Fathers of Men

Jan was prepared never to hear the last of his outrageous conduct in the big schoolroom; that was all he knew about his kind. It cost him one of the efforts of his school life t...

Next day was a Saint’s Day, which you had to yourself in the good old times from chapel in the early forenoon till private work after tea. Jan had just come out of chapel, and w...

There were three days in the year when the venerable market-place was out of bounds, all but the draggled ribbon of pavement running round it and the few shops opening thereon....

On the notice-board in the colonnade there was a sudden announcement which no new boy could understand. It was to the effect that Professor Abinger would pay his annual visit on...

There was really only one bowler in that year’s Eleven, and Chips Carpenter was his prophet. There were others who took turns at the other end, who even captured a few wickets b...

It is remarked of many people, that though they go through life fretting and fuming over trifles, and making scenes out of nothing at all, yet in a real emergency their calmness...

“I shouldn’t wonder. I know he told me the wicket would be just right for him when the heavy roller had been over it. By Jove, he’s doing it again!”

Morgan, the man-servant, and his myrmidon of the boots and knives, were busy and out of sight in the pantry near the hall, as Jan knew they would be by this time. Yet he was flu...

Shockley, Eyre and Carpenter found themselves duly promoted to the Lower Fifth. Rutter and Buggins had failed to get their remove, the line being actually drawn at Jan, who ther...

The only two fellows who were leaving out of Heriot’s house had been dining with the Heriots on the last night of the term. One of them, after holding forth to Miss Heriot like...

It was Dudley Relton, and his forearm felt like a steel girder. Yet his tone was preternaturally polite as between master and boy. There was not even the sound of his own surnam...

Jan went back to his house in a dull glow of injury and anger. But he was angriest with himself, for the gratuitous and unwonted warmth with which he had grasped an unresponsive...

Anybody entering the room just then would have smelt bad blood between the fellow looking out of the window and the other fellow sitting on the edge of the bed. Jan’s whole atti...

It is not to be pretended that a cloud of live young eye-witnesses make quite so much of these excitements as the historian old or young; they may yell themselves hoarse in fron...

It was all but a summer morning when Jan got back into the trousers without pockets and the black jacket and tie ordained by the school authorities. Peculiarly oppressive to Jan...

Jan turned back to the bedroom window, and stood looking out with eyes that saw less than ever. The window was open at the bottom; he kept a discreet distance from the sill, but...

Sprawson was among those who congratulated the author of the “wild panegyric,” though his praise was tempered with corporal punishment for the use of the word “eulogic” in the s...

Rutter had been put in the small dormitory at the very top of the house. Instead of two long rows of cubicles as in the other dormitories, in one of which he had left Carpenter...

Chips was laughing, though Jan was just a little too sardonic for him, as had often been the case of late. The scene was the poet’s study, and the time after lock-up on a Sunday...

Christmas weather set in before the holidays. Old Boys came trooping down from Oxford and Cambridge, and stood in front of their old hall fires in astonishing ties and wondrous...

Jan’s impressions were not the less vivid for his determination not to be impressed at all; for no attitude of mind is harder to sustain than one of deliberate indifference, whi...

It was in Jan’s study, now of course one of the large ones up the steps at the end of the passage. Chips was in there, jawing away about the match, and the prospect of a wicket...

The two new boys in Heriot’s house had been suitably entertained at his table, and afterwards in his study with bound volumes of _Punch_. Incidentally they had been encouraged t...

By the beginning of October there was a bite in the air, and either fives or football every afternoon; and before the middle of the month Jan began now and then to feel there mi...

Heriot did nothing at all—until the next Saint’s Day. That, however, was almost immediately after his return, while he still looked sadder than when he went away, and years olde...

Thenceforward the career of Jan was that of the public-school cricketer who is less readily remembered as anything else. One forgets that he had to rush out to early school like...

The ready invention and general felicity of the public-school nickname are points upon which few public-school men are likely to disagree. If it cannot be contended that either...

There was one great loss which the school and Jan had suffered since the previous summer. Tempted by the prospect of a free hand, unfettered by tradition, and really very lucky...

The match on the Upper, although an impromptu fixture on the strength of an Indian summer’s day, was exciting no small interest in the school. It was between the champion house...

Mr. Heriot himself showed Jan to his room, the spare bedroom on the private side of the house, where he was to remain until he went. All his belongings had been brought down fro...

Founder’s Day was mercifully fine. A hot sun lit the usual scene outside the colonnade, where the Old Boys assembled before the special service with which the day began, and gre...

Jan’s elbow after school, and never sooner than when Jan had made a special fool of himself in form. Chips was as little to be deterred by the gibes of the rest on the way back,...