Prefectship is the coping-stone of a public school education. The boy who leaves without becoming a prefect has missed, we are continually assured, the most important part of his school career. And yet what percentage of an old boys' list, I wonder, reaches the dignity of house prefectship. One gets the impression sometimes that every one, provided he stays on long enough, becomes a prefect. All school stories follow a convention. They open with the new boy closing behind him the green-baize door of the head master's study, gazing wistfully down a long corridor at the end of which is the oak door of the day room. From behind that door comes to him the sound of laughter and eager conversation. There is the unknown, mysterious world he has to enter. That is how every school story opens. And every school story closes on the departure of a hero crowned with athletic and academic honours. The space in between is occupied with the 'see-saw up' process. How else a school story is to be constructed I do not know. It has to be narrative rather than dramatic. But it gives the impression that public school life for the average boy is a slow voyage from fag to prefect. Indeed, if _Peg's Paper_ printed school stories, 'From Fag to Prefect' would probably be the title. Such a tale would, however, be little more generally applicable than a tale of army life entitled 'From Bugler to Brigadier.' The majority of schoolboys do not become prefects. But the people in whose hands the framing of the convention lies think they do, because they did themselves. The dwellers in Mayfair think London consists of a few drawing-rooms and a few restaurants. The schoolmaster naturally follows the conventional course, otherwise he would not be a schoolmaster. If he had not reached the Upper Sixth he would not be in a position to teach. If he had not reached the Eleven he would not be a games master. The story-writer may not be an athlete, but it is hardly possible that a man who can write an interesting book should have failed to make some mark at school if he had stayed out his full time. And so there has grown up a tendency to ignore entirely the careers of the insignificant, which form the background for more striking exploits. And yet, as always, the insignificant are in the majority.