is to get the outer life briskly and sharply
depicted, and to speak of the inner in hints and flashes.
Unfortunately, the man who really knows boys is apt to get so
penetrated with the pathos, the unrealised momentousness, the sad
shipwrecks of boy life that he is not light-hearted enough to depict
the outer side of it all, and a book becomes morbid and sentimental.
Then, too, to draw a boy correctly would often be to produce a sense of
contrast which would almost give a feeling of hypocrisy, because there
are boys--and not unfrequently the most interesting--who, if fairly
drawn, would appear frivolous, silly, conventional in public, even
coarse, who yet might have very fine things behind, though rarely
visible. Moreover, the natural, lively, chattering boys, whom it would
be a temptation to try and draw, are not really the most interesting.
They tend to develop into bores of the first water in later life. But
the boy who develops into a fine man is often ungainly, shy, awkward,
silent in early life, acutely sensitive, and taking refuge in bluntness
or dumbness.

The most striking instances that have come under my own experience,
where a boy has really revealed the inside of his mind and spirit, are
absolutely incapable of being expressed in words. If I were to write
down what boys have said to me, on critical occasions, the record would
be laughed at as impossible and unnatural.

So you see that the difficulties are well-nigh insuperable. Narrative
would be trivial, conversation affected, motives inexplicable; for,
indeed, the crucial difficulty is the absolute unaccountableness of
boys' actions and words. A schoolmaster gets to learn that nothing is
impossible; a boy of apparently unblemished character will behave
suddenly in a manner that makes one despair of human nature, a black
sheep will act and speak like an angel of light. The interest is the
mystery and the impenetrability of it all; it is so impossible to
foresee contingencies or to predict conduct. This impulsiveness, as a
rule, diminishes in later life under the influence of maturity and
material conditions. But the boy remains insoluble, now a demon, now an
angel; and thus the only conclusion is that it is better to take things
as they come, and not to attempt to describe the indescribable.--Ever
yours,

T. B.

UPTON,
May 28, 1904.

DEAR HERBERT,--I am bursting with news. I am going to tell you a
secret. I have been offered an important Ac