will be wanting it some of these days."

He referred to the organisation of regular evening preparation for
the lower boys in Big Hall as a "revolutionary change," but he
achieved it, and he declared he began the replacement of the hacked
wooden tables, at which the boys had worked since Tudor days, by
sloping desks with safety inkpots and scientifically adjustable
seats, "with grave misgivings." And though he never birched a boy
in his life, and was, I am convinced, morally incapable of such a
scuffle, he retained the block and birch in the school through all
his term of office, and spoke at the Headmasters' Conference in
temperate approval of corporal chastisement, comparing it, dear
soul! to the power of the sword. . . .

I wish I could, in some measure and without tediousness, convey the
effect of his discourses to General Assembly in Big Hall. But that
is like trying to draw the obverse and reverse of a sixpence worn to
complete illegibility. His tall fine figure stood high on the days,
his thoughtful tenor filled the air as he steered his hazardous way
through sentences that dragged inconclusive tails and dropped
redundant prepositions. And he pleaded ever so urgently, ever so
finely, that what we all knew for Sin was sinful, and on the whole
best avoided altogether, and so went on with deepening notes and
even with short arresting gestures of the right arm and hand, to
stir and exhort us towards goodness, towards that modern,
unsectarian goodness, goodness in general and nothing in particular,
which the Zeitgeist seemed to indicate in those transitional years.


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