[PROLOGUE]
Why do not English boys care for learning?
Lord Bryce (January 3, 1914).
[MODERN SHELL: TO-DAY]
The boy's first intimation that a new day of miserable waste has begun is received by the clanging in his ears of a discordant bell by a man servant, whose sole claim to attention in these pages is that he also acts as the senior boys' bookmaker's agent, and supplier of cigarettes, tobacco, matches and pipes at a rate highly profitable to himself. The compulsory bath over (no boy would wash unless he was compelled, that is an idea that you who live on adages and saws which are one tissue of lies will find it hard to believe, but it is true), after the compulsory bath, I say, he hurries into his clothes, dashes downstairs and just gets to the chapel as the doors close behind him. The service need not be given in detail: it is merely a roll-call with a little music thrown in; the boys are ardently urged to join in the responses or psalms, sometimes with threats, but except on Sundays no part whatever is taken by the congregation in the service. They mark with satisfaction that their form master has noted their presence and then proceed with their disturbed slumbers, unless the youth on their right or left has some racy story or spicy bit of news to impart, or there is some friend across the gangway of the aisle at whom they wish to gaze, not being permitted by law to speak owing to disparity of age. The fascination of the loved face grows and the service becomes interesting until the Head Master's eye, ever roving, searching for evil, lights on these two: they blush, hide their faces under a pretence of praying, and march out; the service is over. A scamper ensues towards the classrooms for the most hated and slackest school of the day: that on an empty stomach before breakfast.
The scene is an ill-lighted, cobweb-ridden, white-wash-walled, low-ceilinged room, fitted with old oak desks, on which are carved many thousands of initials and into which several obscene remarks are deeply inked; long low benches without backs incite the boys to lounge forward with bent shoulders; there is no relief on any of the walls to hide the hideous plaster except a map of Palestine dated 1871.
The blackboard is rough and cracked, and whatever writing is inscribed on it is indiscernible when the lights are on.