oneself by thinking that it is happier not to realise an ambition
and be disappointed, than to realise it and be disappointed.

It all comes from over-estimating one's own powers, after all. If
one is decently humble, no disappointment is possible; and such
little successes as one does attain are like gleams of sunlight on
a misty day.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
March 25, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--You are quite right about conventionality in
education.

One of my perennial preoccupations here is how to encourage
originality and independence among my boys. The great danger of
public-school education nowadays, as you say, is the development of
a type. It is not at all a bad type in many ways; the best
specimens of the public-school type are young men who are generous,
genial, unembarrassed, courageous, sensible, and active; but our
system all tends to level character, and I do not feel sure whether
it levels it up or levels it down. In old days the masters
concerned themselves with the work of the boys only, and did not
trouble their heads about how the boys amused themselves out of
school. Vigorous boys organised games for themselves, and indolent