NUMBER ONE THE NOVICE

Arthur Robinson, B.A., late exhibitioner of St. Crispin's College, Cambridge, having obtained a First Class, Division Three, in the Classical Tripos, came down from the University at the end of his third year and decided to devote his life to the instruction of youth.

In order to gratify this ambition as speedily as possible, he applied to a scholastic agency for an appointment. He was immediately furnished with type-written notices of some thirty or forty. Almost one and all, they were for schools which he had never heard of; but the post in every case was one which the Agency could unreservedly recommend. At the foot of each notice was typed a strongly worded appeal to him to write (at once) to the Headmaster, explaining first and foremost that he had heard of this vacancy through our Agency. After that he was to state his degree (if any); if a member of the Church of England; if willing to participate in School games; if musical; and so on. He was advised, if he thought it desirable, to enclose a photograph of himself.

A further sheaf of such notices reached him every morning for about two months; but as none of them offered him more than a hundred-and-twenty pounds a year, and most of them a good deal less, Arthur Robinson, who was a sensible young man, resisted the temptation, overpowering to most of us, of seizing the very first opportunity of earning a salary, however small, simply because he had never earned anything before, and allowed the notices to accumulate upon one end of his mantelpiece.

Finally he had recourse to his old College tutor, who advised him of a vacancy at Eaglescliffe, a great public school in the west of England, and by a timely private note to the Headmaster secured his appointment.

Next morning Arthur Robinson received from the directorate of the scholastic agency—the existence of which he had almost forgotten—a rapturous letter of congratulation, reminding him that the Agency had sent him notice of the vacancy upon a specified date, and delicately intimating that their commission of five per cent. upon the first year's salary was payable on appointment. Arthur, who had long since given up the task of breasting the Agency's morning tide of desirable vacancies, mournfully investigated the heap upon the mantelpiece, and found that the facts were as stated. There lay the notice, sandwiched between a document relating to the advantages to be derived from joining the staff of a private school in North Wales, where material prosperity was guaranteed by a salary of eighty pounds per annum, and social success by the prospect of meat-tea with the Principal and his family; and another, in which a clergyman (retired) required a thoughtful and energetic assistant (one hundred pounds a year, non-resident) to aid him in the management of a small but select seminary for backward and epileptic boys.

Arthur laid the matter before his tutor, who informed him that he must pay up, and be a little less casual in his habits in future. He therefore wrote a reluctant cheque for ten pounds, and having thus painfully imbibed the first lesson that a schoolmaster must learn—namely, the importance of attending to details—departed to take up his appointment at Eaglescliffe.

He arrived the day before term began, to find that lodgings had been apportioned to him at a house in the village, half a mile from the School. His first evening was spent in making the place habitable. That is to say, he removed a number of portraits of his landlady's relatives from the walls and mantelpiece, and stored them, together with a collection of Early Victorian heirlooms—wool-mats and prism-laden glass vases—in a cupboard under the window-seat. In their place he set up fresh gods; innumerable signed photographs of young men, some in frames, some in rows along convenient ledges, others bunched together in a sort of wire entanglement much in vogue among the undergraduates of that time. Some of these photographs were mounted upon light-blue mounts, and these were placed in the most conspicuous position. Upon the walls he hung a collection of framed groups of more young men, with bare knees and severe expressions, in some of which Arthur Robinson himself figured.

After that, having written to his mother and a girl in South Kensington, he walked up the hill in the darkness to the Schoolhouse, where he was to be received in audience by the Head.

The great man was sitting at ease before his study fire, and exhibited unmistakable signs of recent slumber.

"I want you to take Remove B, Robinson," he said. "They are a mixed lot. About a quarter of them are infant prodigies—Foundation Scholars—who make this form their starting-point for higher things; and the remainder are centenarians, who regard Remove B as a sort of scholastic Chelsea Hospital, and are fully prepared to end their days there. Stir 'em up, and don't let them intimidate the small boys into a low standard of work. Their subjects this term will be Cicero de Senectute and the Alcestis, without choruses. Have you any theories about the teaching of boys?"

"None whatever," replied Arthur Robinson frankly.

"Good! There is only one way to teach boys. Keep them in order: don't let them play the fool or go to sleep; and they will be so bored that they will work like niggers merely to pass the time. That's education in a nutshell. Good night!"

Next morning Arthur Robinson invested himself in an extremely new B.A. gown, which seemed very long and voluminous after the tattered and attenuated garment which he had worn at Cambridge—usually twisted into a muffler round his neck—and walked up to School. (It was the last time he ever walked: thereafter, for many years, he left five minutes later, and ran.) Timidly he entered the Common Room. It was full of masters, some twenty or thirty of them, old, young, and middle-aged. As many as possible were grouped round the fire—not in the orderly, elegant fashion of grown-up persons; but packed together right inside the fender, with their backs against the mantelpiece. Nearly everyone was talking, and hardly anyone was listening to anyone else. Two or three—portentously solemn elderly men—were conferring darkly together in a corner. Others were sitting upon the table or arms of chairs, reading newspapers, mostly aloud. No one took the slightest notice of Arthur Robinson, who accordingly sidled into an unoccupied corner and embarked upon a self-conscious study of last term's time-table.

"I hear they have finished the new Squash Courts," announced a big man who was almost sitting upon the fire. "Take you on this afternoon, Jacker?"

"Have you got a court?" inquired the gentleman addressed.

"Not yet, but I will. Who is head of Games this term?"

"Etherington major, I think."

"Good Lord! He can hardly read or write, much less manage anything. I wonder why boys always make a point of electing congenital idiots to their responsible offices. Warwick, isn't old Etherington in your House?"

"He is," replied Warwick, looking up from a newspaper.

"Just tell him I want a Squash Court this afternoon, will you?"

"I am not a District Messenger Boy," replied Mr. Warwick coldly. Then he turned upon a colleague who was attempting to read his newspaper over his shoulder.

"Andrews," he said, "if you wish to read this newspaper I shall be happy to hand it over to you. If not, I shall be grateful if you will refrain from masticating your surplus breakfast in my right ear."

Mr. Andrews, scarlet with indignation, moved huffily away, and the conversation continued.

"I doubt if you will get a court, Dumaresq," said another voice—a mild one. "I asked for one after breakfast, and Etherington said they were all bagged."

"Well, I call that the limit!" bellowed that single-minded egotist, Mr. Dumaresq.

"After all," drawled a supercilious man sprawling across a chair, "the courts were built for the boys, weren't they?"

"They may have been built for the boys," retorted Dumaresq with heat, "but they were more than half paid for by the masters. So put that in your pipe, friend Wellings, and——"

"Your trousers are beginning to smoke," interpolated Wellings calmly. "You had better come out of the fender for a bit and let me in."

So the babble went on. To Arthur Robinson, still nervously perusing the time-table, it all sounded like an echo of the talk which had prevailed in the Pupil Room at his own school barely five years ago.

Presently a fresh-faced elderly man crossed the room and tapped him on the shoulder.

"You must be Robinson," he said. "My name is Pollard, also of St. Crispin's. Come and dine with me to-night, and tell me how the old College is getting on."

The ice broken, the grateful Arthur was introduced to some of his colleagues, including the Olympian Dumaresq, the sarcastic Wellings, and the peppery Warwick. Next moment a bell began to ring upon the other side of the quadrangle, as there was a general move for the door.

Outside, Arthur Robinson encountered the Head.

"Good morning, Mr. Robinson!" (It was a little affectation of the Head's to address his colleagues as 'Mr.' when in cap and gown: at other times his key-note was informal bonhomie). "Have you your form-room key?"

"Yes, I have."

"In that case I will introduce you to your flock."

At the end of the Cloisters, outside the locked door of Remove B, lounged some thirty young gentlemen. At the sight of the Head these ceased to lounge, and came to an attitude of uneasy attention.

The door being opened, all filed demurely in and took their seats, looking virtuously down their noses. The Head addressed the intensely respectable audience before him.

"This is Mr. Robinson," he said gruffly. "Do what you can for him."

He nodded abruptly to Robinson, and left the room.

As the door closed, the angel faces of Remove B relaxed.

"A-a-a-a-a-ah!" said everybody, with a sigh of intense relief.

Let us follow the example of the Head, and leave Arthur Robinson, for the present, to struggle in deep and unfathomed waters.

NUMBER TWO THE EXPERTS

Mr. Dumaresq was reputed to be the hardest slave-driver in Eaglescliffe. His eyes were cold and china blue, and his voice was like the neighing of a war-horse. He disapproved of the system of locked form-rooms—it wasted at least forty seconds, he said, getting the boys in—so he made his head boy keep the key and open the door the moment the clock struck.

Consequently, when upon this particular morning Mr. Dumaresq stormed into his room, every boy was sitting at his desk.

"Greek prose scraps!" he roared, while still ten yards from the door.

Instantly each boy seized a sheet of school paper, and having torn it into four pieces selected one of the pieces and waited, pen in hand.

"If you do this," announced Mr. Dumaresq truculently, as he swung into the doorway, "you will be wise."

Every boy began to scribble madly.

"If you do not do this," continued Mr. Dumaresq, "you will not be wise. If you were to do this you would be wise. If you were not to do this you would not be wise. If you had done this you would have been wise. If you had not done this you would not have been wise. Collect!"

The head boy sprang to his feet, and feverishly dragging the scraps from under the hands of his panting colleagues, laid them on the master's desk. Like lightning Mr. Dumaresq looked them over.

"Seven of you still ignorant of the construction of the simplest conditional sentence!" he bellowed. "Come in this afternoon!"

He tossed the papers back to the head boy. Seven of them bore blue crosses, indicating an error. There may have been more than one mistake in the paper, but one was always enough for Mr. Dumaresq.

"Now sit close!" he commanded.

"Sitting close" meant leaving comparatively comfortable and secluded desks, and crowding in a congested mass round the blackboard, in such wise that no eye could rove or mouth gape without instant detection.

"Viva voce Latin Elegiacs!" announced Mr. Dumaresq, with enormous enthusiasm. He declaimed the opening couplet of an English lyric. "Now throw that into Latin form. Adamson, I'm speaking to you! Don't sit mooning there, gaper. Think! Think!

Say something! Wake up! How are you going to get over 'maypole'? No maypoles in Rome. Tell him, somebody! 'Saturnalia'—not bad. (Crabtree, stand up on the bench, and look at me, not your boots.) Why won't 'Saturnalia' do? Will it scan? Think! Come along, come along!"

In this fashion he hounded his dazed pupils through couplet after couplet, until the task was finished. Then, dashing at the blackboard, he obliterated the result of an hour's labour with a sweep of the duster.

"Now go to your desks and write out a fair copy," he roared savagely.

So effective were Mr. Dumaresq's methods of inculcation that eighteen out of his thirty boys succeeded in producing flawless fair copies. The residue were ferociously bidden to an "extra" after dinner. Mr. Dumaresq's "extras" were famous. He held at least one every day, not infrequently for the whole form. He possessed the one priceless attribute of the teacher: he never spared himself. Other masters would set impositions or give a boy the lesson to write out: Dumaresq, denying himself cricket or squash, would come into his form-room and wrestle with perspiring defaulters all during a hot afternoon until the task was well and truly done. Boys learned more from him in one term than from any other master in a year; but their days were but labour and sorrow. During the previous term a certain particularly backward member of his form had incurred some damage—to wit, a fractured collar-bone—during the course of a house-match. The pain was considerable, and when dragged from the scrummage he was in a half-fainting condition. He revived as he was being carried to the Sanatorium.

"What's up?" he inquired mistily.

"Broken neck, inflammation of the lungs, ringworm, and leprosy, old son," announced one of his bearers promptly. "You are going to the San."

"Good egg!" replied the injured warrior. "I shall get off Dummy's extra after tea!"

Then with a contented sigh, he returned to a state of coma.

By way of contrast, Mr. Cayley.

As Mr. Cayley approached his form-room, which lay round a quiet corner, he was made aware of the presence of his pupils by sounds of turmoil; but being slightly deaf, took no particular note of the fact. Presently he found himself engulfed in a wave of boys, each of whom insisted upon shaking him by the hand. Some of them did so several times, but Mr. Cayley, whom increasing years had rendered a trifle dim-sighted, did not observe this. Cheerful greetings fell pleasantly but confusedly upon his ears.

"How do you do, sir? Welcome back to another term of labour, sir! Very well, no thank you! Stop shoving, there! Don't you see you are molesting Mr. Methuselah Cayley, M.A.? Permit me to open the door for you, sir! Now then, all together! Use your feet a bit more in the scrum!"

By this time the humorist of the party had possessed himself of the key of the door; but having previously stopped up the keyhole with paper, was experiencing some difficulty in inserting the key into the lock.

"Make haste, Woolley," said Mr. Cayley gently.

"I fear the porter has inserted some obstruction into the interstices of the aperture, sir," explained Master Woolley, in a loud and respectful voice. "He bungs up the hole in the holidays—to keep the bugs from getting in," he concluded less audibly.

"What was that, Woolley?" asked Mr. Cayley, thinking he had not heard aright.

Master Woolley entered with relish upon one of the standard pastimes of the Upper Fourth.

"I said some good tugs would get us in, sir," he replied, raising his voice, and pulling paper out of the lock with a buttonhook.

Mr. Cayley, who knew that his ears were as untrustworthy as his eyes, but fondly imagined that his secret was his own, now entered his form-room upon the crest of a boisterous wave composed of his pupils, who, having deposited their preceptor upon his rostrum, settled down in their places with much rattling of desks and banging of books.

Mr. Cayley next proceeded to call for silence, and when he thought he had succeeded, said:

"As our new Latin subject books have not yet been distributed, I shall set you a short passage of unprepared translation this morning."

"Would it not be advisable, sir," suggested the head boy—the Upper Fourth addressed their master with a stilted and pedantic preciosity of language which was an outrageous parody of his own courtly and old-fashioned utterance—"to take down our names and ages, as is usually your custom at the outset of your infernal havers?"

"Of what, Adams?"

"Of your termly labours, sir," said Adams, raising his voice courteously.

Mr. Cayley acquiesced in this proposal, and the form, putting their feet up on convenient ledges and producing refreshment from the secret recesses of their persons, proceeded to crack nuts and jokes, while their instructor laboured with studious politeness to extract from them information as to their initials and length of days. It was not too easy a task, for every boy in the room was conversing, and not necessarily with his next-door neighbour. Once a Liddell and Scott lexicon (medium size) hurtled through space and fell with a crash upon the floor.

Mr. Cayley looked up.

"Someone," he remarked with mild severity, "is throwing india-rubber."

Name-taking finished, he made another attempt to revert to the passage of unprepared translation. But a small boy, with appealing eyes and a wistful expression, rose from his seat and timidly deposited a large and unclean object upon Mr. Cayley's desk.

"I excavated this during the holidays, sir," he explained; "and thinking it would interest you, I made a point of preserving it for your inspection."

Instant silence fell upon the form. Skilfully handled, this new diversion was good for quite half an hour's waste of time.

"This is hardly the moment, Benton," replied Mr. Cayley, "for a disquisition on geology, but I appreciate your kindness in thinking of me. I will examine this specimen this afternoon, and classify it for you."

But Master Benton had no intention of permitting this.

"Does it belong to the glacial period, sir?" he inquired shyly. "I thought these marks might have been caused by ice-pressure."

There was a faint chuckle at the back of the room. It proceeded from the gentleman whose knife Benton had borrowed ten minutes before in order to furnish support for his glacial theory.

"It is impossible for me to say without my magnifying-glass," replied Mr. Cayley, peering myopically at the stone. "But from a cursory inspection I should imagine this particular specimen to be of an igneous nature. Where did you get it?"

"In the neck!" volunteered a voice.

Master Benton, whose cervical vertebrÆ the stone had nearly severed in the course of a friendly interchange of missiles with a playmate while walking up to school, hastened to cover the interruption.

"Among the Champion Pills, sir," he announced gravely.

"The Grampian Hills?" said Mr. Cayley, greatly interested. He nodded his head. "That may be so. Geologically speaking, some of these hills were volcanoes yesterday."

"There was nothing about it in the Daily Mail this morning," objected a voice from the back benches.

"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Cayley, looking up.

"It sounds like a fairy tale, sir," amended the speaker.

"And so it is!" exclaimed Mr. Cayley, the geologist in him aroused at last. "The whole history of Nature is a fairy tale. Cast your minds back for a thousand centuries." ...

The form accepted this invitation to the extent of dismissing the passage of unprepared translation from their thoughts for ever, and settling down with a grateful sigh, began to search their pockets for fresh provender. The seraph-like Benton slipped back into his seat. His mission was accomplished. The rest of the hour was provided for.

Three times in the past five years Mr. Cayley's colleagues had offered to present him with a testimonial. He could never understand why.

Mr. Bull was a young master, and an international football-player. Being one of the few members of the staff at Eaglescliffe who did not possess a first-class degree, he had been entrusted with the care of the most difficult form in the school—the small boys, usually known as The Nippers. A small boy is as different from a middle-sized boy as chalk from cheese. He possesses none of the latter's curious dignity and self-consciousness. He has the instincts of the puppy, and appreciates being treated as such. That is to say, he is physically incapable of sitting still for more than fifteen minutes at a time; he is never happy except in the company of a drove of other small boys; and he is infinitely more amenable to fortiter in re than to the suaviter in modo where the enforcement of discipline is concerned. Above all, he would rather have his head smacked than be ignored.

Mr. Bull greeted his chattering flock with a hearty roar of salutation, coupled with a brisk command to them to get into their places and be quick about it. He was answered by a shrill and squeaky chorus, and having thrown open the form-room door herded the whole swarm within, assisting stragglers with a genial cuff or two; the which, coming from so great a hero, were duly cherished by their recipients as marks of special favour.

Having duly posted up the names and tender ages of his Nippers in his mark-book, Mr. Bull announced:

"Now we must appoint the Cabinet Ministers for the term."

Instantly there came a piping chorus.

"Please, sir, can I be Scavenger?"

"Please, sir, can I be Obliterator?"

"Please, sir, can I be Window-opener?"

"Please, sir, can I be Inkslinger?"

"Please, sir, can I be Coalheaver?"

"Shut up!" roared Mr. Bull, and the babble was quelled instantly. "We will draw lots as usual."

Lots were duly cast, and the names of the fortunate announced. Mr. Bull was not a great scholar: some of the "highbrow" members of the Staff professed to despise his humble attainments. But he understood the mind of extreme youth. Tell a small boy to pick up waste-paper, or fill an inkpot, or clean a blackboard, and he will perform these acts of drudgery with natural reluctance and shirk them when he can. But appoint him Lord High Scavenger, or Lord High Inkslinger, or Lord High Obliterator, with sole right to perform these important duties and power to eject usurpers, and he will value and guard his privileges with all the earnestness and tenacity of a permanent official.

Having arranged his executive staff to his satisfaction, Mr. Bull announced:— "We'll do a little English literature this morning, and start fair on ordinary work this afternoon. Sit absolutely still for ten minutes while I read to you. Listen all the time, for I shall question you when I have finished. After that you shall question me—one question each, and mind it is a sensible one. After that, a breather; then you will write out in your own words a summary of what I have read. Atten-shun!"

He read a hundred lines or so of The Passing of Arthur, while the Nippers, restraining itching hands and feet, sat motionless. Then followed question time, which was a lively affair; for questions mean marks, and Nippers will sell their souls for marks. Suddenly Mr. Bull shut the book with a snap.

"Out you get!" he said. "The usual run—round the Founder's Oak and straight back. And no yelling, mind! Remember, there are others." He took out his watch. "I give you one minute. Any boy taking longer will receive five thousand lines and a public flogging. Off!"

There was a sudden unheaval, a scuttle of feet, and then solitude.

The last Nipper returned panting, with his lungs full of oxygen and the fidgets shaken out of him, within fifty-seven seconds, and the work of the hour proceeded.

Each master had his own methods of maintaining discipline. Mr. Wellings, for instance, ruled entirely by the lash of his tongue. A schoolboy can put up with stripes, and he rather relishes abuse; but sarcasm withers him to the marrow. In this respect Mr. Wellings' reputation throughout the school—he was senior mathematical master, and almost half the boys passed through his hands—was that of a "chronic blister."

Newcomers to his sets, who had hitherto regarded the baiting of subject-masters as a mild form of mental recuperation between two bouts of the Classics, sometimes overlooked this fact. If they had a reputation for lawlessness to keep up they sometimes endeavoured to make themselves obnoxious. They had short shrift.

"Let me see," Wellings would drawl, "I am afraid I can't recall your name for the moment. Have you a visiting card about you?"

Here the initiated would chuckle with anticipatory relish, and the offender, a little taken aback, would either glare defiantly or efface himself behind his book.

"I am addressing you, sir—you in the back bench, with the intelligent countenance and the black-edged finger-nails," Wellings would continue in silky tones. "I asked you a question just now. Have you a visiting card about you?"

A thousand brilliant repartees would flash through the brain of the obstreperous one. But somehow, in Wellings' mild and apologetic presence, they all seemed either irrelevant or fatuous. He usually ended by growling, "No."

"Then what is your name—or possibly title? Forgive me for not knowing."

"Corbett." It is extraordinary how ridiculous one's surname always sounds when one is compelled to announce it in public.

"Thank you. Will you kindly stand up, Mr. Corbett, in order that we may study you in greater detail?" (Mr. Wellings had an uncanny knack of enlisting the rest of the form on his side when he dealt with an offender of this type.) "I must apologise for not having heard of you before. Indeed, it is surprising that one of your remarkable appearance should hitherto have escaped my notice in my walks abroad. The world knows nothing of its greatest men: how true that is! However, this is no time for moralising. What I wanted to bring to your distinguished notice is this—that you must not behave like a yahoo in my mathematical set. During the past ten minutes you have kicked one of your neighbours and cuffed another: you have partaken of a good deal of unwholesome and (as it came out of your pocket) probably unclean refreshment; and you have indulged in several childish and obscene gestures. These daredevil exploits took place while I was writing on the blackboard; but I think it only fair to mention to you that I have eyes in the back of my head—a fact upon which any member of this set could have enlightened you. But possibly they do not presume to address a person of your eminence. I have no idea, of course, with what class of society you are accustomed to mingle; but here—here—that sort of thing is simply not done, really! I am so sorry! But the hour will soon be over, and then you can go and have a nice game of shove-halfpenny, or whatever your favourite sport is, in the gutter. But at present I must ask you to curb your natural instincts. That is all, thank you very much. You may sit down now. Observe from time to time the demeanour of your companions, and endeavour to learn from them. They do not possess your natural advantages in the way of brains and beauty, but their manners are better. Let us now resume our studies."

Mr. Wellings used to wonder plaintively in the Common Room why his colleagues found it necessary to set so many impositions.

Lastly, Mr. Klotz. Mr. Klotz may be described as a Teutonic survival—a survival of the days when it was de rigueur to have the French language taught by a foreigner of some kind. Not necessarily by a Frenchman—that would have been pandering too slavishly to Continental idiosyncrasy—but at least by some one who could only speak broken English. Mr. Klotz was a Prussian, so possessed all the necessary qualifications.

His disciplinary methods were modelled upon those of the Prussian Army, of which he had been a distinguished ornament—a fact of which he was fond of reminding his pupils, and which had long been regarded by those guileless infants as one of the most valuable weapons in their armoury of time-wasting devices.

Mr. Klotz, not being a resident master, had no special classroom or key: he merely visited each form-room in turn. He expected to find every boy in his seat ready for work upon his arrival; and as he was accustomed to enforce his decrees at the point of the bayonet—or its scholastic equivalent—sharp scouts and reliable sentries were invariably posted to herald his approach.

Behold him this particular morning marching into Remove A form-room, which was situated at the top of a block of buildings on the south side of the quadrangle, with the superb assurance and grace of a Prussian subaltern entering a beer-hall.

Having reached his desk, Mr. Klotz addressed his pupils.

"He who rount the corner looked when op the stairs I game," he announced, "efter lonch goms he!"

The form, some of them still breathless from their interrupted rag, merely looked down their noses with an air of seraphic piety.

"Who was de boy who did dat?" pursued Mr. Klotz.

No reply.

"Efter lonch," trumpeted Mr. Klotz, "goms eferypoty!"

At once a boy rose in his place. His name was Tomlinson. "It was me, sir," he said.

"Efter lonch," announced Mr. Klotz, slightly disappointed at being robbed of a holocaust, "goms Tomleenson. I gif him irrecular verps."

Two other boys rose promptly to their feet. Their names were Pringle and Grant. They had not actually given the alarm, but they had passed it on.

"It was me too, sir," said each.

"Efter lonch," amended Mr. Klotz, "goms Tomleenson, Brinkle, unt Grunt. Now I take your names unt aitches."

This task accomplished, Mr. Klotz was upon the point of taking up Chardenal's First French Course, when a small boy with a winning manner (which he wisely reserved for his dealings with masters) said politely:—

"Won't you tell us about the Battle of Sedan, sir, as this is the first day of term?"

The bait was graciously accepted, and for the next hour Mr. Klotz ranged over the historic battle-field. It appeared that he had been personally responsible for the success of the Prussian arms, and had been warmly thanked for his services by the Emperor, Moltke, and Bismarck. "You liddle Engleesh boys," he concluded, "you think your Army is great. In my gontry it would be noding—noding! Take it away! Vat battles has it fought, to compare——"

The answer came red-hot from thirty British throats:

"Waterloo!" (There was no "sir" this time.)

"Vaterloo?" replied Mr. Klotz condescendingly. "Yes. But vere would your Engleesh army haf been at Vaterloo without Blucher?" He puffed out his chest. "Tell me dat, Brinkle!"

"Blucher, sir?" replied Master Pringle deferentially. "Who was he, sir?"

"You haf not heard of Blucher?" gasped Mr. Klotz in genuine horror.

The form, who seldom encountered Mr. Klotz without hearing of Blucher, shook their heads with polite regret. Suddenly a hand shot up. It was the hand of Master Tomlinson, who it will be remembered had already burned his boats for the afternoon.

"Do you mean Blutcher, sir?" he inquired.

"Blutcher? Himmel! Nein!" roared Mr. Klotz. "I mean Blucher."

"I expect he was the same person, sir," said Tomlinson soothingly. "I remember him now. He was the Russian who——" "Prussian!" yelled the infuriated Mr. Klotz.

"I beg your pardon, sir—Prussian. I thought they were the same thing. He was the Prussian general whom Lord Wellington was relying on to back him up at Waterloo. But Blutcher—Blucher lost his way—quite by accident, of course—and did not reach the field until the fight was over."

"He stopped to capture a brewery, sir, didn't he?" queried Master Pringle, coming to his intrepid colleague's assistance.

"It was bad luck his arriving late," added Tomlinson, firing his last cartridge; "but he managed to kill quite a lot of wounded."

Mr. Klotz had only one retort for enterprises of this kind. He rose stertorously to his feet, crossed the room, and grasping Master Tomlinson by the ears, lifted him from his seat and set him to stand in the middle of the floor. Then he returned for Pringle.

"You stay dere," he announced to the pair, "ontil the hour is op. Efter lonch——"

But in his peregrinations over the battlefield of Sedan, Mr. Klotz had taken no note of the flight of time. Even as he spoke, the clock struck.

"The hour is up now, sir!" yelled the delighted form.

And they dispersed with tumult, congratulating Pringle and Tomlinson upon their pluck and themselves upon a most profitable morning.

But it is a far cry to Sedan nowadays. The race of Klotzes has perished, and their place is occupied by muscular young Britons, who have no reminiscences and whose pronunciation, both of English and German, is easier to understand.