The Lighter Side of School Life

The Lighter Side of School Life

First of all there is the Headmaster of Fiction. He is invariably called "The Doctor," and he wears cap and gown even when birching malefactorswhich he does intermittently throughout the dayor attending a cricket match. For all we know he wears them in bed. He speaks a language peculiar to himselfa language which at once enables you to recognise him as a Headmaster; just as you may recognise a stage Irishman from the fact that he says "Begorrah!", or a stage sailor from the fact that he has to take constant precautions with his trousers. Thus, the "Doctor" invariably addresses his cowering pupils as "Boys!"a form of address which in reality only survives nowadays in places where you are invited to "have another with me"and if no audience of boys is available at the moment, he addresses a single boy as if he were a whole audience. To influential parents he is servile and oleaginous, and he treats his staff with fatuous pomposity. Such a being may have existedmay existbut we have never met him.[4] What of the Headmaster of Fact? To condense him into a type is one of the most difficult things in the world, for this reason. Most of us have known only one Headmaster in our livesif we have known more we are not likely to say so, for obvious reasonsand it is difficult for Man (as distinct from Woman), to argue from the particular to the general. Moreover, the occasions upon which we have met the subject of our researches at close quarters have not been favourable to dispassionate character-study. It is difficult to form an unbiassed or impartial judgment of a man out of material supplied solely by a series of brief interviews spread over a period of yearsinterviews at which his contribution to the conversation has been limited to a curt request that you will bend over, and yours to a sequence of short sharp ejaculations. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 34721
Author: Hay, Ian
Release Date: Dec 22, 2010
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Illustrator: Baumer, Lewis Christopher Edward, 1870-1963