Part 4

An incident occurred in 1838 which well illustrates the power of a Prefect. A peddler insisted on bringing various contraband articles, among them liquor, to sell to the boys on their recreation-grounds. The Prefects remonstrated time and again, with no effect. At last five of them seized him and threw him, basket and all, into the river. The peddler had the Prefects arrested and tried for assault with intent to kill, and the magistrate fined them fifty dollars each. This fine the college paid willingly, complimenting the Prefects for their zeal and common-sense. The spirit which prompted both masters and pupils exists to-day, not only at Winchester, but at all public schools. The result is that not only is order maintained without ill feeling between masters and pupils, but the eighteen Prefects of each year learn to fill posts requiring unusual tact, common-sense, and courage.

The duty of a Prefect which an American would least envy is that of inflicting bodily punishment--"tunding," as it is called in Winchester slang. This consists in beating the culprit across the back of his waistcoat with a ground-ash the size of one's finger. The art of "tunding," an old Prefect of Hall informed me, was to catch the edge of the shoulder-blade with the rod, and strike in the same spot everytime. In this way, he said, it was possible to cut the back of a waistcoat into strips. In the early part of the century flogging was of more than daily occurrence. An old Wykehamist states that on the day of his arrival at school there were 198 boys in residence and 279 names reported for punishment. Nowadays, however, only a score or so of cases occur each year; and many boys go through the school without being tunded.

A characteristic case occurred during my stay at Winchester. A party of small boys had been invited to a strawberry feast in the rooms of one of the dons, and seeing a group of Prefects in the court below, had been unable to resist the temptation. First a rotten strawberry splashed on the flint at the feet of the Prefects, and then a storm descended. This was too much for Prefectorial dignity to bear. The good don's strawberry feast ended in a general tunding. The Prefect of Hall described this to me next day with quiet satisfaction; and, later, the don spoke of the case as characteristic of the best effects of the Prefectorial system. As host, he said, he had not been able to interfere; and except for school-boy discipline, the culprits would have escaped. The wife of one of the masters, however, said it was a brutal shame, and that if she had her way with those Prefects, she would throw strawberries at them.

Such a system leaves little for the masters to do, yet a boy sometimes carries his case to the higher court, though he does it at the risk of great unpopularity. Some years ago two Seniors, having a grudge against another boy, employed two Juniors, at ninepence a head, to give him a beating. The Prefects very naturally objected to this method of doing one's dirty work, and ordered all four to be tunded. One of the Senior culprits lost courage when he found how hard it was going with his companion, and appealed to the master on the plea that the ground-ash was too large. The master declared that the ground-ashes were "proper good ground-ashes," and proceeded to wear them out on him.

The details of daily life at Winchester are not easy to understand. The "college," as, in fact, each of the "houses," is divided into chambers or "shops," as the boys call them. In each of these lives a community of say a dozen boys, over which three Prefects preside. The sleeping-rooms are locked up, except at night. In the study-room each boy has a desk, which he calls his "horse-box." The Prefects have tables, placed in commanding positions. These are called "washing-stools." In the college there are seven chambers, occupying "Chamber Court," the main quadrangle; and all about are ranged the domestic buildings belonging to the college--the slaughter-house, the bake-house, the kitchen, and the brew-house. In Chamber Court also are the rooms occupied by the masters and their families, and the magnificent college dining-hall and chapel. All these buildings stand to-day almost precisely as they were built five hundred years ago--that is, a hundred years before Columbus discovered America--with this difference, that the flint walls are so stained by time that they reflect the sunshine in many subdued and mellow shades.

There are, however, a few relics of dead customs. At one side of the court you will find the remains of the ancient conduit. Here, on the stone pavement and in the open air, five centuries of boys have taken their morning baths, summer and winter. Bathing could not always, however, be as regular as in these days when travelling Englishmen pack their clothes in leather-covered bath-tubs instead of in a trunk. A dozen years ago bath-rooms were fitted up within-doors, in rooms formerly occupied by learned Fellows of the College. On a wall is the painting of the "Trusty Servant," with its verses.

The old lavatory of the college was called "Moab," while the shoe-blacking place was called "Edom." I wonder how many American school-boys are as familiar as those old English boys must have been with the Psalm that says "Moab is my wash-pot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe." The ancient brew-house in outer court is still used, but when I took luncheon in Hall with the Prefects they rather sniffed at the beer made in it. Under King William, however, it inspired this song:

Now let us all, both great and small, With voice both loud and clear, Right merrily sing, Live Billy our King! For 'bating the tax upon beer. For I likes my drop of good beer; For I likes my drop of good beer. So whene'er I goes out I carries about My little pint bottle of beer.

To my taste the beer was very good, and not too strong. Perhaps it is a sign of the good sense of Wykehamists that they preferred water or milk.

One might also class fagging, with which all readers of _Tom Brown_ are familiar, with the dead and dying customs. It is limited to a few simple offices. A Senior still sends small boys on errands, and sometimes makes him cook and wash bottles at private feasts in chambers. Every evening, too, when the post comes in, the porter of the college brings it to Chambers Court, and at a signal the junior of each chamber to get what belongs to his fellows. In olden times, in order to accustom the fags to handling hot dishes, the Seniors would sometimes score their hands with glowing fagots. This provided them with "tin gloves." A more amusing bit of barbarity was the "toe fittee," pronounced _tofy-tie_. This consisted in tying a string about a boy's great toe while he lay asleep. Then the string was violently pulled, and the boy was drawn out of his bed to his tormentor's side. Sometimes two or three would be brought from different parts of a chamber to the same point. In America I have often known a boy to tie a string about his own toe, and hang it out of the window so that a friend might wake him up to go out fishing; but that is a different thing.

For pure ingenuity the so-called "scheme" bears the palm. It was always the duty of a certain luckless Junior to wake the Prefect at an early hour every morning, and if he overslept he was of course tunded. Noticing that the night candle always burned to a certain point at this hour, some nameless fag invented the plan of hanging a hat-box over his head by a string, and connecting the string with this point of the candle by a rude fuse. He thus made sure that the hat-box would fall on his head at the required hour. Under this sword of Damocles he could, of course, sleep in peace without fear of flogging.

The terrible stories of flogging and fagging, however, really belong to the past. Unless I am very much mistaken, life at Winchester, in spite of an occasional tunding, is much pleasanter and better regulated than in most of our schools. The fact that the Prefects enforce most of the discipline makes it possible for the masters to get very near to the hearts of their pupils; and, above all, the English boys are fortunate in the fact that the wives and daughters of the Masters live with them in the same quadrangle. To speak of Winchester without telling about the wife of the second Head Master, and how fond of her big boys and little boys, good boys and bad boys are, would be to leave the part of Hamlet out of the play. Many are the gawky boys whom she has put at ease among people, and many the bad boys whom she has set right. One of the pleasantest things I saw at Winchester was a lot of Oxford men who had come back to her during vacation just to hear her call them Smith, Brown, and Robinson.

The stamp of men Winchester produces is as distinct from all others as a St. Paul's man is different from one from Exeter. The ideal toward which the school is working was well expressed by one of the Head Masters. "I consider that those boys who issue from the top of the school--_i.e._, those upon whom the highest influences of the school have been brought to bear--are boys who ... carry into life a stamp, not of a very showy kind, but distinguished by a self-reliance, a modesty, a practical good sense, and strong religious feeling--that religious feeling being of a very moderate traditional and sober kind which, in my judgment, is beyond all price."

HOW TO USE A PIANO.

BY W. J. HENDERSON.

"As we journey through life, let us live by the way," is a very old saying to which many interpretations have been given. To me its pleasantest significance is that we should try to make life a constant delight. There is nothing better for this purpose than kindly intercourse with friends, but as we grow older we find that a circle of agreeable acquaintances cannot be maintained simply on a conversational basis. We must offer our friends inducements to come and see us; in other words, we must entertain in some form. Most boys and many girls are alarmed by the word "entertain." The girls are less afraid of it than the boys, because they have an inborn desire and a natural talent for social pleasures. But they are often puzzled as to the best means of arranging entertainments. Everything seems so difficult for a girl to undertake without a great deal of assistance from her mother, and frequently that assistance robs her of all feeling of personal proprietorship in the entertainment.

"It was called my party," she says, "but really mamma did everything."

Now I wish to offer a suggestion or two to girls about a form of entertainment which is easily arranged. There are very few homes in this civilized land which do not contain pianos, and there are very few girls who cannot play a little. Even if you cannot play difficult music you can give a musical, and make it a really artistic and enjoyable entertainment. In the first place, then, let us talk about the piano. Two or three days before your musical is to take place you should have the instrument tuned, for you cannot make music agreeable to your guests if the piano is out of tune. And here let me offer a few suggestions about keeping it in tune. The most important requirement is equality of temperature. Therefore your piano should not stand where the heat of a grate or a steam radiator will affect one end of it more than the other, nor should it be so situated that a draught from a leaky window will blow on one end. It ought to be placed so that it will be affected only by the general temperature of the room, and that ought not to have an extreme range. If you hear loud cracks coming from your piano at times, as if something had snapped, lookout; the chances are that the sounding-board is warping, or something equally undesirable is happening, and it is probably due to the influence of temperature. If you wish to keep a piano in the very best order, do not pile books or music or any other heavy objects on its lid.

When preparing for your musical, bear these suggestions in mind. You will in all likelihood be obliged to move your piano out of its customary position, for nine times out of ten that is one which would make you sit with your back squarely to your audience. You should not do this; but when you move the instrument, do not put it where it will be injured. In giving a musical, bear in mind that the player is to be the centre on which all eyes are focussed. If the piano is a grand, place it so that its right side will be toward the audience, but running a little obliquely, so that the keyboard will be visible, or partly so, to those on the right side of the room. The position of a square or an upright should be similar, but you may with advantage turn an upright so that the keyboard is more in view. If the room is very large, you may raise the lid of a grand half-way. Do not raise it all the way just because you have seen concert performers do so. That is necessary only in a large public hall. If your drawing-room is small, do not raise the lid at all.

Now you must have light for your music. The prettiest way is to set a tall standing-lamp a little to your left and a little behind you. Never place it on your right, because that would be between you and the audience. If you have not a standing-lamp, a pedestal or a table with an ordinary lamp will do quite as well. Do not set a light on the piano. It does not look well, in the first place, and in the second it is likely to rattle. It will add much to the effect of the picture if you surround the base of your lamp with roses and smilax, and it is also pretty to have some smilax twined around the scroll-work of the music-stand. In arranging the seats for your guests, you will naturally have to be guided by consideration of the number you expect. I should advise you not to have too many, for that would make it look too much like a public performance. In placing the seats, try to avoid all appearance of stiffness, yet endeavor to arrange them so that as many as possible of your guests will be in front of the piano--by which I mean facing its right side. But whatever you do, do not set chairs in rows as if it were a public hall. It looks badly, and it prevents freedom of movement among your friends between the selections.

And this leads me to another important suggestion. Whatever your programme may be, it should be short, and it should have at least one intermission. Two would be better. In those intermissions you should encourage conversation, and try to induce your guests to move about and change their seats. You might have lemonade served in one intermission. Let the boys pass it around. That starts both movement and conversation. I suppose I need hardly suggest that, if the words of your friends are too complimentary to your playing, you can lead them to comment on the beauty of the music. But I do believe that the girls will forgive me if I say "dress plainly." A musician should never do anything to attract attention to his person at the expense of his art. Wear a simple gown, and avoid all mannerisms or affectations in playing.

But now I hear some girl saying, "I can't play well enough to give a musical." That depends on what you regard as good playing. If you think it means performing difficult and showy pieces, you are mistaken. That kind of playing may astonish your friends, but it will not give them such genuine pleasure as the performance of a few comparatively easy compositions of real beauty in a sympathetic manner. Here the majority of girls will meet with their greatest difficulty, for I am sorry to say that many music-teachers ignore the easy pieces of the great masters, and give their pupils as studies the cheap rubbish which litters the counters of the average music-store. It is a mistake to suppose that the immortals among composers never wrote anything easy. There are compositions by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and others which can be performed by players of very moderate ability, and there are easy and attractive compositions by less ambitious composers, even such as Johann Strauss, which have much more merit than the brilliant runs and arpeggios of Sidney Smith, H. A. Wollenhaupt, and that class.

There are several ways in which you can make a programme so as to give it a special interest beyond that of the music alone, and I should advise you to adopt some one of these plans. If you are not a brilliant player, all the more reason for adding interesting features to your entertainment. If you are an accomplished performer, your musical will still gain in artistic dignity by an intelligent arrangement of the programme. Of course there is one thing always to be borne in mind: you must compose your list of selections so that there will be constant variety. Do not, for instance, put three or four slow and plaintive pieces one after the other. As a rule, too, it is well to avoid a succession of compositions in the same form, such as sonatas, nocturnes, or valses. Eminent artists make mistakes in these matters. One of the most distinguished conductors in this country once gave an orchestral concert consisting of nine overtures. The effect was very bad indeed, for in spite of the fact that they were all by different composers, they were not sufficiently dissimilar in form to produce variety.

Keeping in mind, then, the necessity of variety, you can arrange your programme chronologically--that is, beginning with a very early writer and coming down to the most recent. Secondly, you can arrange it by schools, taking some pieces from the polyphonic, some from the classic, and some from the romantic. Thirdly, you may arrange it according to nations, giving examples of German, Russian, French, Italian, English, and American. Fourthly, you may make it representative of one nation; and fifthly, representative of one composer. The last-named way is not advisable for any except accomplished performers, because you will find it practically impossible to make up even a short list of good pieces by one composer and have them all easy. A programme representative of one nation may also be chronological, and if you intend to give more than one musical--say a series of three--this will probably be the most attractive way. But undoubtedly the neatest way for a single recital would be the arrangement according to nations, for you will have no trouble at all in finding a single composition from each country that is pretty and easy to play. In making out the programme, be careful to give the full title and, if possible, opus number of the composition, and I think it always adds to the interest of a programme for young people to put in the dates of the births and deaths of the composers. If you will permit me, I will now submit a sample programme on the plan of representation of nations just to show you how attractive it looks:

GERMAN.

1. Sonata No. 33 E-flat (composed when eleven years old) _Beethoven_ (1770-1827).

RUSSIAN.

2. Melody in F _Rubinstein_ (1829-1894).

POLISH.

3. "Chant du Voyage" _Paderewski_ (1860----).

FRENCH.

4. "Funeral March of a Marionette" _Gounod_ (1818-1893).

ITALIAN.

5. Gavotte (from violin sonata in F) _Corelli_ (1653-1713).

ENGLISH.

6. Nocturne in E-flat _J. Field_ (1782-1837).

AMERICAN.

7. "Wood Idyl," from Opus 19 _MacDowell_ (1861----).

I wish to submit for your consideration one more programme, representing the great schools of music, simply to show you that such a list can be made of pieces well within the powers of an amateur of ordinary technical ability.

POLYPHONIC SCHOOL (1500-1750).

1. Canzona in seto tono _Girolamo Frescobaldi_ (1588-1645).

2. Prelude No 1 from the "Well-tempered Clavichord" _J. S. Bach_ (1685-1750).

CLASSIC SCHOOL (1750-1827).

3. Andante and Finale from Sonata No. 1 _W. A. Mozart_ (1756-1791).

4. Sonata No. 37 _L. van Beethoven_ (1770-1827).

ROMANTIC SCHOOL (1821 to the present).

5. Slow Waltz (from "Album Leaves") _R. Schumann_ (1810-1856).

6. "Marche Hongroise" _Franz Schubert_ (1797-1828).

The compositions embraced in this programme are well within the power of an amateur of moderate ability.

If, however, you can play more difficult music, your choice will be extended. Nevertheless, I adhere to my first assertion that it is not at all troublesome to make up a programme of compositions which may be classed as easy. And here let me give you some final advice. Select for a musical at which you are to be the performer music somewhat easier than that which you are accustomed to study under your teacher. The reason for doing this is so plain that it is hardly necessary to mention it. If you are unaccustomed to formal piano-playing before an audience, you will undoubtedly be nervous. Now if you go to the piano knowing that the music before you is going to tax your utmost powers, you will be still more nervous, and the probabilities are that you will not only not play the music effectively, but that you will play it badly and make many technical slips. The more you make, the more nervous you will become, till it would not be surprising if you should break down altogether. On the other hand, if you are conscious that the music is well within your powers--that you have technical facility enough and to spare--you will not be harassed by fears of making blunders, but will lose all your nervousness as soon as you begin to play and to realize how easy your work is. Thus instead of being constantly on the watch for fear of making mistakes, you will be able to devote your entire attention to giving every phrase the right expression. If you have carefully studied the musical beauties of each composition, you will no doubt surprise yourself as well as your friends by the intelligence and sentiment of your playing. Bear in mind the fact that such great artists as Paderewski frequently charm and move an audience more by the amount of color and expression which they throw into easy compositions like Chopin's E-flat nocturne, while in their more brilliant playing, as in one of Liszt's Hungarian rhapsodies, they gain applause rather as the result of amazement at their conquest of technical difficulties than as the demonstration of sincere delight in the music itself. And now I shall leave the rest to the girls. I am sure that among the readers of this paper there must be hundreds and hundreds of girls who can play the piano well enough to get up such musicals as I have suggested.

THE MARINE DEMONSTRATION IN NEW YORK HARBOR.

The city of New York has one of the finest harbors in the world, and it invariably invokes a burst of admiration from the observer when he first sails up through its land-locked entrance, passing the low-lying hills of Staten Island on his left and Long Island on his right; then past Governors Island, with its old fort, and the Statue of Liberty, to approach the densely populated Manhattan Island with its innumerable tall buildings that testify to the admirable skill of the city's architects and engineers. The forest of masts that fringe the water's edge, the saucy puffing tugs towing huge vessels, steamboats, flat-boats, barges, etc., here and there, and the stately steamships gliding along, make a very impressive picture.