who liked the culprit no more than we did, threatened to have him tied down, and gave him such a swishing as was unheard of. Swishing, like fighting, has now almost died out at Eton, but whether an efficient sub¬ stitute has been discovered for those two very ordinary events to school¬ boys I very much doubt. When I asked my boy thirty years later why they never fought now and how a boy would act to another who insulted him or his relations, he replied that public opinion would set down a fellow who did such things as “a cad,” and public opinion among boys is a more powerful influence than upon grown-up people. So I suppose that fighting, like duelling, must be looked upon as a thing of the past, and whether, as the Germans and Americans think, both are necessary to keep up the determination and courage for which those nations are, like ourselves, distinguished, is a question which the future alone can determine. As long, however, as such dangerous games as polo and such rough ones as football are generally popular among young men and lads, I do not think we need fear the decadence of the British race.
To return to our studies, Classics were really the only things which a boy had any real encouragement to study. In order to pass the Army examina¬ tions which had recently been established an Army class was started and six or seven mathematical masters were engaged, but these, or some of them, being of a different social position to the regular masters and having no houses, had little or no influence either with masters or boys, and it was a question not then settled in the minds of the boys whether they had the same right to set punishments and complain to the headmaster (usually equivalent to swishing) as the classical masters.
I remember one of these mathematical masters, who, though no doubt a very good teacher, was from his manners and appearance looked on by his pupils as “ a cad ” and in consequence got on badly with them. To show the insolence of which some boys are capable I may say that when he set a punishment of Virgil to write out, the boy fixed two or three pens in one holder and covered a sheet of paper with hieroglyphics which, though purporting to be Latin verses, no one could read. When the “poena” was shown up the mathematical master asked what all this scrawl was supposed to be, as he could not read anything on the paper. The boy replied: "Oh, I suppose you do not know Latin,” and proceeded to quote Virgil from memory. However, he did not get off, and eventually mathe¬ matics came to be looked on as a regular part of our work.
Though a certain amount of history and geography was taught it was nearly all ancient, and in consequence we grew up with as little knowledge of both these important branches of knowledge as an Eton boy whom I met some years ago, who was then in the sixth form, and is now a rising member of the House of Commons. When asked whether a native of India who was distinguishing himself—at football, I think—was a Sikh or not, he knew no more what a Sikh was than a megalosaurus. The weekly map was the only part of my studies in which I remember to have ever had the slightest interest, and my strongest competitor in that art was Mr. Freshfield, afterwards President of the Royal Geographical Society,
I became a “wet bob” and spent many happy days on the river in various
kinds of boats. Unless you were rich enough to afford a “lock-up boat,”
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