What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? It is, as I have repeatedly said, that a Boarding-School, whether public or private, is not the ideal method of educating boys; but, pending that great increase of Day-Schools for the sons of the upper classes which Dr. Warre foresees, it is the only method practically available for the great majority of English parents. Whether the instruction imparted in the Public Schools is or is not worth the amount which it costs is a matter of opinion; and, indeed, as long as the parent (who, after all, has to pay) is satisfied, no one else need trouble himself about the question. As to domestic arrangements and provision for health and comfort, it may be frankly conceded that the Schoolboy of to-day is much better off than his father or even his elder brother was; and that the improvements in his lot have tended to diminish the profits on which the House-Master used to grow rich.
P.S.—Having the terrors of the ferule before my eyes, let me hasten to say, with all possible explicitness, that in my account of my correspondence with the outraged Schoolmaster, I have aimed at giving a general impression rather than a verbal transcript.
XVII
SQUARES
All true lovers of Lewis Carroll will remember that Hiawatha, when he went a-photographing, "pulled and pushed the joints and hinges" of his Camera,
"Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid."
But it is not of squares in the mathematical sense that I speak to-day, but rather of those enclosed spaces, most irregularly shaped and proportioned, which go by the name of "Squares" in London.