our work with that of the metal founder,” he says in the article in question. “Just as the metal comes to the foundry rudis indigestaque moles, a rough and formless mass, without the slightest suggestion of the shape which it must finally assume, so a boy comes to a great Public School with little or nothing about him to suggest the young man who, in eight or nine years’ time, will say goodbye to the dear old school, setting his teeth tight, restraining himself from giving up to the anguish of this last farewell. Nay, I think that ours is the harder task, for the metal that is sent to the foundry has, I presume, been freed of its impurities; we have to deal rather with the ore—a mass which is not only shapeless, but contains much that is not metal at all, which must be burnt out and cast aside as useless rubbish. So the boy comes from his home, which may or may not have possessed valuable formative influences; which we often find has tended to create a spirit of individualism and assertiveness; which, in numerous cases, has left the boy under the delusion that he has come into the world to live his own life and think his own thoughts. This is the ore that we cast into our furnace. We burn out the dross and rubbish; we liquefy the stubborn and resisting metal till it can be run into the mould—the mould being the whole tone and feeling of a great community. We discourage all excessive individuality; we make it quite plain to the boy that he has come to Lupton, not to live his life, not to think his thoughts, but to live our life, to think our thoughts. Very often, as I think I need scarcely say, the process is a somewhat unpleasant one, but, sooner or later, the stubbornest metal yields to the cleansing, renewing, restoring fires of discipline and public opinion, and the shapeless mass takes on the shape of the Great School. Only the other day an old pupil came to see me and confessed that, for the whole of his first year at Lupton, he had been profoundly wretched. ‘I was a dreamy young fool,’ he said. ‘My head was stuffed with all sorts of queer fancies, and I expect that if I hadn’t come to Lupton I should have turned out an absolute loafer. But I hated it badly that first year. I loathed rocker—I did, really—and I thought the fellows were a lot of savages. And then I seemed to go into a kind of cloud. You see, Sir, I was losing my old self and hadn’t got the new self in its place, and I couldn’t make out what was happening. And then, quite suddenly, it all came out light and clear. I saw the purpose behind it all—how we were all working together, masters and boys, for the dear old school; how we were all “members one of another,” as the Doctor said in Chapel; and that I had a part in this great work, too, though I was only a kid in the Third. It was like a flash of light: one minute I was only a poor little chap that nobody cared for and who didn’t matter to anybody, and the next I saw that, in a way, I was as important as the Doctor himself—I was a part of the failure or success of it all. Do you know what I did, Sir? I had a book I thought a lot of—Poems and Tales of Edgar Allan Poe. It was my poor sister’s book; she had died a year before when she was only seventeen, and she had written my name in it when she was dying—she knew I was fond of reading it. It was just the sort of thing I used to like—morbid fancies and queer poems, and I was always reading it when the fellows would let me alone. But when I saw what life really was, when the meaning of it all came to me, as I said just now, I took that book and tore it to bits, and it was like tearing myself up. But I knew that writing all that stuff hadn’t done that American fellow much good, and I didn’t see what good I should get by reading it. I couldn’t make out to myself that it would fit in with the Doctor’s plans of the spirit of the school, or that I should play up at rocker any better for knowing all about the “Fall of the House of Usher,” or whatever it’s called. I knew my poor sister would understand, so I tore it up, and I’ve gone straight ahead ever since—thanks to Lupton.’ Like a refiner’s fire. I remembered the dreamy, absentminded child of fifteen years before; I could scarcely believe that he stood before—keen, alert, practical, living every moment of his life, a force, a power in the world, certain of successful achievement.”
Such were the influences to which Ambrose Meyrick was being subjected, and with infinite success, as it seemed to everybody who watched him. He was regarded as a conspicuous instance of the efficacy of the system—he had held out so long, refusing to absorb the “tone,” presenting an obstinate surface to the millstones which would, for his own good, have ground him to powder, not concealing very much his dislike of the place and of the people in it. And suddenly he had submitted with a good grace: it was wonderful! The masters are believed to have discussed the affair amongst themselves, and Horbury, who confessed or boasted that he had used sharp persuasion, got a good deal of kudos in consequence.
III
A few years ago a little book called Half-Holidays attracted some attention in semi-scholastic, semi-clerical circles. It was anonymous, and bore the modest motto Crambe bis cocta; but
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