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
While the monotonous teaching of analysis goes on, several of the boys
at the back might be noticed by any one not quite blind to be writing
notes which are hurriedly passed along the form surreptitiously,
others again are feverishly learning Greek irregular verbs for their
next hour, when they go to a man who canes for every failure to answer
a question; more still might be seen writing lines under cover or
pretence of taking notes, for the master has now finished his analysis
and is carefully reading out notes from a "Verity" edition of _Twelfth
Night_, which play the form are supposed to be enjoying, notes which
each boy has carefully to take down and learn, notes in which he
learns for the thousandth time that moe = more, nief = hand, and some
interesting but watered-down details about the lives of Penthesilea,
Ariadne, and other classical favourites. In the intervals of taking
down whatever portion of this rubbish that various members of the form
think fit, the idiot of the form (there is always one) is being quietly
tortured in many ways, gentlemen behind kick him violently forward, the
quiet youth on his left has been silently pinching his ears and pulling
his hair, with a calculating brutality that exists scarcely anywhere
except in the Public Schools and the South Sea Islands.
An air of supreme boredom and lassitude is evident on every face in the
room; the very atmosphere and clothing seem to be pervaded with it and
invite it.
Suddenly Haxton, now quite pale and obviously shaking, returns: he
writes a note quickly. The recipient begs for permission to be excused
for a little; he must go to the sanatorium. After carefully burning a
lot of incriminating documents in his study he makes his way to the
sick-room and feeling really quite unwell is able to induce the nurse
(in the absence of the doctor) to admit him.
Meanwhile the class pursues unruffled the even tenor of its way. A bell
rings, it is 8.15; early school is over and the pangs of hunger prevail
over all other feelings. Breakfast is supervised by unfortunate junior
masters, who are supposed to use their eyes to count the 300 boys and
to see that they do not cut their loaves on the cloth. Soon afterwards
Second School begins, a classical hour; for this there has been half
an hour's special preparation after breakfast--a grammar grind--the
man to whom they go now being renowned for his strong arm and often
stretched-out hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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