To those men who by nature and disposition were unable to make their authority felt, school hours must have often been a time of veritable torment. Generally well-meaning men of gentle nature, when they did punish they almost invariably punished wrong or in an ineffectual manner, their usual practice being either to set some tremendous “poena,” which they afterwards revoked, or settle upon the wrong boy, to whom in the end they were obliged to accord something very like an apology. In a few rare instances the perfectly legitimate loss of temper by a master led to very grave consequences. Goaded to fury by a long course of deliberate insubordination, some tortured tutor would at last turn upon a pupil and box his ears. Physical chastisement by a master in any form whatever was then strictly forbidden, the infliction of corporal punishment being reserved for the Head and Lower Masters alone. The boys were perfectly aware of this, and instances occurred of grave consequences attending a well-deserved blow. One master, I believe, was more or less compelled to leave the school because he had hit a particularly impertinent boy with a book, and several instances of masters receiving reprimands occurred from time to time. By the irony of fate, the most unsuccessful masters were sometimes the cleverest men, who, however, had begun badly and obtained a reputation which caused them to be tortured by successive generations of boys. Of one of these unfortunate pedagogues it was said that during school hours the first rank of his division talked, the second whistled, and the third sang. [SN: AN UNFORTUNATE MASTER]