This is not so surprising as it sounds. A schoolmaster's life is one long pose. His perpetual demeanour is that of a blameless enthusiast. A boy never hears a master swear--at least, not if the master can help it; he seldom sees him smoke or drink; he never hears him converse upon any but regulation topics, and then only from the point of view of a rather bigoted archangel. The idea that a master in his private capacity may go to a music-hall, or back a horse, or be casual in his habits, or be totally lacking in religious belief, would be quite a shock to a boy. It is true that when half-a-dozen ribald spirits are gathered round the Lower Study fire after tea, libellous tongues are unloosed. The humorist of the party draws joyous pictures of his Housemaster staggering home to bed after a riotous evening with an Archdeacon, or being thrown out of the Empire in the holidays. But no one in his heart takes these legends seriously--least of all their originator. They are merely audacious irreverences. All day and every day the boy sees the master, impeccably respectable in cap and gown, rebuking the mildest vices, extolling the dullest virtues, singing the praises of industry and application, and attending Chapel morning and evening. A boy has little or no intuition: he judges almost entirely by externals. To him a master is not as other men are: he is a special type of humanity endowed with a permanent bias towards energetic respectability, and grotesquely ignorant of the seamy side of life. The latter belief in particular appears to be quite ineradicable. But in truth the scholastic hierarchy is a most complicated fabric. At the summit of the Universe stands the Head. After him come the senior masters--or, as they prefer somewhat invidiously to describe themselves, the permanent staff--then the junior masters. The whole body are divided and subdivided again into little groups--classical men, mathematical men, science men, and modern-language men--each group with its own particular axe to grind and its own tender spots. Then follow various specialists, not always resident; men whose life is one long and usually ineffectual struggle to convince the School--including the Head--that music, drawing, and the arts generally are subjects which ought to be taken seriously, even under the British educational system. As already noted, after the Head--quite literally--come the Housemasters. They are always after him: one or other of the troop is perpetually on his trail; and unless the great man displays the ferocity of the tiger or the wisdom of the serpent, they harry him exceedingly. Behold him undergoing his daily penance--in audience in his study after breakfast. To him enter severally: A., a patronising person, with a few helpful suggestions upon the general management of the School. He usually begins: "In the old Head's day, we never, under any circumstances----"