he is supposed to spend that time. A game of
football two or three times a week, does not last more than an hour
and a quarter; if you add a liberal allowance for changing and baths,
two hours is the whole time occupied. A game of fives or a physical
drill class need not demand more than an hour. The game that really
wastes time--and I am sorry to admit it--is cricket. I am not thinking
so much of the long waits in the pavilion when two batsmen on a side
are well set, and the rest have nothing to do but to applaud. I see no
way out of that difficulty, so long as wickets are prepared as they
are now by artistic groundsmen. I am thinking rather of the excessive
practice at nets. An enthusiastic house captain is apt to believe that
by assiduous practice the most unlikely and awkward recruit can be
converted into a useful batsman, and the result is that he will drive
all his house day after day to the nets, until they begin to loathe
the sight of a cricket ball.

We should recognise that cricket is a game for the few; the majority
of boys can never make good cricketers. And happy are those schools
which are near a river and can provide an alternative exercise in the
summer, which does not require exceptional quickness of eye and wrist
and does provide a splendid discipline of body and spirit. In the
summer it is well to exempt all boys from cricket, who have really a
taste for natural history or photography. Summer half-holidays are
emphatically the time for hobbies, and it is a serious charge against
our games if they are organised to such a pitch that hobbies are
practically prohibited. The zealous captain will object that such
"slacking" is destroying the spirit of the house. We must endeavour to
point out to him that the unwilling player never makes a good player,
and that such a boy may be finding his proper development in the
pursuit of butterflies, a development which he would never gain by
unsuccessful and involuntary cricket. House masters too are apt to
complain that freedom for hobbies is subversive of discipline, and to
quote the old adage about Satan and idle hands. That there is risk, is
not to be denied. But you cannot run a school without taking risks.
Our whole system of leaving the government largely in the hands of
boys is full of risks. Sometimes it brings shipwreck; more often it
does not. For in the majority of cases the policy of confidence is
justified by results.

There is one way of wasting time