The scheme, in fact, sprang out of enthusiasm and had no bottom in experience. It may be true that all men are brothers, but it is not logical to infer from that that all brothers are the better for each other's society. The raw Brazilians, Chilians, Nicaraguans and what not who were drawn from their native forests and plunged into the company of blockish Yorkshire lads, or sharp-faced London boys, were only scared into rebellion and to demonstration after their manner. They used the knife sometimes; they hardly ever assimilated; and they taught us nothing that we were the better of knowing. Quite the contrary. We taught them football, I think, and I remember a negro from Bermuda, a giant of a fellow who raged over the ground like a goaded bull when that game was being played, to the consternation of his opponents. He had a younger brother with inordinately long arms, like a great lax ape, a cheerful, grinning, harmless creature as I remember him. He was a football player too; his hug was that of an octopus which swallowed you all. As for the English, in return for their football lore they received the gift of tobacco. I learned to smoke at fifteen from a Chilian called Perez, a wizened, preternaturally wise, old youth. Nobody in the world could have been wise as he looked, and nobody else in the school as dull as he really was. Over this motley assembly was set as house-master a ferocious Scotchman of great parts, but no discretion; and there were assistants, too, of scholarship and refinement, who, if they had had the genius for education, without which these things are nothing, might have put humanity into some of us. When it was past the time I discovered this, and one of them became my friend and helper. I then discovered the tragedy of our system from the other side. For the pain is a two-edged sword, and imbrues the breast of the pedagogue even while it bleeds the pupil to inanition. That poor man, scholar, gentleman, humourist, poet, as he was, held boys in terror. He misdoubted them; they made him self-conscious, betrayed him into strange hidden acts of violence, rendered him incapable of instruction except of the most conventional kind. All his finer nature, his humanism, was paralysed. We thought him a poor fool, and got a crude entertainment out of his antics. Actually he was tormenting in a flame; and we thought his contortions ridiculous. God help us all, how are we to get at each other, caged creatures as we are! But this is indeed a tragic business, and I don't want you to tear your hair.