t is better to do so frankly and make no
pretence about it.

But I am sure that it is one's duty as a teacher to try and show boys
that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are
one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown
this. I found--I am now speaking of intellectual things--that certain
authors were held up to me as models which I was unfortunate enough to
dislike. Instead of making up my own mind about it, instead of trying
to see what I did admire and why I admired it, I tried feebly for years
to admire what I was told was admirable. The result was waste of time
and confusion of thought. In the same way I followed feebly, as a boy,
after the social code. I tried to like the regulation arrangements, and
thought dimly that I was in some way to blame because I did not. Not
until I went up to Cambridge did the conception of mental liberty steal
upon me--and then only partly. Of course if I had had more originality
I should have perceived this earlier. But the world appeared to me a
great, organised, kindly conspiracy, which must be joined, in however
feeble a spirit. I have learnt gradually that, after a decent
compliance with superficial conventionalities, there are not only no
penalties attached to independence, but that there, and there alone, is
happiness to be found; and that the rewards of a free judgement and an
authentic admiration are among the best and highest things that the
world has to bestow. . . .--Ever yours,

T. B.

UPTON,
June 18, 1904.

DEAR HERBERT,--I am sick at heart. I received one of those letters this
morning which are the despair of most schoolmasters. I have in my house
a boy aged seventeen, who is absolutely alone in the world. He has
neither father or mother, brother or sister. He spends his holidays
with an aunt, a clever and charming person, but a sad invalid (by the
way, in passing, what a wretched thing in English it is that there is
no female of the word "man"; "woman" means something quite different,
and always sounds slightly disrespectful; "lady" is impossible, except
in certain antique phrases). The boy is frail, intellectual, ungenial.
He is quite incapable of playing games decently, having neither
strength or aptitude; he finds it hard to make friends, and the
consequence is that, like all clever people who don't meet with any
success, he takes refuge in a kind of contemptuous cynicism. His aunt
is devoted to him and