy for some time. Old Boys come back frequently and keep us reminded that after all there is a war on, which we are apt to forget when we have a petty feud of our own raging. I have refereed a good deal of "footer," and struggled hard to keep my platoon up to the mark. The only complaint I have about life is that the days are too short and I want to do far more than I can.
January 19, 1917
We spent a splendid holiday in London going from house to house of new friends and seeing for the first time how the artistic and literary section of London live. They are very different from the Marlton people: their codes are much less stringent, they are far more tolerant, they seem to get much more out of life. They are intensely interested in art, painting, sculpture, music, the drama, and all æsthetic delights. Elspeth was taken up at once by them: she has the sort of uncommon beauty that passes more or less without comment in Marlton but in London is looked upon with admiration. She seems much healthier and more vivacious in town: the life agrees with her. I spent some days with her at Bath and some quietly in St. John's Wood, writing for dear life at one of my new novels for Manson. The worst of novel-writing is that it gives one no time at all for articles and the money one derives from it does not come in for so long a time after. I am told that the book writer achieves a kudos which the mere short-story and article writer never gets. I doubt it, but it may be so. Anyway I doubt whether I shall write many books, the wastage of nervous tissue is too great. While I am at work on a subject I want to go on and on at lightning speed until I have finished, and when I have finished I am perilously near lunacy.
February 10, 1917
A frightful blow has befallen us. I have been turned out of Marlton for writing my second novel. I am to leave at the end of the term. So after eightyears I am thrown out of my profession: a quaint finish for the overkeen enthusiast. I quite see that I was a fool to write it. It was all owing to my unreasonable haste. I spoke out too plainly: I didn't condemn my villain enough or show the hatred I bear to vice. It is useless to explain now: all the pent-up fury of those who imagine themselves injured by me has broken out and I am overwhelmed. I was supposed to be taking part in a play that the school and town were getting up in aid of the hospital and I was requested to resign my part because no one would act in it if I persisted in going on. I have been lectured by heaps of my junior colleagues here as if I had committed a most heinous crime. I don't quite know what to make of it all. That the book is a bad one I can scarcely doubt, for the critics have been as unanimous in their condemnation of it as they were unanimous in praising my first. I must be much madder than I thought I was, because I still fail to see why my influence, which was generally allowed to be on the side of the angels, should suddenly become malign and foul because I create foul characters in a book.
I could wish that some of my enemies could have seen my further work, for I have now two more novels written, which can scarcely appear for a year at least. It is all horrible. I can't bear to contemplate cutting myself off from the society of boys. Before I married they meant everything in the world to me and now they come after Elspeth and Prunella.
I have passed through troublous years of late which have tainted my brain: I might have become sane again in time, but now all is darkness and I have nothing further to look forward to. Each hour ofclass brings me nearer to my last one and it is all I can do to keep from crying aloud. At least I will spend my remaining days in trying to keep the beacon bright in my boys' eyes. I have always regarded the schoolmaster's as the most responsible position in the kingdom: these boys sitting under me to-day will help to control the Empire to-morrow. Am I leading them to see that corruption, vice, intolerance and bigotry are deadly sins and that disinterestedness, virtue, tolerance and active sympathy are the weapons they must learn to use in their fight to build the New Jerusalem in England? I have to rouse them from their lethargy, to make them wild crusaders, caring for nothing but the future prosperity of their country. I have so little time left to do it and so much to do. The days pass with frightful rapidity. Elspeth has been up to London searching for a flat for us to live in, and after an arduous and protracted journeying she has eventually discovered a small but comfortable ground-floor apartment in Maida Vale.
So now nothing remains but to finish the term out, pack up and go. I have been searching for work but there does not seem anything vacant just at present. It is no light thing at my age suddenly to throw up the profession one has adopted and to begin again. Education was my one great passion in life. I can never hope to be a great writer. The future is black: I dare not contemplate it. There are still, however, thank God, some weeks to go.
April 3, 1917
My last term as a Public School master is over. How I managed to get through the last few hours in school without breaking down I don't know. Luckily no one knows the agony I feel. Several, the majority of people, think that I am leaving of my own free will in order to be at liberty to write: the irony of that is laughable. I would give my whole soul to continue to my life's end as a teacher of youth: I have loved my work with a passion I could never transfer to anything else. I have made endless mistakes. I have gone too fast: I have treated growing boys as if they were grown up: I have not always given my colleagues their due in my intolerance of lukewarmness. I have always worshipped energy, and energy has been my ruin. I have never been able to curb my tongue or my enthusiasm nor to stifle my opinion. The grass has grown over the grave of my ambitions at Radchester and I am by now forgotten as a breath of wind that once passed over, so will it be at Marlton in a term or so. All my ardour gone for nothing, my strenuous ideals broken, my office another man will take and Marlton will be at peace again.
Regrets I know to be vain, tears wasteful. The decree has gone forth against me and I must abide by it.
But after all, "There is a world elsewhere!" Marlton is somewhat of a backwater, the waters here run very sluggishly. I want more scope; once I am in the great world again I shall quickly recover my sense of perspective and come to regard this place in its true light. My four years' experience here hasbeen most valuable, but the secret of success in life is to keep moving. A rolling stone may gather no moss, but it does "see life." At any rate I am saved from sinking into a groove. To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.
The meaning of life, as Tchekov says, is to be found only in one thing—fighting. To get one's heel on the vile head of the serpent and to crush it.... If one has made a mistake and lost faith in one idea, one may find another.
I have still got what I would not barter for anything in heaven or earth, and that is the love of Elspeth.
So long as she remains mine I can defy the world, I am happy. Pray God she will never desert me and turn me out as Marlton has, for without her I have no sun, no moon, no reason for being. She possesses me heart and soul. I only wish she could ever realize a millionth part of what she means to me.
I have thought it good, for the sake of those who have somehow missed Patrick Traherne's published work, which he produced under a variety of pseudonyms and initials (G. K., J. B., A. C. B., and K. R., being his favourites), to append a fragment here of a book which he never finished.
It was to be called "The Future of the Boy," but I have been unable to find more than the Prologue and Epilogue: he wrote to me on several occasions asking advice on technical points, and I had gathered from these letters that he was well under way with the book (which was obviously to be his "magnum opus") when all writing had to cease. I fear that he must have destroyed the manuscript in a moment of depression, probably on the day when he received his dismissal from Marlton. I guess, however, that he could not bring himself to burn his Prologue and Epilogue even though he became too inert to try to publish them. I am the more pleased, therefore, to be allowed the privilege of giving publicity for the first time to two of the most remarkable papers on education I have ever read. That they are immature and in many respects false is at once obvious; they only touch, too, on the intellectual side of school life, the importance of which he always overemphasized; but they are stimulating, controversial, and interesting.
I shall be amply repaid if the result of my labours is to send such readers back to his earlier work, where they may discover for themselves some of the myriad problems that vex the practical educationalist, and at the same time learn more of his theories for reforming the abuses which block up the path to progress.
Why do not English boys care for learning?
Lord Bryce(January 3, 1914).
Theboy's first intimation that a new day of miserable waste has begun is received by the clanging in his ears of a discordant bell by a man servant, whose sole claim to attention in these pages is that he also acts as the senior boys' bookmaker's agent, and supplier of cigarettes, tobacco, matches and pipes at a rate highly profitable to himself. The compulsory bath over (no boy would wash unless he was compelled, that is an idea that you who live on adages and saws which are one tissue of lies will find it hard to believe, but it is true), after the compulsory bath, I say, he hurries into his clothes, dashes downstairs and just gets to the chapel as the doors close behind him. The service need not be given in detail: it is merely a roll-call with a little music thrown in; the boys are ardently urged to join in the responses or psalms, sometimes with threats, but except on Sundays no part whatever is taken by the congregation in the service. They mark with satisfaction that their form master has noted their presence and then proceed with their disturbed slumbers, unless the youth on their right or left has some racy story or spicy bit of news to impart, or there is some friend across the gangway of the aisle at whom they wish to gaze, not being permitted by law to speak owing to disparity of age. The fascination of the loved face grows andthe service becomes interesting until the Head Master's eye, ever roving, searching for evil, lights on these two: they blush, hide their faces under a pretence of praying, and march out; the service is over. A scamper ensues towards the classrooms for the most hated and slackest school of the day: that on an empty stomach before breakfast.
The scene is an ill-lighted, cobweb-ridden, white-wash-walled, low-ceilinged room, fitted with old oak desks, on which are carved many thousands of initials and into which several obscene remarks are deeply inked; long low benches without backs incite the boys to lounge forward with bent shoulders; there is no relief on any of the walls to hide the hideous plaster except a map of Palestine dated 1871.
The blackboard is rough and cracked, and whatever writing is inscribed on it is indiscernible when the lights are on.
The door has just been unlocked, a grey-haired portly man in an M.A. gown lets the flood of sombrely-clad louts of seventeen and eighteen rush past the Eton-collared, more brilliant youngsters of fourteen, so that they may secure the place nearest to the pipes, or sit in remote corners with their backs against the wall, covered by the form in front from any possible detection.
The master makes his way to his desk, sits down and raps out suddenly:
"Stop talking there; how many times have I told you to stop talking as soon as you come into the room? Harrison minor, are youstillconversing? Thank you, thank you for your momentary attention. If you will be so good as to bring me the last three hundred lines of the Fourth Æneid on Thursday, second school,we shall be, I think, at one again. Shut your books. Write out the Rep." Silence then follows, except for the scraping of pens, the dropping of books and mathematical instruments, and the whispered monotone of one boy who is copying it straight from the book on to the paper. Several others after a time, at a loss how to continue, peer gently over their neighbours' shoulders and, enlightened, proceed.
One of the bigger boys, more muscular but even less intellectual than the rest, produces a paper-covered novel of Mr. Nat Gould from his pocket and proceeds to read with some fervour when he has copied his repetition: two others are engaged in an acrimonious conversation, "You —— young swine, I'll damned well lick you after for that. Blast you, take your arm away, I can't see a word you've written."
"I say, your crowd were a lot of stumors yesterday; so you thought you were the House for the 'pot.' My God! Talk about swank!"... And so on, until the master who has hurriedly been correcting some analysis, which the form wished to have back (this is an English lesson, by the way) suddenly raises his head, apparently having heard and seen nothing, and says, "Anybody finished yet? Ah! you have, Dixon. Now hurry up, the rest of you; I've a lot to do to-day," and then breathlessly he turns to his corrections again, until he has done, then calling the nearest boy to him tells him to give out the corrected papers. "By the way, we'll correct that Rep. you've just done. I'll read it out to you. Four marks a line and one off for every word wrong—"
"Anon the great San Philip she bethought..."
"Anon the great San Philip she bethought..."
He wheezes the noble poem out in lines like so manyrashers of bacon, gives the form a moment's respite in which to add (which they do very generously to themselves) the number of marks. He then proceeds to give a long disquisition on adjectival adjuncts and subordinate clauses. "Surely, Morgan, your knowledge of the Latin tongue should have shown you that——"
A school messenger interrupts.
"The Head Master to see Haxton at once, sir." Subdued murmurs and a casual whistle emanate as a fair-haired, good-looking boy goes off, blushing. In an undertone one of the biggest fellows at the back says to his neighbour, "There'll be Hell to pay, my son, if that little fool starts confessing his and our past, he's gone for confirmagger-pi-jaw, he won't stick much of that Devil's talk; he'll let on at once, and—Hell! Yes, sir? No, sir, I wasn't talking. Oh, sorry sir, I thought you meant now, sir, I was just asking how many marks Jaques had got, sir."
While the monotonous teaching of analysis goes on, several of the boys at the back might be noticed by any one not quite blind to be writing notes which are hurriedly passed along the form surreptitiously, others again are feverishly learning Greek irregular verbs for their next hour, when they go to a man who canes for every failure to answer a question; more still might be seen writing lines under cover or pretence of taking notes, for the master has now finished his analysis and is carefully reading out notes from a "Verity" edition ofTwelfth Night, which play the form are supposed to be enjoying, notes which each boy has carefully to take down and learn, notes in which he learns for the thousandth time that moe = more, nief = hand, and some interestingbut watered-down details about the lives of Penthesilea, Ariadne, and other classical favourites. In the intervals of taking down whatever portion of this rubbish that various members of the form think fit, the idiot of the form (there is always one) is being quietly tortured in many ways, gentlemen behind kick him violently forward, the quiet youth on his left has been silently pinching his ears and pulling his hair, with a calculating brutality that exists scarcely anywhere except in the Public Schools and the South Sea Islands.
An air of supreme boredom and lassitude is evident on every face in the room; the very atmosphere and clothing seem to be pervaded with it and invite it.
Suddenly Haxton, now quite pale and obviously shaking, returns: he writes a note quickly. The recipient begs for permission to be excused for a little; he must go to the sanatorium. After carefully burning a lot of incriminating documents in his study he makes his way to the sick-room and feeling really quite unwell is able to induce the nurse (in the absence of the doctor) to admit him.
Meanwhile the class pursues unruffled the even tenor of its way. A bell rings, it is 8.15; early school is over and the pangs of hunger prevail over all other feelings. Breakfast is supervised by unfortunate junior masters, who are supposed to use their eyes to count the 300 boys and to see that they do not cut their loaves on the cloth. Soon afterwards Second School begins, a classical hour; for this there has been half an hour's special preparation after breakfast—a grammar grind—the man to whom they go now being renowned for his strong arm and often stretched-out hand.
The classroom is much the same (they all are) as the one to which I introduced you before breakfast. The master, younger, square-jawed, not intellectual but grim, rather sour: the face is more remarkable for an absence of any virtue than for any special presence of vice. He gives the boys three minutes in which to make sure of their work: then they are all marched out into the middle of the room, asked questions rapidly on the Greek irregular verbs; a boy goes down a place; another supplants him; the whole system is apparently to keep the body moving so that the brain may perhaps capture some motion and become alert; rather does it seem to any rational, unprejudiced bystander a method to involve wasting a maximum amount of time for a minimum amount of actual good. These boys are most certainly no more alert than they were in early school: they do not crib here, or write notes to each other or read Mr. Nat Gould, they are far too frightened for that; they are terrorized like a rabbit in front of a gigantic snake, fascinated, almost loving, certainly admiring the strength of a man who has such power. He is not inhuman either, this master, he has a stock of jokes, each of which is carefully stowed into a particular compartment of his brain, brought out in a particular order and calling for the same amount of quiet laughter every time.
He is very popular among the boys and in existing conditions perhaps deserves to be. When you are being slave-driven, you at least like your driver to be simple, honest and modelled on a plan you can understand: he has to beat you, he is paid for it; if he can afford to throw you a joke, however old and threadbare, yet like a bone thrown to a pariah dogin the street, you relish it all the more, for you know it is more than your due.
This man achieves very excellent results in all examinations: he is known as the best teacher of grammar in the school. He is the "thorough" man who will make his way and become a leading Head Master in the end. He has no sympathy, no intellectual insight, he has been bred on the same plan that he is now inculcating and thinks it the finest system ever devised for the education of boys: in fact the only system. He knows that several ignorant authors, journalists and politicians occasionally decry the results of his teaching, but he is aloof, superior to all these "common cries of curs"; more aristocratic even than Coriolanus, his downfall in the next decade will be as it was with the aristocrats in the French Revolution, really terrible to witness.
It is with a sigh of relief that the Modern Shell hear the bell that rings the close of this hour. Immediately following on this, the form splits up into sets for mathematics, a subject in which they never make much progress for several reasons.
In the first place the set master is a queer man with ideas; he took a low degree in mathematics himself and never knew much about them, but it worries him to find that no boy ever seems to know when to divide, multiply, add or subtract by pure reason.
All the set seem accustomed to see a type on the top of an exercise or on the blackboard and to copy this type feverishly a hundred times, thereby to gain many marks and think they have accomplished something. For the fetish of marks is what makes Modern Shell do any work at all. They have a perfectpassion for gaining them and this master panders to it by giving them thousands a day: consequently the set works at lightning speed, but never achieves anything, for none of its members seems capable of reason. Even though geometry is substituted for Euclid they still contrive to learn propositions as a species of very difficult prose repetition: they still believe in and treat algebra and arithmetic as two vastly different subjects which can have no connexion with each other, the mere presence of an "x" in an arithmetic paper frightens them out of their senses. They dabble in stocks and shares, compound proportion, approximation in decimals, quadratic equations, logarithms and progressions, and yet immediately they get out of form and into the tuck-shop they are unable even to count the change they get out of half a crown without a mistake, they cannot measure the simplest article accurately and have no more power of logical reasoning than they had as babies. Consequently when they come to examination time they fail. Given a type they will work out a hundred examples with scarcely a mistake. Asked for the answer of an original sum and they are nonplussed at once and multiply when they should divide, add when they should subtract and vice versa, entirely without method, principle or reason. Yet these fellows work hard enough, not from fear of the master in this case, he scarcely ever punishes, but in order to gain some of the thousand marks over which he is so generous.
The last school of the morning is spent to-day in history. Geography is also supposed to be taught but is gently allowed to slide except for the drawing of a few maps. The history master is a dear goodman, a thorough "slacker," well beloved of the whole school and staff.
The preparation is as usual "to read a chapter of Oman." Some notes are read out from the master's "undergraduate" notebook very slowly and listlessly and as slowly and listlessly taken down by most of the form unless they have anything else to do such as drawing "Old Clothes-horse" (the nickname of the master), a proceeding sometimes fraught with danger for "Old Clothes-horse" has an uncomfortable habit of suddenly remembering his vocation, of saying to himself, "I must be stern." On such days he will demand of such a one the drawing, and bawl out at the top of his voice: "You disgraceful scoundrel, you son of a plough-boy—you—you—disgusting hound—you will write out the whole of the last hundred pages of the history"—a punishment naturally enough afterwards remitted to one-half, one-third, one-tenth, but even then fairly severe. His method of imparting history runs too much on the lines of doing the minimum of correcting work (which though he does not know it, is a step in the right direction, but done in his case from the wrong motive) and of placing implicit confidence in the reading of the work of one man.
Dates and comparisons of characters, knowledge of laws and deft little paragraphs about things like Habeas Corpus, Barebones, and so on, with neat compartments at the end of each period containing the great names in literature of that period (as if it ever did a boy any good just to know the name of Dryden, Pope, Burke, and Johnson without having read a word of their works), these combine to form his stock in trade. His boys turn out fairly well instereotyped examinations, but they leave school knowing no real history at all, worse still with a positive distaste for a subject with which they have really not even a nodding acquaintance.
Morning school is now over and an hour is to pass before the midday dinner. You think perhaps these boys now are going to have complete rest, a chance of being by themselves, time for reading—not a bit of it. There will now be compulsory net practice or shooting on the range, recruit drill, a racquets or a fives tie to play off, an imposition, probably several, in arrears to be polished off, book-keeping, shorthand, typewriting or music classes to attend, or, worst of all, private tuition. Dinner comes as a temporary relief in which discussion runs rife on the latest scandal, scores at cricket, the news in theSportsman, the newest catch-word, how So-and-So was ragged, the latest form of torture devised for the most prominent idiot, and all the customs, fashions and frivolities of their little world. After dinner a stampede is made to change from the appalling funereal garments of the morning which are given an all too brief respite, into the flannels necessary for the House match or nets of the afternoon. Some luckless ones who have perchance dropped a pen in the deadly stillness of a strict master's form or refused to do any preparation for over a week in a slack one's set, are hounded round the quadrangle for half an hour in an ignominious punishment drill, which drill sometimes contains over a hundred boys, which speaks well for the discipline of the school.
Suppose it is a House-match day, and nearly every day in the summer term sees one of these in progress, those in the Houses concerned, not actually playing,will all be compelled to watch: nay, in fact so imbued with the evils of over-athleticism are they that they would all rather miss anything than one ball bowled, one run scored; their eyes are riveted on to the cricket pitch; the whole staff is there equally occupied; the life of the little nation is at stake; nothing at all matters except the winning or losing of this single match. It is the one big world event about which quarrels will be raised, criticism will be rife for days to come, in dormitory, in the Common Room, in the privacy of the masters' own sitting-rooms or in the studies of the boys. Other Houses not actually playing will be practising assiduously at nets until another bell rings to show that time is up; a rush is made to change back into the monastic garb preparatory to getting up more work (or pretending to) for afternoon school. The first period of the afternoon to-day is given up to what is called science for our forms; that is to say, a few nerveless experiments which never come off are tried by a man whom it is hard to differentiate from the bottle-washer of the laboratory, a man with an accent (not that that matters intrinsically), but a man with the vulgar attributes that accompany accent when promoted to spheres unused to such things; living in an air of snobbishness and hypocrisy, this "bounder" bounds more than ever he need and causes howls of derision as, in his nervousness he mispronounces words of which even Modern Shell have somehow acquired the correct tonation. A smattering of physics, chemistry, electricity, magnetism, heat and light, is now doled out in such minute quantities that no one ever derives any real idea of what is going on, what they all mean; just enough to temporize, to fill theparents' minds with the idea that their sons are being liberally educated in every department of life.
From this waste of time the boys proceed to their last hour of real school "teaching" for the day—French or German, taught again in sets by a man who took high honours in history and then spent six months in a Germanpension. His foreign accent is deplorable but he is a conscientious man and makes a valiant effort at least to keep a day ahead of his set (not a very hard task) in knowledge. He, however, has ideas on the subject of teaching modern languages and does not believe too much in the mental gymnastic of grammar, but buys periodicals in French and German, and also modern novels for his set to read: being an entirely honest man his ignorance is being continually shown up, particularly as he is unfortunate enough to have in his set one boy who spends all his holidays in Belgium or Switzerland, but his popularity carries him through, and his very lack of knowledge makes the boys work to see if they can beat him on his own ground: this, it is easy to see, is the Modern Shell's intellectual treat of the day. In examinations they do nothing, but most of them get some sort of a smattering of, and begin really to take an interest in, languages whose periodicals sometimes even publish football and cricket results and occasionally have pictures which remind them of certain London penny weeklies that they avidly read in dormitory.
A bell signalizes tea and the end of school. A hurried repast, for physical training follows hard on the top of it, a compulsory form of exercise that most boys frankly detest. After twenty minutes of this the preparation bell goes, and excitement is rife tosee whether it is "The Cadger" or "Hopeless George" on duty. If the former, work and the right work has to be attempted: if the latter, novels appear as if by magic and work is given, for an ecstatic hour, the go-by. Another bell (the bell is so constantly in use that a special man has to be kept who does nothing else but attend to this department) summons the school to evening chapel, a repetition of the morning roll-call, except that a lusty roar in a well-known hymn will testify to the Almighty that there are 300 boys who are well pleased that "another ruddy day is o'er." As a matter of fact it is not "o'er," for a further hour of preparation in the privacy, however, of their studies this time awaits them. Pathetic indeed is the sight of the tired-out wan faces of the Modern Shell boy, whose head can be seen nodding over the page of a dull grammar, trying in vain to keep awake and remember the consequences that will accompany his ignorance on the morrow if he forgets what a quasipassive or oxymoron is.
At last, at ten o'clock the bell rings once more and with a burst of energy he flings his book aside and rushes upstairs only, in all probability, to find that it is his duty to keep "nixes-watch," that is, to stand near the end of the dormitory until nearly midnight to listen for the step of the House-master, who might otherwise pry into practices that would fill his complacent mind with disquiet. About midnight, worn out, yet not a whit improved in body, soul, or mind the luckless wight will be allowed to get into bed, to sleep, perchance to dream of a new regime, of a better order of things, where life will not be one dull, eternal round of uselessness, useless knowledge, useless punishments, useless games, useless virtues, uselessvices, useless restraint, useless discipline, but free, progressive, happy, where no such things take place as have taken place in this absolutely truthful picture I have drawn of a day in the life of a boy in the Modern Shell.
Education is the release of man from self. You have towiden the horizons of your children, encourage and intensifytheir curiosity and their creative impulses, and cultivateand enlarge their sympathies. Under your guidanceand the suggestions you will bring to bear on them, theyhave to shed the old Adam of instinctive suspicions, hostilities,and passions, and to find themselves again in thegreat being of the Universe.—"The World Set Free."
Inthe first place it must be borne in mind that one great difference in the attitude of this form to life in general in the future will be caused by the fact that it will be a mixed class of boys and girls, and will be recruited from all sections of the people, so that there will be every chance of there being practically no divergence in age, physique or intelligence between the top and bottom, to use the existing phraseology, between A and Z, as they will then be placed.
The boys and girls will be permitted to get up as early in the morning as they like, but not later than 7.30 in the summer months. Breakfast will follow at once in different Houses, boys and girls sitting at the same table as much mixed as possible, friend with friend. Chapel for those who wish to go will follow, a service short, devotional, sincere, containing a few personal prayers, a rousing well-known hymn and a lesson of particular applicability not necessarily taken from the Bible alone, but from any of the great masterpieces of the world. Masters and mistresses who feel inspired to give a personal address of not more than five minutes on any problem that may have been occupying their minds may interpolate their sermonette in the place of this lesson. This, the only service of the day, will not take longer than twelve minutes. If the weather is fine most of thework of the day will be done out of doors, some of it, such as the manual labour classes, the digging, road-mending, gardening, will necessarily be so, but in favourable circumstances the intellectual side of the curriculum will be as far as possible carried out in the open air. If, however, this is to-day impossible, the Latin hour will be conducted in a classroom, where inspiring pictures, replicas of old masters and pieces of sculpture will make an already bright, airy, cheerful, healthy classroom still more so.
The master, mistress, girls and boys will all be dressed in those clothes considered most sane and healthy from the eugenics point of view; flannels and gymnastic dress will probably be most popular. The Latin taught will certainly not be of the grammar-grind sort: conversation will go on between girl and boy, others in the same class will be constructing a Roman amphitheatre, or working out, on a sort ofDaily Mailwar board, a campaign of Pompey or Cæsar.
The life of a Roman citizen will be enacted and written about by the classes: all the time the boys and girls will be doing the work; the teacher only flitting about from group to group as his or her presence is required, encouraging here, pointing out errors there, all the time acting as any real teacher ought to act, that is, not foisting his or her opinion on to the form but developing their own ideas on the lines most desirable for them.
The hour instead of passing as hours in school are passing nowadays in periods of long, slowly dragging minutes that make time seem interminable to those who take out their watches in the vain hope that Father Time will take a hint and have mercy, will goso quickly in the interest and joy of real work and progress that the form will only regret having to leave the subject, were it not that the next is just as full of interest, just as helpful.
It is mathematics in this second period carried out in a sort of engineering schoolroom where practical implements are at hand for testing all their theoretical results.
One section of the class to-day splits up into a lot of stockbrokers and the rest into investors. Each investor has his own bag of gold or counters, his own cheque-book, the daily newspapers are brought into school and consulted, and each youthful financier tries his fortune with the investment that most suits his fancy at the time. Day by day he develops his original idea, buying here, selling there, so that his knowledge of stocks and shares by the end of a term is unassailable; the foundation is laid of a character that will not play ducks and drakes with his own real money in later life if he finds that his splashes now hold him up to ridicule from his fellows at school. In geometry the forms will invent their own problems and work out together as a body any that defeat the individual intelligence. And again the teacher's aid will only be invoked as a last resource; the children will teach themselves. Buying and selling, commission and percentage work will all be done as it were in real life by the taking of a case that one of the form invents or by going the round of the shops in the town or village and auditing their accounts, looking into their businesses and receiving real instruction from those whose life's work it is to conduct a trade or business, so that here again the factor of reality so absolutely essential to the intelligent learner shall be brought into play.
By the end of a term each pupil or at any rate each form will have produced its own algebra, arithmetic and geometry, and these will be stored in the archives of the form if they are thought to be of sufficient value. At any rate they will be the only textbooks they will see in these subjects.
The period following on this will be an outdoor one if possible, either one of those mentioned above or a natural history study in the nearest wood, or drawing of the surrounding country, or dancing on the platform permanently kept for that purpose in a corner of the playing-fields to a gramophone, or singing in the open air, or any exercise or physical training decided on as beneficial to the human frame! From this the form will come in refreshed in body ready for more intellectual stimulus.
Then follows the hour of history and geography; the history on a plan rudely devised in the early part of the twentieth century by Mr. C. R. L. Fletcher in his "Sir Roger of Tubney" and Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer in "Ladies Whose Bright Eyes," where all our ancestors, their customs and reasons for their strange actions, stand out clearly in the broadest outlines as real living forces. The Elizabethan adventurer, the peasant, the villein, the Norman baron, the various Kings, the Cavalier gallant, the Augustan Age courtier, the Georgian politician, the powder-puff-age lady satirized by Addison, all will live as actually as our own relatives and friends.
Scenes from history again will be acted in costume, debates will take place in class as to why Shakespeare does not see fit to mention Magna Charta, what effects followed, what causes, why enthusiasm was held in such disdain in the eighteenth century, and altogether,hand in hand with the literature of its age, the history of each period in the nation's life will be carefully worked out, and its bearing on present-day character and custom soundly sifted and thrashed out.
I said geography would be taken at the same time: geography as studied in the new schools will be an excellent mixture of political economy, history (really it is hard to separate the two), science and mathematics, all in their relation to actual facts.
Calculations of temperatures by isotherms, geological strata, even numerical facts about other races, all of these things will strike home and be found of paramount interest to boys and girls, but most especially will this be the case when, as will always happen, the form decide to work out and write up in detail the accurate history and geography of their school and the district immediately surrounding it. This will give so much, such ample opportunity for the rousing of and keeping keenly alive their faculties, that of all subjects, history and geography will be the hardest from which to tear the ardent enthusiasts. The nature of the soil, the various winds that blow, the effect of these winds on the weather, that is, what weather to expect after different winds, the rainfall, the contour of the outlying lands, the agricultural state, the condition of the crops—the list might be magnified into a book by itself, all these things will help the child to a better and truer understanding of the making of history and geography than any textbook, and will prove of lasting worth to him as a useful citizen of the future. After this period there will follow an entirely free time, when the school will be at liberty to follow its own devices until lunch-time: there will be voluntary lectures on all sortsof subjects that appeal to the stamp-collector's or the natural historian's mind by men and women who have made their mark. Great explorers and big-game hunters will themselves come and give an account of their exciting experiences. Perpetual pianolas, perpetual cinematograph films will be in use during these hours in which the school is at liberty. In the afternoon, free time will be given for games of every description to be played, no particular partiality being extended to one over another. Running, swimming, tennis, basket-ball, racquets, fives, golf, cricket, shooting, all will be equally accessible and equally encouraged.
Tea-parties daily from 4 to 4.30 will be given by masters and mistresses, and by pupils to other pupils or to their elders, a time of social intercourse and polite society: the neighbouring populace will then be entertained by the youthful hosts, and courtesy and gallantry have a special chance of being adequately cultivated. After tea school will again be continued in the science hour, where each pupil will proceed to experiment under the care of an expert with the produce which he or she has been concerned with in the morning. It may be to-day that the Modern Shell are trying to discover a use for the millions of rotten bananas that are shipped into this country week by week in order to economize in produce or to discover a new fertilizer: it may be that they wish to discover how to eliminate from the water of the neighbourhood certain properties that have been found to have an evil effect on the health of the populace; once you see the bugbear, the nightmare of examination, is removed the child can occupy himself doing something really useful, somethingwhich will in all probability be, in the end, of great service to the State and at the same time train the youthful mind in the way it both wishes and ought to go.
The French period which finishes up the afternoon school will be of great use, for reminiscences will be indulged in of the last visit to a French school, village or town on the part of those members of the form who went last year, in the annual foreign tour; they will by these reminiscences, told of course in French, whet the minds of the neophytes, so that they will look forward more than ever to the holidays which will see them as a body transported to a land where so many fascinating customs may be witnessed. Conversation both in and out of school will be carried on in both German and French as much as possible, helped of course by the fact that there will be so many natives of these countries always in the school.
The evening will sometimes be spent in quiet reading, sometimes in lectures, sometimes in cinematograph shows (as a matter of fact the cinema will be very much in evidence throughout each and every day), sometimes in concerts, pianola and real, very often in theatricals; but on this particular evening of which I am speaking the Modern Shell have decided to do the English that the present-day form did in morning school before breakfast. This English period is, if anything, looked forward to more than any other period in the day.
The reason is that, in its many-sidedness, it is even perhaps more entrancing than geography. First there is the writing and editing of the form magazine, which is an intricate periodical with a daily news-sheet merging into a more serious-minded weekly, whichitself turns into a monthly magazine of extraordinary bulk. News, verses, stories, long and short, novels, drawings, essays, debates, dialogues, all are heaped into this production.
Plays are written, produced and acted by each form, supervised only at the rarest intervals by the form master, parts for which are thought out and debated about spiritedly in form as part of the subject. Extracts from the great masters are discovered, learnt and declaimed by the discoverer to the rest of his confederates; everywhere and in every branch of this subject there is the fresh air and fierce pleasure of the explorer and pioneer, carving out for himself a gigantic task to be performed, disciplining himself for that task by repeated smaller undertakings. In such an atmosphere of feverish excitement and interest, is it to be wondered at that the result is so magnificent? For our youthful poetry is real poetry written in the white heat of passion, the literature of our youth is real literature written while the fire of life is still burning strongly and furiously inside. Each boy and girl finds in him or her self something that he or she must say, something sacred that must be expressed after attempts which may often be futile, volatile, fluid; at length there emanates a solid, lasting record in sentences that will ring through the world of a generation that had risen out of the slough of sullen acquiescence in an age that cared not for learning or things of the soul, to the highest heights that had ever been dreamt of by the human race, and our schools of the future had shown how nearly godlike indeed are these puny mortals when they put their shoulders to the wheel and help God to grind His mill.
So we leave our dream-children and this sketch of Utopia in the fervid hope that something of truth exists in this vision that I have seen, and the last and most fervent prayer of my life is that I may live long enough to take part in a revolution that shall make such a vision possible, and see it in the initial stages starting on its godlike course; then shall I, like Simeon, be content to depart in peace, for I shall have, in little at any rate, O God, have seen Thy salvation.