the genius for education, without which these things are nothing,
might have put humanity into some of us. When it was past the time I
discovered this, and one of them became my friend and helper. I then
discovered the tragedy of our system from the other side. For the
pain is a two-edged sword, and imbrues the breast of the pedagogue
even while it bleeds the pupil to inanition. That poor man, scholar,
gentleman, humourist, poet, as he was, held boys in terror. He
misdoubted them; they made him self-conscious, betrayed him into
strange hidden acts of violence, rendered him incapable of instruction
except of the most conventional kind. All his finer nature, his
humanism, was paralysed. We thought him a poor fool, and got a crude
entertainment out of his antics. Actually he was tormenting in a
flame; and we thought his contortions ridiculous. God help us all, how
are we to get at each other, caged creatures as we are! But this is
indeed a tragic business, and I don't want you to tear your hair.

I remained at Spring Grove, I think, four or five years, a barren,
profitless time. I remember scarcely one gleam of interest which
pierced for more than a few moments the thick gloom of it. The cruel,
dull, false gods of English convention (for thought it is not) held me
fast; masters and pupils alike were jailers to me. I ate and drank of
their provision and can recall still with nausea the sour, stale
taste, and still choke with the memory of the chaff and grit of its
quality. Accursed, perverse generation! God forbid that any child of
mine should suffer as I suffered, starve as I starved, stray where I
was driven to stray. The English boarding-school system is that of the
straw-yard where colts are broken by routine, and again of the
farmyard where pups are walked. Drill in school, _laissez-faire_ out
of it. It is at once too dull and too indolent to recognise character
or even to look for it; it recks nothing of early development or late;