to be a probable future Minister of War. But the weak spot in his heart is
for poetry and for literature generally; the number of poems he knows by
heart is marvellous, and at the meetings of the Heptarchy he freely
indulges his love of quotations, a pleasure he strictly denies himself in
other surroundings, for fear of boring people. But everybody has a dim
presumption that the general knows a good deal more than most people are
aware of, and this dim presumption is strengthened by the very firm
conviction that he is an exceedingly genial man and a 'jolly good fellow.'

Mr. Ariens, Lit.D., 'Rector of the Gymnasium (equivalent to Head-master of
a Grammar School), is the most remarkable type even in this very
remarkable set of men. He is highly unconventional, and his boys adore
him, while his old boys admire him, and the parents are his perennial
debtors in gratitude. He is unconventional in everything, in his dress, in
his way of living, in his opinions and judgments, but he parades none of
these, reducing them to neither a whim nor a hobby. He passed some years
in the Dutch Indies, travelled all over Europe, knows more of Greek,
Latin, and antiquities than anybody else, and is as thoroughly scientific
as any University professer. But the Government will never give him a
vacant chair, for his pedagogical powers surpass even his scientific
abilities, and they cannot spare such men in such places. To some
aristocratic people his noble simple-mindedness is downright appalling;
but when he goes about in dull, cold, wintry weather and visits the poor
wretches in the slums, where nature and natural emotions and forms of
speech are quite unconventional, he is duly appreciated. For he is not
only a splendid 'gymnasii rector,' he is also a very charitable man,
though he likes only one form of charity, that by which the rich man first
educates himself into being the poor man's friend, and then only offers
his sympathy and help, the charity which the one can give and the other
take without either of them feeling degraded by the act. He is not a