Eton, like Winchester, has seventy scholars—"King's scholars," or "collagers," as they are called—who are chosen by competitive examination, and are supported by the funds of the foundation. Every year four or five of these are awarded scholarships at King's College, Cambridge, just as the best boys from Winchester go to New College, Oxford. The rest of the boys, as at Winchester, live under the care of masters in houses of about thirty-five boys each, scattered through the town, and are called "oppidans." The oppidans call the collagers "tugs," a word which probably refers to their togas—that is, gowns. Not many years ago the collagers were so poorly fed and housed, and so wretched generally, that the phrase was "beastly tugs"; but of late this class prejudice is dying out, and the fact that several of the collagers have been great athletes and good fellows all round has worked wonders. One still hears of "beastly tugs," and the prejudice against being supported by the college is not yet dead; but one finds it mostly among the younger boys, and even they do not feel it half so much as they pretend.
The government of the school is very like that at Winchester. The Captain of the College has much the same duties as the Prefect of Hall, and is aided by the other best scholars. The oppidans have also a Captain, but he is under the Captain of the College. Besides this, the houses have each a Captain, as the Winchester houses, have Prefects. Of course it does not always happen that the man who leads his house in scholarship is man enough to rule the rest; but if he is not, the leading athletes step in and take matters into their own hands.
THE QUADRANGLE OF THE "COLLEGE."
The punishment masters give for small offences is pœnas—that is, lines of Latin or Greek to write out. In extreme cases the head master "swishes" a boy with a lot of birch twigs tied together. In time past swishing seems to have been about the only means of discipline, and the head master had a regular block for the purpose. One night a lot of old Etonians, who had been celebrating a cricket victory, broke into the room where the block was, and carried it off to London. There they hired rooms and founded an Eton Block Society, to which no one could belong who had not been swished on the block at school.
What Wykehamists call tunding, Etonians call smacking. The only difference is that instead of standing up, the culprit sometimes has to put his head under a table, while the Captain rushes across the room with uplifted rod. Etonians say that though smacking sometimes draws blood, the worst part of the punishment is the suspense of waiting between blows with your head under the table. The offences punished by smacking are disorder and disobedience in the house. On an average, the head master has only half a dozen boys or so to swish each term, and the average boy is not smacked more than a dozen times during his six years at Eton. Many people, of course, think bodily punishment very brutal, but I never knew a public-school boy or a master who did not approve of it as practised nowadays. In fact, you could hardly enlist the older boys on the side of law and order without giving them a means of discipline which the younger boys respect; and if you didn't do this, you would have to give up the best parts of the public schools.
The houses at Eton are clustered about the college, and look very comfortable with their broad, ivy-covered fronts, and window-boxes blazing with flowers. In the description of Winchester, there was so much to say about the college that I had no room to speak of the houses; but at Eton the houses are the more important part. Instead of large common sleeping-rooms, the boys have each a room of his own. These are not usually more than ten feet square, and besides a folding-bed, bath-tub, and wash-stand, they contain not only a fireplace, to cook meals, and a tea table, but also a study table and chair, and sometimes a bookcase and ottoman. You wouldn't think there was much space left for a boy to live in, to say nothing of making a racket, but there is. A favorite joke in some of the houses is to gather all the bath-tubs in a hall, and shove them through the transom into some poor fellow's room. This fills the room so full that the boy who owns it has to get the care-taker to drag out each separate bath-tub, amid vast sound and confusion, before he can go to bed. In the winter months the boys play football up and down the halls, using the doors at either end for goal. This also makes enough noise. But these are not the only diversions. In a number of rooms you will find collections of books far larger and more wisely selected than is usual on the shelves even of American university men.
A boy enters his house at about twelve years old. From this time on he is carefully watched by the house-master, with a view to checking his bad traits and developing his good ones. Most of the masters make it a point to find out all they can about a boy from his parents, and then carry on his training as it was begun; or if he thinks his training unwise, to correct it. The fact that most of the troublesome details of discipline are in the hands of the elder boys makes a master's relations with his pupils unusually frank and affectionate. And as the masters are always well educated, usually sensible, and often famous athletes, they have a strong and very admirable influence. Much of all this, of course, the boy never suspects. He simply grows to respect and like his master without quite knowing why.
A master's best means of bringing out a boy's character is to put him in the way of having the right sort of comrades. Sometimes the older boys—perhaps at the master's suggestion—invite new boys to breakfast, as second-year men at the university invite freshmen; but usually a boy becomes acquainted with his seniors by fagging for them. His severest duties as a fag are to cook breakfast and supper in his fag-master's room; but in many of the houses the boys eat their meals together, so the fags have a pretty easy time of it. In fact, altogether too much has been said about the tyranny and brutality of fagging. Most small boys are glad enough to be with the big boys, and a Senior who plays football or rows well might have as many youngsters to wait on him as he chose. Fag-masters are often the fags' best friends, and even at the universities afterward keep a kindly eye upon them. Sometimes it happens that a fag turns out a great cricketer or oarsman, in which case his old fag-master is as proud of him as of a younger brother. Like as not in after-life a country parson can look back upon the time when he fagged the bishop of his diocese. Like tunding or smacking, fagging is at bottom more humane than the neglect which a small boy suffers at an American school.
The boys are kept very much together in each house by their meals and the early hour of "lock-up"; while chapel, frequent school-hours, and "absences"—that is, roll-calls—keep them from spending much time away from the school. As a result the fellows in a house get to know each other thoroughly, and to stick together like brothers. Each house has its debating and literary society, its football and cricket teams, and its crew. Where there is so much loyalty to the house, it is only natural that rivalry among the houses should be keen. Ten times as many boys go into athletic contests as in America. Altogether a house is a miniature college, and a school a small university. Even if a boy didn't know a soul outside of his house, he need never become lonesome, and seldom homesick. This life in the houses is almost all the society boys have at most public schools.