staff punctual and enthusiastic without fussing or herding them. He is a good speaker, and though not invariably in Orders, he appreciates the enormous influence that a powerful sermon in Chapel may exercise at a time of crisis; and he supplies that sermon himself.

He keeps a watchful eye upon an army of servants, and does not shrink from the drudgery of going through kitchen-accounts or laundry estimates. He investigates complaints personally, whether they have to do with a House's morals or a butler's perquisites.

He keeps abreast of the educational needs of the time. He is a persona grata at the Universities, and usually knows at which University and at which College thereof one of his boys will be most likely to win a scholarship. In the interests of the Army Class he maintains friendly relations with the War Office, because, in these days of the chronic reform of that institution, to be in touch with the "permanent" military

mind is to save endless trouble over examinations which are going to be dropped or schedules which are about to be abandoned before they come into operation. He cultivates the acquaintance of those in high places, not for his own advancement, but because it is good for the School to be able to bring down an occasional celebrity, to present prizes or open a new wing. For the same reason he dines out a good deal—often when he has been on his feet since seven o'clock in the morning—and entertains in return, so far as he can afford it, people who are likely to be able to do the School a good turn. For with him it is the School, the School, the School, all the time.

If he possesses private means of his own, so much the better; for the man with a little spare money in his pocket possesses powers of leverage denied to the man who has none. I know of a Headmaster who once shamed his Governing Body into raising the salaries of the Junior Staff to a decent standard by supplementing those salaries out of his own slender resources for something like five years.

And above all, he has sympathy and insight. When a master or boy comes to him with a grievance he knows whether he is dealing with

a chronic grumbler or a wronged man. The grumbler can be pacified by a word or chastened by a rebuke; but a man burning under a sense of real injustice and wrong will never be efficient again until his injuries are redressed. If a colleague, again, comes to him with a scheme of work, or organisation, or even play, he is quick to see how far the scheme is valuable and practicable, and how far it is mere fuss and officiousness. He is enormously patient over this sort of thing, for he knows that an untimely snub may kill the enthusiasm of a real worker, and that a little encouragement may do wonders for a diffident beginner. He knows how to stimulate the slacker, be he boy or master; and he keeps a sharp look-out to see that the willing horse does not overwork himself. (This latter, strange as it may seem, is the harder task of the two.) And he can read the soul of that most illegible of books—save to the understanding eye—the boy, through and through. He can tell if a boy is lying brazenly, or lying because he is frightened, or lying to screen a friend, or speaking the truth. He knows when to be terrible in anger, and when to be indescribably gentle.

Usually he is slightly unpopular. But he

does not allow this to trouble him overmuch, for he is a man who is content to wait for his reward. He remembers the historic verdict of "A beast, but a just beast," and chuckles.

Such a man is an Atlas, holding up a little world. He is always tired, for he can never rest. His so-called hours of ease are clogged by correspondence, most of it quite superfluous, and the telephone has added a new terror to his life. But he is always cheerful, even when alone; and he loves his work. If he did not, it would kill him.

A Headmaster no longer regards his office as a stepping-stone to a Bishopric. In the near future, as ecclesiastical and classical traditions fade, that office is more likely to be regarded as a qualification for a place at the head of a Department of State, or a seat in the Cabinet. A man who can run a great public school can run an Empire.

CHAPTER TWO

THE HOUSEMASTER

To the boy, all masters (as distinct from The Head) consist of one class—namely, masters. The fact that masters are divisible into grades, or indulge in acrimonious diversities of opinion, or are subject to the ordinary weaknesses of the flesh (apart from chronic shortness of temper) has never occurred to him.

This is not so surprising as it sounds. A schoolmaster's life is one long pose. His perpetual demeanour is that of a blameless enthusiast. A boy never hears a master swear—at least, not if the master can help it; he seldom sees him smoke or drink; he never hears him converse upon any but regulation topics, and then only from the point of view of a rather bigoted archangel. The idea that a master in his private capacity may go to a music-hall, or back a horse, or be casual in his habits, or be totally lacking in religious belief, would be quite a shock to a boy.

It is true that when half-a-dozen ribald spirits are gathered round the Lower Study fire after tea, libellous tongues are unloosed. The humorist of the party draws joyous pictures of

his Housemaster staggering home to bed after a riotous evening with an Archdeacon, or being thrown out of the Empire in the holidays. But no one in his heart takes these legends seriously—least of all their originator. They are merely audacious irreverences.

All day and every day the boy sees the master, impeccably respectable in cap and gown, rebuking the mildest vices, extolling the dullest virtues, singing the praises of industry and application, and attending Chapel morning and evening. A boy has little or no intuition: he judges almost entirely by externals. To him a master is not as other men are: he is a special type of humanity endowed with a permanent bias towards energetic respectability, and grotesquely ignorant of the seamy side of life. The latter belief in particular appears to be quite ineradicable.

But in truth the scholastic hierarchy is a most complicated fabric. At the summit of the Universe stands the Head. After him come the senior masters—or, as they prefer somewhat invidiously to describe themselves, the permanent staff—then the junior masters. The whole body are divided and subdivided again into little groups—classical men, mathematical men,

science men, and modern-language men—each group with its own particular axe to grind and its own tender spots. Then follow various specialists, not always resident; men whose life is one long and usually ineffectual struggle to convince the School—including the Head—that music, drawing, and the arts generally are subjects which ought to be taken seriously, even under the British educational system.

As already noted, after the Head—quite literally—come the Housemasters. They are always after him: one or other of the troop is perpetually on his trail; and unless the great man displays the ferocity of the tiger or the wisdom of the serpent, they harry him exceedingly.

Behold him undergoing his daily penance—in audience in his study after breakfast. To him enter severally:

A., a patronising person, with a few