common with one's contemporaries than with those who lie outside the circle of one's immediate interests, and this knowledge distresses him. There are times when he feels intensely miserable, others when he feels radiantly happy. At any rate he is living more intensely and less selfishly than he did before. He is on a distinctly higher plane of emotional tension. Indeed in its beginnings such a friendship is certainly good for the elder boy and probably for the younger one; at any rate there is the comfortable knowledge that he has an elder friend to whom he can turn for sympathy and advice; and he is protected thus from many of the dangers to which his good looks might otherwise expose him. The environment of school life does not allow, however, the friendship to retain its first freshness. It becomes conscious of itself. It is noticed by other members of the house: 'Hallo, Jones,' they say, 'seen anything of Morrison this morning?' Jones, being the elder, is embarrassed by what seems to him an accusation of weakness. Morrison is flattered to think that others have recognised and perhaps envied the patronage. Jones begins to make inquiries of his friends, and a series of confidences convinces him that he has reached the condition of being 'keen' on Morrison. This conviction places his friendship on an entirely different and, to a certain extent, official basis. If he had been left alone it is not improbable that he would have made no such discovery. As Morrison would never have more than liked him, his feeling for the smaller boy would not have become defined. Their friendship would have remained in the strictest sense of the word, platonic. But so frail a flower could not hope to flourish for long in the rigid atmosphere of a Public School. Everything in a Public School has to conform to type; there are rules for the proper ordering of every situation. Friendship, like personality, has to pass through the mint.