he mispronounces words of which even Modern Shell have somehow acquired the correct tonation. A smattering of physics, chemistry, electricity, magnetism, heat and light, is now doled out in such minute quantities that no one ever derives any real idea of what is going on, what they all mean; just enough to temporize, to fill the parents' minds with the idea that their sons are being liberally educated in every department of life. From this waste of time the boys proceed to their last hour of real school "teaching" for the day--French or German, taught again in sets by a man who took high honours in history and then spent six months in a German _pension_. His foreign accent is deplorable but he is a conscientious man and makes a valiant effort at least to keep a day ahead of his set (not a very hard task) in knowledge. He, however, has ideas on the subject of teaching modern languages and does not believe too much in the mental gymnastic of grammar, but buys periodicals in French and German, and also modern novels for his set to read: being an entirely honest man his ignorance is being continually shown up, particularly as he is unfortunate enough to have in his set one boy who spends all his holidays in Belgium or Switzerland, but his popularity carries him through, and his very lack of knowledge makes the boys work to see if they can beat him on his own ground: this, it is easy to see, is the Modern Shell's intellectual treat of the day. In examinations they do nothing, but most of them get some sort of a smattering of, and begin really to take an interest in, languages whose periodicals sometimes even publish football and cricket results and occasionally have pictures which remind them of certain London penny weeklies that they avidly read in dormitory.