A Schoolmaster's Diary: Being Extracts from the Journal of Patrick Traherne, M.A., Sometime Assistant Master at Radchester and Marlton.Traherne, Patrick
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A Schoolmaster's Diary: Being Extracts from the Journal of Patrick Traherne, M.A., Sometime Assistant Master at Radchester and Marlton.
Traherne, Patrick
Traherne, Patrick, 1885-1917
We have had some good sermons this term from visitors. One man on
the Beauty of Holiness tried to make us see what there was of beauty
in even this arid wilderness: he succeeded rather well--but then,
of course, he doesn't have to live here. He vainly imagines that we
consider the sea to be the real sea instead of a waste of grey water,
ugly and cruel. Then we had a most famous man, who tried to make all
the school go and confess their vices to him: his mistake was to
imagine that there was but one vice and that one practised by 90 per
cent. of the school. You can't do much with a man who has got a bee
in his bonnet to that extent. Although he was sincere and obviously
affected many of the boys, he rather irritated me. I wish I could
settle in my mind what is the sort of sermon boys ought to have. The
one we had last term on keeping the Divine spark alive was certainly
the best I have ever heard, but that may be because I agreed with every
word about the necessity of cultivating individuality and imagination.
In some ways it would be good for us to hear more about Church
doctrine: we are really rather vague about our beliefs.
I am afraid the "ragging" of Koenig is not confined to the boys: he
has lately been elected to the "club," and we do our level best to
make him drunk: we tell him the tallest of yarns about impossible old
customs which we celebrate for his benefit. He must think us--oh, I
don't know what he makes of us. In my heart I am really sorry for him.
Of late I have taken to going to see him by myself. Of course by now he
sees that he has been hopelessly "ragged" ever since he came, but he
has a wonderful belief that in the end he will settle down. When this
generation has passed on, he will be stricter and the younger boys will
reverence him. Poor devil, he doesn't realize that his name is already
a byword and that it will become a standing tradition to "rag" him for
all time. There is the case of old "Parsnips" Askew: he has been here
for thirty years and not a day passes without some silly trick being
passed upon him. Sometimes his form will come clad as if for amateur
theatricals with the excuse that they hadn't time to change, and they
will go on with their (imagined) rehearsal while he tries in vain to
teach. On other occasions they come in in uniform and drill; there are
endless variants: four or five will faint and the rest of the form rush
about in all directions for water or carry the "bodies" out and never
return.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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