, the simple joys of
ordinary and uneventful life. One may thus arrive at a certain degree
of independence. And though the heart may ache a little at the chances
missed, yet one may console oneself by thinking that it is happier not
to realise an ambition and be disappointed, than to realise it and be
disappointed.

It all comes from over-estimating one's own powers, after all. If one
is decently humble, no disappointment is possible; and such little
successes as one does attain are like gleams of sunlight on a misty
day.--Ever yours,

T. B.

UPTON,
March 25, 1904.

DEAR HERBERT,--You are quite right about conventionality in education.

One of my perennial preoccupations here is how to encourage originality
and independence among my boys. The great danger of public-school
education nowadays, as you say, is the development of a type. It is not
at all a bad type in many ways; the best specimens of the public-school
type are young men who are generous, genial, unembarrassed, courageous,
sensible, and active; but our system all tends to level character, and
I do not feel sure whether it levels it up or levels it down. In old
days the masters concerned themselves with the work of the boys only,
and did not trouble their heads about how the boys amused themselves
out of school. Vigorous boys organised games for themselves, and
indolent boys loafed. Then it came home to school authorities that
there was a good deal of danger in the method; that lack of employment
was an undesirable thing. Thereupon work was increased, and, at the
same time, the masters laid hands upon athletics and organised them.
Side by side with this came a great increase of wealth and leisure in
England, and there sprang up that astonishing and disproportionate
interest in athletic matters, which is nowadays a real problem for all
sensible men. But the result of it all has been that there has grown up
a stereotyped code among the boys as to what is the right thing to do.
They are far less wilful and undisciplined than they used to be; they
submit to work, as a necessary evil, far more cheerfully than they used
to do; and they base their ideas of social success entirely on
athletics. And no wonder! They find plenty of masters who are just as
serious about games as they are themselves; who spend all their spare
time in looking on at games, and discuss the athletic prospects of
particular boys in a tone of perfectly unaffected seriousness. The