The only break is Speech Day, a most amazing ceremony which gives one furiously to think. We had an Archbishop and several famous men of the day to talk to us this year, but the sole business of the affair seemed to be to feed the parents as lavishly as possible and to laud ourselves up to the skies. The only criterion of success, to judge from the Head Master's speech, was the number of Higher Certificates gained in the annual examination. He obviously makes a fetish of this; he publishes it in all the papers and recurs to it at constant intervals, in sermons, at masters' meetings and at dinner-parties. Apparently we stand or fall by this one qualification. Anything further from the true end and aim of education it would be hard to imagine. For this one day of speeches and lunch the whole place is transformed: it becomes almost civilized, a part of the world that we know outside. There are motor-cars, pretty, smartly dressed girls with their mothers, and proud fathers full of malapropos comments, and--most important of all--no compulsory cricket. For one whole day we get a chance to breathe, to look round and talk, and at night if a boy is lucky he may even dine with his people at their hotel in Scarborough. It need scarcely be said how flat the rest of the term seems after this great day, so eagerly looked forward to, so long in coming, so quickly over when it does arrive. I think I derived most of my joy from comparing the garb of my colleagues on this day with their ordinary, every-day habiliments. I suppose no class of men dresses more shabbily than the schoolmaster; as he is so abominably underpaid that is not to be wondered at. What is a matter for comment is the extraordinary costume he dons on gala occasions. Grey frock-coats with black trousers and a straw hat, dark morning coat with brown boots and a bowler--there is no end to the grotesqueness of the combination of ill-assorted garments. We look like a lot of master grocers tricked out for an annual convention. After all, clothes are not a very important part of life, but it does somehow emphasize our aloofness from the workaday world to appear clad like Rip Van Winkles once a year. Our gaucherie when we are called upon to talk to our visitors would make even a shop-walker wince. We seem to have lost the art of conversation: our tongues are rusty; we have no commonplaces, we cannot even hand round tea or food without falling over one another. We feel all the time that these parents are laughing at our awkwardness, that the girls have labelled us all as old fossils, bloodless, not unlike harmless lunatics: their brothers will certainly not tend to remove that impression when asked. Altogether I felt ashamed of my profession for the whole of that day. I would willingly forget it.