I have made friends during the last two or three weeks with Copplestone, who is a House-master of a very religious turn of mind. He dislikes corporal punishment and is hence looked upon as anæmic both by his boys and his colleagues. He reads (quaintly enough) nothing but Arnold Bennett. I go up to his rooms and talk by the hour about "The Old Wives' Tale," "Clayhanger," and "Hilda Lessways": he is rather a pitiable sort of man: he feels that he owes his allegiance to the old school, and yet he feels that we represent the humanitarian side of education. He is like Sir Thomas More, torn between his reason and emotion: like Sir Thomas More he is going to suffer for his ill-timed birth. Had he been born ten years earlier he would have been a whole-hearted upholder of _l'ancien régime_. Had he been born ten years later he would have been one of us and not cared a rap about the old men or tradition. His only course is to resign and become a village priest: he would be admirable with old ladies, and the younger members of his congregation would approve of him because of his love for Arnold Bennett. Here he behaves like Shelley's mother, alternately petting and spoiling his boys, punishing them out of all proportion to their offence at one moment, only to let them off and feed them extravagantly the next. The result is that no boy can tell what he is going to do. He is quite unreliable: he allows himself to be hopelessly "ragged" for two days and then flares up and half kills a quite inoffensive youngster who happens to cough. I feel really sorry for him, for no one cares for him. He has successfully fallen between two stools and become despised by both the great opposing forces on the staff. He is neither new nor old, hot nor cold, and exactly fulfils that horrible prophecy of Ezekiel about being spewed out of the mouth of all parties. Thank Heaven this term is over. I haven't learnt much more about my job: I have had some illusions shattered: I have luckily made a few more friends, but boys are queer--one is apt to offend them without in the least knowing why. I shouldn't care to spend my time, like Smithson, who lives for nothing but to curry favour with every boy he meets: he's as bad as the type of boy who always "sucks up" to masters, the very worst sort of creature. Smithson "treats" them all lavishly: he makes fun of the weaklings and the unpopular, he "toadies" to the prefects and generally makes a damned fool of himself. He doesn't see, poor devil, that popularity, like Fortune, is a fickle jade, and only pursues those who take no notice of her at all. Good God! Fancy becoming a schoolmaster in order to be popular! _May 4, 1911_