companions--they are so restless, so full-blooded, so pitilessly
indifferent, so desperately interested in the narrow round of
school life; and I have the sort of temperament that will efface
itself to any extent, if only the people that I am concerned with
will be content. I suppose it is a feeble trait, and that the best
schoolmasters have a magnetic influence over boys which makes the
boys interested in the master's subjects, or at least hypnotises
them into an appearance of interest. I cannot do that. It is like a
leaden weight upon me if I feel that a class is bored; the result
is that I arrive at the same end in my own way. I have learnt a
kind of sympathy with boys; I know by instinct what will interest
them, or how to put a tiresome thing in an interesting way.

But I shudder to think how sick I am of it all! I want a long bath
of silence and recollection and repose. I want to fill my cistern
again with my own thoughts and my own dreams, instead of pumping up
the muddy waters of irrigation. I don't think my colleagues are
like that. I sate with half-a-dozen of them last night at supper.
They were full of all they meant to do. Two of the most energetic
were going off to play golf, and the chief pleasure of the place
they were going to was that it was possible to get a round on
Sundays; they were going to fill the evening with bridge, and one
of them said with heart-felt satisfaction, "I am only going to take
two books away with me--one on golf and the other on bridge--and I
am going to cure some of my radical faults." I thought to myself
that if he had forborne to mention the subjects of his books, one
might have supposed that they would be a Thomas-a-Kempis and a
Taylor's Holy Living, and then how well it would have seemed! Two
more were going for a rapid tour abroad in a steamer chartered for
assistant masters. That seemed to me to be almost more depressing.