entertaining of a wholesome one. The best of all cures is to provide
every boy with some occupation which he indubitably loves. There are
a good many boys whose work is not interesting to them, and a certain
number to whom the prescribed games are a matter of routine rather
than of active pleasure. Indeed it may be said that hardly any boys
enjoy either work or games in which they see no possibility of any
personal distinction. It is therefore of great importance that every
boy whose chances of successful performance are small should be
encouraged to have a definite hobby; for an occupation which the mind
can remember with pleasure and anticipate with delight supplies the
food for the restless imagination, which may otherwise become dreary
from inaction, or tainted by thoughts of baser pleasure. A
schoolmaster only salves his conscience by supplying a strict
time-table and regular games. A house master ought to be most careful
in the case of boys whose work is languid and proficiency in games
small, to find out what the boy really likes and enjoys, and to
encourage it by every means in his power. That is the best corrective,
to administer wholesome food for the mind to digest. But I believe
that good teachers ought to go much further, and speak quite plainly
to boys, from time to time, on the necessity of practising control of
thought. My own experience is that boys were always interested in any
talk, call it ethical or religious, which based itself directly upon
their own actual experience. I can conceive that a teacher who told a
class to sit still for three minutes and think about anything they
pleased, and added that he would then have something to tell them,
might have an admirable object-lesson in getting them to consider how
swift and far-ranging their fancies had been; or again he might
practise them in concentration of thought by asking them to think for
five minutes on a perfectly definite thing--to imagine themselves in a
wood, or by the sea, or in a chemist's shop, let us say, and then