I made all the boys in my form write centenary appreciations of Dickens, too. I got some queer stuff. He is not half as well known as he ought to be in spite of his great name. But I do wish he had resisted his tendency to caricature. There have been the usual rows. By far the most disconcerting was the expulsion of Mather, who was a school prefect and a scholar of Magdalen, for stealing. It seems impossible to believe. It appears that he was in a House where most of the boys have far too much pocket-money: the very fags own to having "fivers." Poor old Mather was one of eight sons of a penniless country parson: he never had a sou and consequently starved when all the rest of the House were revelling in delicacies. More masters have been poisoning the boys' minds against me. Tony's House-master has been lecturing him about my pernicious influence. I wish I knew what was behind this dark conspiracy. I wish they would give me some facts to go on, and say that just here or just there I was doing harm, but all their accusations are nebulous. Whenever I go up to a man's rooms and beard him in his den, he nearly always denies that he ever said any of the things which were reported of him. It's very difficult to know what to do. I've discovered another wheeze which I use to get original work out of my form. I give out a list of forty or fifty words, ostensibly for spelling, and by the side of these they write a list of synonyms, and then during their next prep. they weave a story round the words I have given them. I have had wonderful results from this simple device. Incidentally the boys love doing it. It stimulates them, especially when they have to read their own efforts aloud. Now that the sports are looming ahead, I get up in the very early mornings and take people for training walks. In the afternoon I run with them across country or round the track. Before I came no one worried much about the sports. I have really got them keen this year, much to Hallows' indignation, because as games master he is responsible for the sports, and he thinks I'm taking too much upon myself in training them daily for weeks before the events. About a dozen of us, Tony and other boys in this House, go off every Sunday to a nook we've found by an inland stream. We call it a training walk: it pans out at twelve miles. By so doing we get right outside the country we know and really begin to get a glimmering of beauty on these glorious warm spring days. It's impossible to imagine now that we were ever snow-bound. It is warm and sunny every day; so much so that "Rugger," and hockey seem indescribably silly games for this time of year. It feels "crickety" weather. I've been writing articles on Hymns and Cross-Country Running for the London Press and had both accepted, which is a bit of luck. Things are looking up. All the same it's a nerve-racking process, waiting to hear one's fate by every post. Editors are as stubborn as mules and without any sense of humanity.