week." Neither of us
ever attended a meeting of this society, and it is obvious, from the
fact that more than half the house joined in, that we are not concerned
here with the activities of a little set of intellectualists. In the
fullest sense in which the word is applicable in a public school, these
political activities were "democratic," and the effect on the "English"
work of some of the boys in middle forms was most remarkable. The
present writer recalls, for instance, a Middle Fifth essay of some
three thousand words on the complex, and in some ways repellent,
subject of "National Guilds." On how many successive nights the rule
against "sitting up" was broken over the composition of this work the
recipient of the essay forebore to inquire.

From this beginning other developments rapidly opened. A modest but
useful idea was a question paper, on which any one who liked could set
down questions that occurred to him in the course of his reading. The
House Library naturally felt the impact of the movement, and a
political section was started in which books about the Greeks and
Mill's "Liberty" stood side by side with the latest essay on
"Reconstruction." But it would be giving an altogether unworthy notion
of the movement if it were suggested that politics alone, in the
narrower sense, marked the limit of these activities. The best modern
plays and poetry began to appear on shelves whence rubbishy novels of a
past generation were removed to make room for them. Nor were older
books neglected. The general drift of interest was inevitably towards
the moderns; but the great poets of the past were also finding their
way in before the end came.

Then, of course, there was a gramophone, with its "popular" and
"classical" repertoires; and before the end came, the "classical" had
so far surpassed the "popular" in popularity that House piano recitals
had begun as well.

Another development was on lines that would have gladdened the heart of
Ruskin and Morris, though I do not know that either of these was
consciously recognised as an influence. A movement arose for
beautifying the studies, which began with pseudo-Japanese lamp-shades,
and moved upward through pretty curtains and tablecloths to framed
"Medici" pictures. Before the end there was hardly a study that had
not its big framed Medici, and often a selection of Medici postcards as
well.

All these things involved, of course, some considerable expenditure;