away for a night; but I will come and dine with you one day
this week, if you can keep an evening free.

And one thing I will promise--when you are away, I will write to you as
often as I can. I shall not attempt any formal letters, but I shall
begin with anything that is in my mind, and stop when I feel disposed;
and you must do the same. We won't feel bound to ANSWER each other's
letters; one wastes time over that. What I shall want to know is what
you are thinking and doing, and I shall take for granted you desire the
same.

You will be happier, now that you KNOW; I need not add that if I can be
of any use to you in making suggestions, it will be a real
pleasure.--Ever yours,

T. B.

UPTON,
Feb. 3, 1904.

MY DEAR HERBERT,--It seems ages since we said good-bye--yet it is not a
week ago. And now I have been at work all day correcting exercises,
teaching, talking. I have had supper with the boys, and I have been
walking about since and talking to them--the nicest part of my work.
They are at this time of the day, as a rule, in good spirits,
charitable, sensible. What an odd thing it is that boys are so
delightful when they are alone, and so tiresome (not always) when they
are together. They seem, in public, to want to show their worst side,
to be ashamed of being supposed to be good, or interested, or
thoughtful, or tender-hearted. They are so afraid of seeming better
than they are, and pleased to appear worse than they are. I wonder why
this is? It is the same more or less with most people; but one sees
instincts at their nakedest among boys. As I go on in life, the one
thing I desire is simplicity and reality; pose is the one fatal thing.
The dullest person becomes interesting if you feel that he is really
himself, that he is not holding up some absurd shield or other in front
of his shivering soul. And yet how hard it is, even when one
appreciates the benefits and beauty of sincerity, to say what one
really thinks, without reference to what one supposes the person one is
talking to would like or expect one to think--and to do it, too,
without brusqueness or rudeness or self-assertion.

Boys are generally ashamed of saying anything that is good about each
other; and yet they are as a rule intensely anxious to be POPULAR, and
pathetically unaware that the shortest cut to popularity is to see the
good points in every one and not to shrink from mentioning them. I once
had a pupil, a simple-minded, serene