lived!"

"But tell me something personal about him. How did his conversation impress you?"

"Conversation? Bless you, he never conversed with anybody. He just told them what he thought about a thing, and that settled it. Besides, I never exchanged a word with him in my life. But he was a great man."

"Didn't you meet him all the time you were at school?"

"Oh yes, I met him," replied my friend with feeling—"three or four times. And that reminds me, I can tell you something personal about him. The old swine was left-handed! A great man, a great man!"

Happy the warrior who can inspire worship on such sinister foundations as these!

The other kind has to prevail by another method—the Machiavellian. As a successful Headmaster of my acquaintance once brutally but truthfully expressed it: "You simply have to employ a certain amount of low cunning if you are going to keep a school going at all." And he was right. A man unendowed with the divine gift of rudeness would, if he spent his time answering the criticisms or meeting the objections of colleagues or parents or even boys, have no time for anything else. So he seeks refuge either in finesse or flight. If a parent rings him up on the telephone, he murmurs

something courteous about a wrong number and then leaves the receiver off the hook. If a housemaster, swelling with some grievance or scheme of reform, bears down upon him upon the cricket field on a summer afternoon, he adroitly lures him under a tree where another housemaster is standing, and leaves them there together. If an enthusiastic junior discharges at his head some glorious but quite impracticable project, such as the performance of a pastoral play in the school grounds, or the enforcement of a vegetarian diet upon the School for experimental purposes, he replies: "My dear fellow, the Governing Body will never hear of it!" What he means is: "The Governing Body shall never hear of it."

He has other diplomatic resources at his call. Here is an example.

A Headmaster once called his flock together and said:

"A very unpleasant and discreditable thing has happened. The municipal authorities have recently erected a pair of extremely ornate and expensive—er—lamp-posts outside the residence of the Mayor of the town. These lamp-posts appear to have attracted the unfavourable notice of the School. Last Sunday evening,

between seven and eight o'clock, they were attacked and wrecked, apparently by volleys of stones."

There was a faint but appreciative murmur from those members of the School to whom the news of this outrage was now made public for the first time. But a baleful flash from the Head's spectacles restored instant silence.

"Several parties of boys," he continued, "must have passed these lamp-posts on that evening, on their way back to their respective houses after Chapel. I wish to see all boys who in any way participated in the outrage in my study directly after Second School. I warn them that I shall make a severe example of them." His voice rose to a blare. "I will not have the prestige and fair fame of the School lowered in the eyes of the Town by the vulgar barbarities of a parcel of ill-conditioned little street-boys. You may go!"

The audience rose to their feet and began to steal silently away. But they were puzzled. The Old Man was no fool as a rule. Did he really imagine that chaps would be such mugs as to own up?

But before the first boy reached the door the Head spoke again.

"I may mention," he added very gently, "that the attack upon the—er—lamp-posts was witnessed by a gentleman resident in the neighbourhood, a warm friend of the School. He was able to identify one of the culprits, whose name is in my possession. That is all."

And quite enough too! When the Head visited his study after Second School, he found seventeen malefactors meekly awaiting chastisement.

But he never divulged the name of the boy who had been identified, or for that matter the identity of the warm friend of the School. I wonder!

One more quality is essential to the great Headmaster. He must possess the Sixth Sense. He must see nothing, yet know everything that goes on in the School. Etiquette forbids that he should enter one of his colleague's houses except as an invited guest; yet he must be acquainted with all that happens inside that house. He is debarred by the same rigid law from entering the form-room or studying the methods and capability of any but the most junior form-masters; and yet he must know whether Mr. A. in the Senior Science

Set is expounding theories of inorganic chemistry which have been obsolete for ten years, or whether Mr. B. in the Junior Remove is accustomed meekly to remove a pool of ink from the seat of his chair before beginning his daily labours. He must not mingle with the boys, for that would be undignified; yet he must, and usually does, know every boy in the School by sight, and something about him. He must never attempt to acquire information by obvious cross-examination either of boy or master, or he will be accused of prying and interference; and he can never, or should never, discuss one of his colleagues with another. And yet he must have his hand upon the pulse of the School in such wise as to be able to tell which master is incompetent, which prefect is untrustworthy, which boy is a bully, and which House is rotten. In other words, he must possess a Red Indian's powers of observation and a woman's powers of intuition. He must be able to suck in school atmosphere through his pores. He must be able to judge of a man's keenness or his fitness for duty by his general attitude and conversation when off duty. He must be able to read volumes from the demeanour of a group in the corner of the quadrangle,

from a small boy's furtive expression, or even from the timbre of the singing in chapel. He must notice which boy has too many friends, and which none at all.

Such are a few of the essentials of the great Headmaster, and to the glory of our system be it said that there are still many in the land. But the type is changing. The autocratic Titan of the past has been shorn of his locks by two Delilahs—Modern Sides and Government Interference.

First, Modern Sides.

Time was when A Sound Classical Education, Lady Matron, and Meat for Breakfast formed the alpha and omega of a public school prospectus. But times have changed, at least in so far as the Sound Classical Education is concerned. The Headmaster of the old school, who looks upon the classics as the foundation of all education, and regards modern sides as a sop to the parental Cerberus, finds himself called upon to cope with new and strange monsters.

First of all, the members of that once despised race, the teachers of Science. Formerly these maintained a servile and apologetic existence, supervising a turbulent collection of young gentlemen whose sole appreciation of

this branch of knowledge was derived from the unrivalled opportunities which its pursuit afforded for the creation of horrible stenches and untimely explosions. Now they have uprisen, and, asseverating that classical education is a pricked bubble, ask boldly for expensive apparatus and a larger tract of space in the time-table.

Then the parent. He has got quite out of hand lately. In days