to follow the example of a small acquaintance of my own and write home on a post-card, "I like A [one master], but I hate B [another master]," you may be perfectly certain that if A is infinitely flattered, B will be yet more infinitely amused. And I will venture to predict that you will, like most of us, live to acknowledge that the years you spent at school formed the far-and-away happiest period of your life.

It would be unfair to apply the title of malade imaginaire to every unhappy little wight who comes to school labelled delicate when he is nothing of the sort, because the imagination is so much more frequently his mother's than his own. He has probably been brought up in a home where medicine in one form or another is regarded as a staple article of diet. His mother not only has at her fingers' ends the whole pharmacopoeia of the Galen or Hippocrates of the day, but boasts an intimate acquaintance with every page of 'Graham's Domestic Medicine,' and makes daily additions, entirely out of her own head, to the large manuscript volume of prescriptions which has become an heirloom in the family. In the background looms a mysterious figure, the family doctor, authority to be called upon to play his part more frequently even than Crispinus, the present terror of the younger members of the family at home, and in no distant future the béte noir, or, better still, the bogie - man of the preparatory school - master. Yes; I have no doubt on re

flection that that "bogie - man describes the gentleman better than bête noir. The latter term seems to imply something actual or existent in word or deed, but there is a glamour of unreality about the former. I do not mean to imply that the family doctor is non-existent, but I affirm without hesitation that, if he is really to be credited with having talked one tithe of the nonsense which a hysterical or imaginative lady is in the habit of imputing to him, his proper position in life is that of permanent in-patient of a lunatic asylum. The schoolmaster is one degree less sceptical than Betsy Prig. Prepared to accept the existence of Mrs Harris as a fact, he often finds himself unable to swallow all the theories that are attributed to that truly wonderful lady. Arriving at school with his play-box chockfull of home remedies, and his memory crowded by various hygienic precautions to taken and petty rules about things to be avoided, the poor little new-comer's thoughts are so entirely centred upon himself and his own possible or probable ailments that hearty work and hearty play cannot at once be expected of him. It is a point in his favour, at all events, that he has won his way to a new atmosphere and new surroundings; that he does not fear from morning to night discussions or arguments about his own little interior; that he is not questioned and cross-questioned about his feelings or his symptoms; that he does not have his temperature taken in

be

the morning, at midday, and again before he goes to bed; that the house is not turned upside-down because he has forgotten to take his invigorating pill before breakfast, or his blood - making draught after dinner. If he has not been a voluntary victim of the home system of health espionage, he may be found to work out his own cure. For when he sees that other boys round him thrive and flourish without taking medicine by the bucketful, that pale-faced Jones minor can get fifty runs without dying of heart disease, and that Robinson, Robinson, though he sneezes at intervals, neither takes to his bed nor threatens to have pneumonia, he begins to pluck up courage on his

own account.

"Need I take those beastly pills before breakfast?" he inquires of the matron, a far more potent authority than any master.

"Leave them off for a day or two, Master White, and see how you feel," says that wise woman, whose fingers have been itching for a week to throw the pill-box out of the window.

Three days later he announces that he is feeling ever so much jollier, and advances another request

"Do you think I need go on with that horrid stuff that makes me feel so sick after dinner?"

Again temporary abstinence is sanctioned, and by the end of six weeks pills and draughts become things of the past. There may be wails and lamentations at home when the play

box on being unpacked is found to contain pretty well any article in the world except a patent- medicine bottle; but dear old paterfamilias steps in to the rescue at last, declares that he has never seen Jack look so well before, and-for a little strong language goes a long way when there is hysteria about-that he'll be d-d if he is going to have the house smelling like a chemist's shop in future."

When in more obstinate cases the infection has gone so deep that Master Green evidently prefers to be regarded as a chronic invalid, I have heard it suggested that a dose of birch-rod, to be taken externally, and thoroughly well rubbed in, might prove an effective remedy, and were it possible to make the treatment retrospective, and affecting the original transgressors, I would most certainly recommend it.

I have no doubt, my dear Cornelia, that you have long since written me down a brute. But at the same time let me point out to you that if your unhappy little boy really and truly has all the ailments that you attribute to him, school is no place for him. If, on the other hand, on calm reflection, you are willing to admit that perhaps you have exaggerated some of the symptoms, that things are not quite so bad as you represented, and that even the family doctor now says that the boy is no longer too delicate to go to school, pack him off to school by all means, but do not try to manage him from home. The general-command

ing is held responsible for the conduct of operations in the presence of the enemy. That campaign is predoomed to failure where the general is continually hampered and worried by orders and counterorders from home.

"But what does Mr Blank know about my boy's constitution?"

"May I tell you, dear lady, that Mr Blank has in his time had to do with about a thousand little boys' constitutions, and that at least one hundred of those thousand boys have been really delicate and five hundred more reputed to be so. It is as much Mr Blank's interest and business in life to look after the health of the boys who pass through his hands as it is to teach them. And for that reason he has been at pains to secure the services of a matron who knows ten times as much about little boys and their ailments as your old nurse has ever had the chance of knowing, and who is guided by the advice of a doctor who has made little boys his peculiar study for many years past. You will find that even your staunch ally, the family doctor, will in the future limit his interference to a letter recommending his late patient to his new adviser, and giving his own diagnosis of the case, always provided that it really is a case. Do the same yourself, if you like, by the matron, and then cease to worry and to fuss. As in other matters, so in health, neither you nor the schoolmaster nor the school-matron can command success, but the latter pair will

try quite as zealously as yourself to deserve it.

One more type of boy, Boy Plausible and Explanatory. This is a curious little mortal, a victim in some cases of excessive conscientiousness, in others of over-readiness towards self-justification. The intention of the over-conscientious may be good, but there is a tendency to confound lucidity and verbosity. Those were heathens, dear Cornelia, who thought that they would be heard for their much speaking, speaking, and you will be doing a kind thing for your little fellow if you bring him up on the old principle, "Least said, soonest mended.'

Boy trained on the opposite system is apt to become too much of a Pharisee for my liking, and in his anxiety to make out a good story for himself, incurs the danger of trespassing on the wrong side of the line that separates falsehood from truth. I am not by way of writing a homily on truth, but may I say that in the modern Preparatory School a boy has very little excuse for telling lies. The reign of terrorism in schools-there was a good deal of that in days of old-is fortunately past. Petty acts of mischief are now no longer accounted crimes, nor is an accident regarded as evidence of vicious disposition. In days when-for so the school Draco had ordained-a broken window and a flagrant lie were visited with one and the same form of punishment, the successful liar might easily have come to be regarded as a hero. Injustice or uneven justice or

impatience on the trainer's part are things which provoke retaliation in the form of lying from the pupil. See to it, Cornelia, that there be no injustice or impatience in the home-training, and that your boy be taught to give a plain and unvarnished account of his peccadilloes, in full confidence that he will receive that even-handed justice at home which he will later on receive at school. Be ready above all things to believe that there are more just than there are unjust "beasts" "beasts" among school

masters.

Let me give you for your comfort a dialogue I can very easily imagine between a certain schoolmaster whom I have in my mind, of the most pronounced modern type, a little unconventional perhaps, but among the best of the day, and a small culprit, who, having broken a window, might-with a little encouragement-spin a long yarn about nothing.

Master. Hey? What? Broken a window? Stone, of course! Boy. Yes, sir; I only

Master. Made a bad shot. Shouldn't throw stones at all if you can't throw straight, so you'll have to pay for the window. Fine day, isn't it? Trot off!

When your father was at school, madam, the same story had another ending.

"Broken a window? I shall flog you for that. Only throwing a stone! I shall flog you for that."

I think that you will admit

that your son will not be so sorely tempted to screen a fault by a lie at his school as his grandfather was tempted in the days of old. But you will have to do your part in seeing that he is an honest boy to start with.

I have written so much about the different sorts of geese in a Preparatory School that I have little space remaining for the swans. These birds are by no means rare in our Zoological Gardens, if not quite so common as their original proprietors are apt to imagine. If they come from the home-training as bond fide swans, there is not much fear that they will sensibly deteriorate; some of them may even improve a little. But the triumph and the aim of the schoolmaster's art is to prove to the world that that little grey bird which had promised to be an ugly duckling can by a little management be induced to shine out in its true colours as a glorious swan. The schoolmaster, my dear Cornelia, may not be an angel, but there is just this one thing angelical as well as human about him: the tiresome little scamp whose gradual improvement he has been diligently watching will always be nearer to his heart than the immaculate darling of imagination or of fiction could ever by any possibility become. "We all," says Aristotle, "have more affection for what we have achieved with toil, as those who have made money love it more than those who have inherited it."

THE horizon to the west was keen as the blade of a knife, and over it all colours swam and blended in an ecstasy of sunset.

"There is more blood than peace in a sky like that," observed the Vrouw Grobelaar from her arm-chair on the stoep. "When I was a child, I never saw a mess of fire in the west but I thought it betokened the end of the world. Ah, well, one grows wiser!"

"Green is for love," said Katje. "Do you see any green in the sunset?" I saw a mile of it, edging on a sea of orange and a mountain of azure.

"Where?" demanded the old lady. "Oh, that—that's almost blue, which means sin in marriage. But naming the colours in the sky is a wasteful foolishness, and the folk that are guided by them always tumble in the end. When Jan Uys was on his deathbed, he said Dia had always been counting counting the colours with the Irishman, and that's what caused all the trouble." Katje sighed. "He was man of sixty,' unconscious Vrouw continued, "and a Boer of the best, with a farm below the Hangklip where my cousin Barend's aunt is now.

the

He

was a rich and righteous man, too, and as upstanding and strong as any man of his age that I ever saw. He had buried four good wives, so nobody can say he wasn't a good husband, but he had a way with him - something heavy and ugly, like a beast or a Kaffir-which many girls didn't like. His fifth wife was Dia, who came from Lord knows where, somewhere down south, and she was only sixteen.

"I believe in fitting a girl with a husband when she is ripe, and sixteen is old enough with any well-grown maid. But in the case of Dia, it is a pity somebody did not stop to think.

She was more than

half a child; just a slender, laughing, running thing that liked sweets and peaches better than coffee and meat, and used to throw stones. She threw one at my cart, with her arm low like a boy, and hit my Kaffir on the neck, and then squeaked and ran to hide among the kraals. Yes, somebody should have stopped to think before they coupled her to big Jan Uys, with his scowl and his red eyes and white beard, and his sixty hard years behind him."

"I should think so, indeed," was Katje's comment.