[8] Let me note once for all that whatever I say about S. Paulo, here and elsewhere, is founded (facts and figures alike) on what I knew and learned of the city in 1909-10. A dozen years may, and do, bring many changes! [9] "Honey!" said an American bride (returning from an early morning walk) at a door--which she imagined to be that of the nuptial chamber--in the corridor of a big hotel; "honey! it's me: let me in." No response. "Honey! it's me, it's Mamie: open the door." Still no answer. "Honey! honey! don't you hear? it's me, honey." Gruff (unknown) male voice: "Madam, this is not a beehive, it's a bathroom!" {170} CHAPTER X 1910 The early days of December brought me news from England of the death of Provost Hornby, my old head master at Eton, aged well over eighty. He had birched me three times;[1] still, I bore him no malice, though I did not feel so overcome by the news as Tom Brown did when he heard of the death of _his_ old head master.[2] An eminent scholar, a "double blue" at Oxford, of aspect dignified yet kindly, he had seemed to unite all the qualities necessary or desirable for an arch-pedagogue; yet {171} no head master had ever entered an office under a cloud of greater unpopularity. We were all Tories at Eton in the 'sixties; and the rumoured association of the new head with the hated word _Reform_ (which his predecessor Dr. Balston was said to have stoutly resisted) aroused in our youthful breasts a suspicion and dislike which culminated in the words "No Reform!" being actually chalked on the back of his gown (I personally witnessed the outrage) as he was ascending the stairs into Upper School. _Tempora mutantur_: I dare say there are plenty of young Etonian Radicals nowadays; though I do seem to have heard of Mr. Winston Churchill having been vigorously hooted in School Yard, on his first appearance at his old school after "finding salvation" in the Radical camp.