l that hard lines." But he continued his
"Lament for Blissidas" notwithstanding, introducing Saint Winifred and
other mourners over Bliss's fate, and ending with the admonition that in
writing the lines he was--

"To touch the tender tops of various quills,
And mind and dot his quaint enamelled i's."

When Walter asked his tutor for the paper on which to write his
punishment, Mr Robertson said to him, "Already, Evson!" in a tone of
displeasure, and with a sarcasm hardly inferior to that of Talleyrand's
celebrated "Deja." "Two hundred lines and a lesson to write out
_already_!" Bitter; with no sign of sympathy, without one word of
inquiry, of encouragement for the future, or warning about the past; no
advice given, no interest shown; no wonder that Walter never got on with
his tutor.

The days that began for Walter from this time were days of darkness and
disappointment. He was not deficient in natural ability, but he had
undergone no special training for Saint Winifred's School, and
consequently many things were new to him in which other boys had been
previously trained. The practice of learning grammar by means of Latin
rules was particularly trying to him. He could have easily mastered the
facts which the rules were intended to impress, but the empirical
process suggested for arriving at the facts he could not remember, even
if he could have construed the crabbed Latin in which it was conveyed.
His father, too, had never greatly cultivated his powers of memory, and
hence he felt serious difficulty at first with the long lessons that had
to be learnt by heart.

Mr Paton's system was simply this. If a boy failed in a lesson from
any mundane cause whatever, he had to write it out; if he failed to
bring it written out, he had to write it twice; if he was turned in a
second lesson he was sent to detention, _i.e._, he was kept in during
play hours; if this process was long-continued he was sent to the
headmaster in disgrace, and ran the chance of being flogged as an
incorrigible idler. Mr Paton, who was devoted to a system, made no
allowance for difference of ability, or for idiosyncrasies of
temperament; he was a truly good man, at bottom a really kind-hearted
man, and a genuine Christian; but the system which he had adopted was
his "idol of the cave," and, as we said before, the _Kavwv molubdinos_
was unknown to him.

Now, the way the system worked on Walter was this: he failed in lessons
because they w