Week after week passed, and I was pushed on with a rapidity that surprised me. I passed through the earlier rules of algebra, came to simple equations, understood them; passed on to quadratics, and at length came to cubics. Mr Rouse’s method of teaching was perfect. To him there was no such thing as a difficulty; if he found that I was puzzled at anything, he at once came to the rescue, and asserted that “it was a very simple thing.” In a few words he would give an explanation which made the problem thoroughly clear, and often caused me to wonder how I could have been so stupid as not to see clearly before he explained the difficulty to me.
On several occasions Mr Rouse had willingly consented to my going to the theatre, his object seeming to be to give all the liberty he could, and to impress on his pupils the importance of self-dependence.
Three months after joining Mr Rouse I was working at subjects that only the first and most advanced class attempted at Hostler’s. I could scarcely believe that all this was real. It had been so impressed on me at Hostler’s that I was intensely stupid, and that even a clever boy could not reach the first class from where I had been in less than a year, that I began to fear I must be cramming and had not a thorough sound knowledge of the subjects I was supposed to have learnt.
One day I suggested this difficulty to Mr Rouse, telling him how slowly boys went on at Hostler’s, compared to the rate at which I had advanced.
Mr Rouse replied that, instead of cramming, he hoped I had thought carefully over and thoroughly understood what I had done, and he believed I was less crammed than Mr Hostler’s boys, whom he knew learnt most things by rote like parrots.
As regards their Euclid I knew this opinion was correct, for I understood now far more of geometry than I felt certain any of Hostler’s boys did. I could turn problems upside down, and prove principles as well as mere cases, this proficiency being due to the clear and quiet way in which Mr Rouse would explain the various propositions.
Nothing could be more satisfactory than my progress up to within a month of the examination. I felt considerable hope myself, although I could not get over the feeling that the head boys at Hostler’s must know much more than I knew. One morning, however, on waking, I had a very bad fit of coughing; during the day it became worse. I scarcely slept the following night, and on the next day I learnt that I had a bad attack of hooping-cough.
Mr Rouse looked very grave at the intelligence given him by the doctor, for he knew that I had to pass a medical as well as a mental examination, and that the doctor would not allow me to pass if I had the hooping-cough.
I had now to keep my bed, and was soon leached and blistered, but the cough clung to me most obstinately, and so shook me that I felt too ill to work. I was in this state to within a week of the examination, but I had made up my mind I would take my chance at Woolwich, and well or ill I would go up.
It has often since those days occurred to me that there is in the human mind and human will some power which, if exercised, has the effect of driving off or overcoming sickness; men, it is said, often sink and die from despondency, whilst others, by pure energy as it were, get well. To give in, as it were, to sickness often seems to increase the disease, whilst to fight against it staves it off.