What a boy admires most of all is ability--ability to do things, naturally and spontaneously. He worships bodily strength, bodily grace, swiftness of foot, straightness of eye, dashing courage, and ability to handle a bat or gun, or control the movements of a ball, with dexterity and--ease. Great emphasis must be placed on the ease. Owing to a curious kink in the schoolboy mind, these qualities depreciate at least fifty per cent. if they are not _natural_ qualities--that is, if they have been acquired by laborious practice or infinite pains. The water-funk who ultimately schools himself into a brilliant high-diver, or the overgrown crock who trains himself, by taking thought, into an effective athlete, is a person of no standing. At school sports you often hear such a conversation as this: "Good time for the mile, wasn't it?" "Yes; but look at the way he has been sweating up for it. He's been in training for weeks. Did you see Jinks in the high jump, though? He cleared five foot four, and never turned out to practice once. That's pretty hot stuff if you like!" Or: "Pretty useful, old Dobbin taking six wickets!" "Oh, that rotter! Last year he could hardly get the ball within a yard of the crease. I hear he has been spending hours and hours in the holidays bowling by himself at a single stump. He's no earthly good, really." It is the way of the world. The tortoise is a dreadfully unpopular winner. To an Englishman, a real hero is a man who wins a championship in the morning, despite the fact that he was dead drunk the night before. This contempt for the plodder extends also to the scholastic sphere. A boy has no great love or admiration for learning in itself, but he appreciates brilliance in scholarship--as opposed to hard work. If you come out top of your form, or gain an entrance scholarship at the University, your friends will applaud you vigorously, but only if they are perfectly certain that you have done no work whatever. If you are suspected of midnight oil or systematic labour, the virtue is gone out of your performance. You are merely a "swot." The general attitude appears to be that unless you can take--or appear to take--an obstacle in your stride, that obstacle is not worth surmounting. This leads to a good deal of hypocrisy and make-believe. For instance: "Pretty good, Sparkleigh getting a Schol, wasn't it?" remark the rank and file to one another. "He never did a stroke of work for it, and when he went up for his exam. he went on the bust the night before. Jolly good score off the Head: he said he wouldn't get one!... Grubbe? Oh yes, he got one all right. I should just think so! The old sap! We'd have rooted him if he hadn't!"