Presently they were all assembled, and the Head appeared upon his rostrum. There was a deathlike stillness: not a boy stirred.
Then the Head spoke.
"Any boy," he announced, "found trespassing upon the railway-line in future will be expelled. You may go."
They went. The organisation of that school is still a model of perfection, and its scholarship list is exceptionally high. But the school has never forgiven the Head, and never will so long as tradition and sentiment count for anything in this world.
So far, then, we have accumulated the following virtues for the Headmaster. He must be a gentleman, a picturesque figure-head, and must possess a sense of humour.
He must also, of course, be a ruler. Now you may rule men in two ways—either with a rapier or a bludgeon; but a man who can gain his ends with the latter will seldom have recourse to the former. The Headmaster who possesses on the top of other essential qualities the power of being uncompromisingly and divinely rude, is to be envied above all men. For him life is full of short cuts. He never argues. "L'école, c'est moi," he growls, and no one contradicts him. Boys idolise him. In his presence they are paralysed with fear, but away from it they glory in his ferocity of mien and strength of arm. Masters rave impotently at his brusquerie and absolutism; but A says secretly to himself: "Well, it's a treat to see the way the old man keeps B and C up to the collar." As for parents, they simply refuse to
face him, which is the head and summit of that which a master desires of a parent.
Such a man is Olympian, having none of the foibles or soft moments of a human being. He dwells apart, in an atmosphere too rarefied for those who intrude into it. His subjects never regard him as a man of like passions with themselves: they would be quite shocked if such an idea were suggested to them. I once asked a distinguished alumnus of a great school, which had been ruled with consummate success for twenty-four years by such a Head as I have described, to give me a few reminiscences of the great man as a man—his characteristics, his mannerisms, his vulnerable points, his tricks of expression, his likes and dislikes, and his hobbies.
My friend considered.
"He was a holy terror," he announced, after profound meditation.