There was once a certain person called Procrustes who is said, in his reception of his visitors, to have adopted a simple and uniform procedure. He invited or compelled each one of them to pass a night in his house. He offered each a bed. He offered them all the same bed; he insisted upon their occupying it. It was a bed so constructed as to suit a man of mediocre size and stature. If any guest of Procrustes was too long for the bed, the superfluity of his limbs was lopped off. If any one was too short, his limbs were stretched to the proper length. It was only the guest whose stature exactly corresponded to the dimensions of the bed that escaped without mutilation. The modern bed of Procrustes is or was a public school. Nowhere in the world is there so keen an appreciation of those who adapt themselves to local tone, temper, and custom. But nowhere is departure, however slight, from the recognised standard of propriety, visited with consequences so unfailing. The society of a public school is a world in itself, self-centred, self-satisfied. It takes but slight account of the principles and practices which obtain in the world of men. It has its own laws, its own fashions, its own accepted code of morals. To these all persons must submit, or the penalty of resistance is heavy. Its virtues are not altogether those of men and women, nor are its vices. Some actions of which the world thinks comparatively little, it honours with profound admiration. To others, which the world thinks much of, it is indifferent. Mere physical courage, for instance, is esteemed too highly. Self-repression is depreciated. Hypocrisy is loathed. But the inverted hypocrisy--the homage which virtue pays to vice--or, in other words, the affectation of being worse than one really is, is common among boys and is thought to be honourable. Truth, again, is not esteemed as a virtue of universal application, but is relative to particular persons, a falsehood, if told to a schoolfellow, being worse than if told to a master. Nobody can be intimate with a community of schoolboys and not feel that a morality so absolute, yet so narrow, and in some ways so perverted, bears a certain resemblance to the morality of a savage tribe. It is rather the germ of morals than morality itself.