to his best interests, but she is too much of an
invalid to be able to look after him; the result is that he is allowed
practically to do exactly as he likes in the holidays; he hates school
cordially, and I don't wonder. He fortunately has one taste, and that
is for science, and it is more than a taste, it is a real passion. He
does not merely dabble about with chemicals, or play tricks with
electricity; but he reads dry, hard, abstruse science, and writes
elaborate monographs, which I read with more admiration than
comprehension. This is almost his only hold on ordinary life, and I
encourage it with all my might; I ask about his work, make such
suggestions as I can, and praise his successful experiments and his
treatises, so far as I can understand them, loudly and liberally.

This morning one of his guardians writes to me about him. He is a
country gentleman, with a large estate, who married a cousin of my
pupil. He is a big, pompous, bumble-bee kind of man, who prides himself
on speaking his mind, and is quite unaware that it is only his position
that saves him from the plainest retorts. He writes to say that he is
much exercised about his ward's progress. The boy, he says, is fanciful
and delicate, and has much too good an opinion of himself. That is
true; and he goes on to lay down the law as to what he "needs." He must
be thrown into the society of active and vigorous boys; he must play
games; he must go to the gymnasium. And then he must learn
self-reliance; he must not be waited upon; he must be taught that it is
his business to be considerate of others; he must learn to be obliging,
and to look after other people. He goes on to say that all he wants is
the influence of a strong and sensible man (that is a cut at me), and
he will be obliged if I will kindly attend to the matter.

Well, what does he want me to do? Does he expect me to run races with
the boy? To introduce him to the captain of the eleven? To have him
thrust into teams of cricket and football from which his incapacity for
all games naturally excludes him? When our bumble-bee friend was at
school himself--and a horrid boy he must have been--what would he have
said if a master had told him to put a big, clumsy, and incapable boy
into a house cricket eleven in order to bring him out?

Then as to teaching him to be considerate, the mischief is all done in
the holidays; the boy is not waited on here, and he has plenty of
vigorous discipline in the k