It need hardly be said that this method of selecting a school, while unquestionably typical, would not always lead to the same result. Friend Number Four, for example, might have contradicted Number Three and Number One, and by lauding St. Susan’s to the skies, have sent the son of the house to the school of Aunt Emmeline’s choice. Or, if the case had been thoroughly investigated, the private school might easily have won the favorable decision. As it was, Mr. Lindsay, in considering the boy and his needs as well as his own ideals, proceeded rather more rationally than the average parent. Many a boy is placed in a particular school merely on the strength of a specious advertisement. Some are ejected from home rather than sent to school, the destination being of much less consequence to the selfish parents than their own relief from responsibility. Others again, through unwholesome dread of evil influences, are turned over to a family of under-masters who wait on them and think for them and keep them in prolonged infancy. But these are extremes of neglect or solicitude. In the end the school is but the opportunity, the vital force is the boy. If the boy is wrong, no school can make him right. Given the right boy in the hands of competent, conscientious men, and the form of the school makes little difference. So thought Mr. Lindsay as he said good-by to his strapping son at Seaton station; and he boarded the train with a clear conscience. CHAPTER II ACQUAINTANCES Lindsay was registered as a middler. Being weak in Latin and Greek, and strong in French and German, he found himself spread over three classes, pushed ahead in modern languages, and degraded among the juniors in classics. To this mixture of classes and associates he resigned himself the more readily, as he honestly purposed to do what the school authorities advised, maintain his position in the middle and senior subjects and work his way up out of the junior class. But the experience of the first few days did not strengthen his confidence. To hear these young boys rattle off declensions and principal parts, run through synopses as he might run through the alphabet, give glib translations of passages through which he must toil his slow and painful way; to see how with every question on ablative or subjunctive, the air quivered with the hands of those eager to answer—all this, with the distractions of strange boys and their stranger acts added to the bewilderment of unfamiliar surroundings, plunged him in despair.