“My schooling before Oxford I now feel was wretched. They didn’t teach me how to learn. The teachers themselves were mediocre. They may have had a smattering of the classics—but that doesn’t constitute fitness to teach. Have you read the chapter on education in H. G. Well’s ‘Joan and Peter’? That strikes me as true.
“I’m glad my orphan children at St. Anthony are getting the right kind of training from those who understand their business.”
The Doctor still cherishes the insignia of rowing and athletic clubs to which he was attached while at Oxford. One of his pet coats wears the initials “O. U. R. F. C.” for the Oxford University Rugby Football Club. He also stroked the Torpid crew, and the crew of the London Hospital.
He hates—in fact, he refuses, like Peter Pan—to grow up or to grow old. “Isn’t it too bad that just when our minds have struck their stride and are doing their best work we should have to end it all?” Not that he has the least fear of Death. In the country of his loving labour, the fisher-folk face Death so often in their lawful occasions, for the sake of you and me who enjoy the savour of the codfish and the lobster, that when Death finally comes he comes not as a dark and awful figure but as a familiar and a friend.
“PLEASE LOOK AT MY TONGUE, DOCTOR!”
“NEXT!”