To most people life comes at second hand. They learn from books, cinemas, and plays what are the appropriate emotions and the correct procedure for any given situation. The public school boy is no less conventional than his elders. He allows his inclinations to be directed into the accepted course. He is surprised, in the first place, by a delightful and unexpected emotion; but the surprise soon passes. He has formed just such another attachment as has been formed by practically every senior boy in his house. He exchanges confidences, he seeks the advice of some older boy, and follows the convention. If there were no senior boys, no example, and no convention, the first surprise of charmed bewilderment would endure. In the course of time it might very well be that out of that first romantic story would grow a deep, mutual, and lasting friendship. But such a development is hardly possible in an unnatural society where children and fully grown men are herded indiscriminately together. The example of elder boys, moreover, not only defines the nature of half-perceived emotions; it also forces emotions that would otherwise remain a long while in bud. There are many who consider it is the blood thing to have a _jeune ami_; that such a relationship is the privilege of a house colour. They want to be talked about. They have themselves spoken when juniors with bated breath of supposed 'cases.' They would like to be spoken of like that themselves, to feel themselves moving in an atmosphere of conjecture and intrigue, to gather an added sense of their own importance. Besides this itch, a natural one, to occupy the limelight by copying the customs of the great, there is the subtle influence of indirect example. In the same way that a boy who goes often to the theatre and the cinema and observes there the charming processes of love, begins to long for tenderness, and caresses, and endearments, so does the schoolboy who hears on all sides romantic confidences, find himself drawn into the glittering circle. This lure would at least be removed by the lowering of the age limit. That it would solve all the difficulties I would not for a moment maintain. We cannot imagine a world in which men and women will not desert or betray each other; in which husbands will remain faithful and the unmarried chaste. Why should we expect school life, which is the world in little, to be so startlingly different. Parents refuse to believe that their own children are mortal: 'These things,' they say, 'may happen to our neighbour's children. They do not happen to our own.' And schoolmasters are only too anxious to reassure them. Parents have such faith in their sons that they will believe in the most superficial testimonials. They are so anxious to be deceived.