opularity of interfering with bad traditions, or we are lacking in
imaginative sympathy, or we sophistically persuade ourselves into the
belief that the character is strengthened by exposure to premature
evil. The atmosphere of the boarding-school is a very artificial one;
its successes are patent, its debris we sweep away into a corner; but
whatever view we take of it all, it is a life which, if one cares for
virtue at all, however half-heartedly, tries the mental and emotional
faculties of the schoolmaster to the uttermost, and every now and then
shakes one's heart to the depths with a terrible wonder as to how one
can ever answer to the account which will be demanded.

I do not claim to have realised my responsibilities fully, or to have
done all I could to lead my flock along the right path. But I did
desire to minimise temptations and to try to get the better side of
the boys' hearts and minds to emphasise itself. One saw masters who
seemed to meddle too much--that sometimes produced an atmosphere of
guarded hostility--and one saw masters who seemed to be foolishly
optimistic about it all; but as a rule one found in one's colleagues a
deep and serious preoccupation with manly ideals of boy-life; and in
these stories I tried my best to touch into life the poetical and
beautiful side of virtue, to show life as a pilgrimage to a far-off
but glorious goal, with seductive bypaths turning off the narrow way,
and evil shapes, both terrifying and alluring, which loitered in shady
corners, or even sometimes straddled horribly across the very road.

The romance, then, of these stories is coloured by what may be thought
to be a conventional and commonplace morality enough; but it is real
for all that; and life as it proceeds has a blessed way of revealing
the urgency and the unseen features of the combat. It is just because
virtue seems dry and humdrum that the struggle is so difficult. It is
so hard to turn aside from what seems so dangerously beautiful, to
what seems so plain and homely. But it is what we mostly have to do.

I saw many years ago a strange parable of what I mean. I was walking
through a quiet countryside with a curious, fanciful, interesting boy,
and we came to a little church off the track in a tiny churchyard full
of high-seeded grasses. On the wall of the chancel hung an old trophy
of armour, a helmet and a cuirass, black with age. The boy climbed
quickly up upon the choir-stalls, took the helmet down, e