Robert Campbell (a favourite pupil) left the school to-day. He had reached the age-limit.... Truly it is like death: I stand by a new made grave, and I have no hope of a resurrection. Robert is dead. Precisely because I have lived on close terms with this, and the wicked waste of it, I appeal to you who are so much more fortunate than this Robert or this Margaret and will have far more to say in the world, to think of them--how many they are. I am not sentimentalising. When an Elementary Schoolmaster spreads himself and tells me he looks upon every child entering his school as a potential Lord Chancellor, I answer that, as I expect, so I should hope, to die before seeing the world a Woolsack. Jack cannot ordinarily be as good as his master; if he were, he would be a great deal better. You have given Robert a vote, however, and soon you will have to give it to Margaret. Can you not give them also, in their short years at school, something to sustain their souls in the long Valley of Humiliation? Do you remember this passage in "The Pilgrim's Progress"--as the pilgrims passed down that valley? Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a Boy feeding his Father's Sheep. The Boy was in very mean Cloaths, but of a very fresh and well-favoured Countenance, and as he sate by himself he Sung. Hark, said Mr Greatheart, to what the Shepherd's Boy saith. Well, it was a very pretty song, about Contentment. He that is down need fear no fall He that is low, no Pride: He that is humble ever shall Have God to be his Guide. But I care less for its subject than for the song. Though life condemn him to live it through in the Valley of Humiliation, I want to hear the Shepherd Boy singing. [Footnote 1: The reference given is _Zeitschr. f. Ethnologie_, XIX. 30 ff.] LECTURE V ON READING FOR EXAMINATIONS WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 1917 I You, Gentlemen, who so far have followed with patience this course of lectures, advertised, maybe too ambitiously, as 'On the Art of Reading,' will recall to your memory, when I challenge it across the intervals of Vacation, that three propositions have been pretty steadily held before you. The _first_: (bear me out) that, man's life being of the length it is, and his activities multifarious as they are, out of the mass of printed matter already loaded and still being shot upon this planet, he _must_ make selection. There is no other way. The _second_: that--the time and opportunity being so brief, the mass so enormous, and the selection therefore so difficult--he should select the books that are best for him, and take them _absolutely,_ not frittering his time upon books written about and around the best: that--in their order, of course--the primary masterpieces shall come first, and the secondary second, and so on; and mere chat about any of them last of all.