such wise that no eye could rove or mouth gape without instant detection.
"Viva voce Latin Elegiacs!" announced Mr. Dumaresq, with enormous enthusiasm. He declaimed the opening couplet of an English lyric. "Now throw that into Latin form. Adamson, I'm speaking to you! Don't sit mooning there, gaper. Think! Think!
Come, lasses and lads, get leave of your dads —
Come on, man, come on!
—And away to the maypole, hey!
Say something! Wake up! How are you going to get over 'maypole'? No maypoles in Rome. Tell him, somebody! 'Saturnalia'—not bad. (Crabtree, stand up on the bench, and look at me, not your boots.) Why won't 'Saturnalia' do? Will it scan? Think! Come along, come along!"
In this fashion he hounded his dazed pupils through couplet after couplet, until the task was finished. Then, dashing at the blackboard, he obliterated the result of an hour's labour with a sweep of the duster.
"Now go to your desks and write out a fair copy," he roared savagely.
So effective were Mr. Dumaresq's methods of inculcation that eighteen out of his thirty boys succeeded in producing flawless fair copies. The residue were ferociously bidden to an "extra" after dinner. Mr. Dumaresq's "extras" were famous. He held at least one every day, not infrequently for the whole form. He possessed the one priceless attribute of the teacher: he never spared himself. Other masters would set impositions or give a boy the lesson to write out: Dumaresq, denying himself cricket or squash, would come into his form-room and wrestle with perspiring defaulters all during a hot afternoon until the task was well and truly done. Boys learned more from him in one term than from any other master in a year; but their days were but labour and sorrow. During the previous term a certain particularly backward member of his form had incurred some damage—to wit, a fractured collar-bone—during the course of a house-match. The pain was considerable, and when dragged from the scrummage he was in a half-fainting condition. He revived as he was being carried to the Sanatorium.
"What's up?" he inquired mistily.
"Broken neck, inflammation of the lungs, ringworm, and leprosy, old son," announced one of his bearers promptly. "You are going to the San."
"Good egg!" replied the injured warrior. "I shall get off Dummy's extra after tea!"