the sons of parrots or rabbits. I never even learned to handle a
cricket bat or ball there. Neither, I think, did any of my
contemporaries in that futile place. The headmaster and proprietor was
a harassed and disappointed man, who exhausted whatever energies he
possessed in interviewing parents and keeping up appearances. His one
underpaid usher was a young man of whom I remember little, beyond his
habit of pulling my ears in class, and the astoundingly rich crop of
pimples on his face, which he seemed to be always cultivating with
applications of cotton-wool, plaster, and nasty stuff from a flat
white jar. His mind, I verily believe, was as innocent of thought as a
cabbage. When sent to play outdoor games with us, and instruct us in
them, he always reclined on the grass, or sat on a gate, reading the
_Family Herald_, or a journal in whose title the word 'Society'
figured; except on those rare occasions when his employer came our way
for a few moments. Then, cramming his book into his pocket, the poor
pimply chap would plunge half hysterically into our moody ranks
(forgetful probably of what we were supposed to be playing) with
muttered cries of: 'Now then, boys! Put your heart into it!' and the
like. 'Put your heart into it!' indeed! Poor fellow; he probably was
paid something less than a farm labourer's wage, and earned
considerably less than that.

No, any education which I received in boyhood must have come to me
from my father; and that entirely without any set form of instruction,
but merely from listening to his talk, and asking him questions. Also,
the books I read were his property; and I do not recall any trash
among them. It was the easiest thing in the world to evade the
'home-work' set me by the usher, and I consistently did so. As a rule, he
was none the wiser, and when he did detect me, the results rarely went
beyond perfunctory ear-pulling; a cheap price for free evenings, I
thought. The usher was frankly sick of us all, and of his employment,
too; and I do not wonder at it, seeing that he was no more equipped
for his work than for administering a state. He never had been trained
to discharge any function in life whatever. How then could he be
expected to know how to train us?

Withal, I somehow did acquire a little knowledge, and the rudiments of
some definite tastes and inclinations, during this period. Recently,
in London, I have once or twice endeavoured to probe the minds of
County Council schoo