“Are you still inspecting schools? Still in the same district? Do you know our man, Mr. M. or N.?”
“No; we never meet our colleagues outside the Division.”
“Ah, dear me: I wish you would come to us instead. Our man is very unpopular; requires so much in the way of improvements. Why, what do you think he did last March?” &c., &c.
It was pleasant to think that on that summer day all my school managers were wandering about England, making the same complaint about me.
It is a pleasant profession for a peaceably-minded man. If I were asked to state its principal charm, I should say it is Irresponsibility. The income is moderate, but sufficient and certain. In the dim and distant future looms a pension, assuring bread and butter. The standard of comfort, therefore, is assured: unfruitfulness of honest work does not threaten poverty; Patients, clients, customers, cannot leave one.
But the chief comfort is that there is no personal worry. A doctor grieves that his patients die; a barrister gnashes his teeth at the blind stupidity of judges and juries, who heeded him not; a parish priest lies sleepless o’ nights, sorrowing for the wickedness of Crooked Court, notably for the backsliding of hopeful converts. But the entire collapse of the arithmetic in Crooked Court Board School would not deprive the “irresponsible, indolent reviewer” of a moment’s rest. The work is often very heavy, but it is not work that kills: it is worry.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] A colleague insists on a variant: “when John Gilpin’s horse couldn’t.”
CHAPTER XIX
CHAUNTERS’
“I heard once more in college fanes
The storms their high-built organs make,
And thunder-music, rolling, shake
The prophets blazon’d on the panes.”