"How if a-will not stand?" inquired the watch of wise old Dogberry.

How then, if a-be not educated?

Why, then a-must teach himself to dig, or a-must 'list, or go out as cabin-boy or errandboy, or find some equally unintellectual occupation. There is no reason why I should discuss his future. Let us rather bid him God-speed on his journey through life, and so take our leave of him.

We will so far follow Dogberry's advice as to take no note of him and let him go; but in the place of thanking God that we are rid of a knave, we will condole with him on his being the son of most neglectful and improvident parents.

It is an accepted theory, may it be said, that Boy, if he ever hopes when he had arrived at man's estate to make his way in the world, must, unless indeed he be either an exceptional genius or a "freak," have a sound education, and that the

greater the present self-sacrifice on the parents' part in the way of providing that education, the less probably will be the drain on their purse in the days to come. For in these days of strong competition education may, in part at all events, supply the deficiency of capital wherewith to start the world. But in the face of increasing difficulties and increasing competition is it found that parents of the limited-income class are making greater efforts to ensure Boy's ultimate success than their own parents did for them? Up to a certain extent, perhaps, an affirmative answer may be given. For the modern parent, if we strike an average, probably packs off Boy to a dame's school or a preparatory school at an earlier age than he went himself. There seems, on the contrary, to be a falling off in the matter of the home preparation for school-life, and Boy too commonly in these days arrives at Dotheboys Hall totally unequipped with any power whatever of concentrating his thoughts, and in a state of ignorance which Government refuses to countenance in the future tiller of the soil. It is surely an anomalous state of affairs that our rulers should exact а certain amount of knowledge, even though it may prove to be a mechanical and parrot-like knowledge, from our little hobbledehoy, but prefer to close their eyes to the fact that a good many children in

the upper and middle classes know absolutely nothing at all. "Here's virgin soil for you," says Paterfamilias, as he introduces his nine-year-old boy to the preparatory schoolmaster, "make the best you can of him," or, in other words, "I have absolutely neglected my own obvious duty, but do you do yours."

If things go smoothly with Boy, which may possibly be the case if the so-called virgin soil be indeed virgin, and void of ill-weeds, well and good.

"Smart youngster that boy of mine!" pronounces Paterfamilias.

But if things go contrariwise -why, then :

"Never taught him a word at that school, so take my advice and don't send your boy there," is the verdict.

It is not required that a man who has either done a hard day's work on his own account or has a hard day's work in front of him, should rise up early or go to bed late in order that he may be able to devote some hours to teaching Boy the alphabet or grinding him through the pages of the Latin Grammar. On the contrary, I am inclined to think the father who personally undertakes the daily instruction of his little son is embarking upon a very hazardous experiment. When the small Rugbeian registered his opinion that "all the masters are beasts," he was merely giving voice to that feeling of antagonism which naturally exists in the heart of nineteen out of twenty young animals, compelled to do things which they

dislike doing, towards the compelling power. When I make my puppy sit up and hold a piece of biscuit on his nose, I do not imagine that he entirely enjoys the performance, and I am prepared to believe that he considers me a "beast" for requiring it of him. For puppy, however, the immediate prospect of receiving the biscuit tones down the asperity of the situation, and shortly he learns to love not the lesson qua lesson, but the lesson plus biscuit to follow. Boy's real biscuit, the solid advantages of education, is so very much in the dim distance during those preliminary stages that the teacher will remain more or less a beast for several years to come. It is true that Cornelia now and again will tell her friends that "Bobbie is very fond of his lessons." But then the dear good lady is either drawing upon her imagination or-worse still-is the mother of a prig. Boy's natural inclination is to play, and it is only in maturer life that he will find in congenial work the best of all forms of amusement.

There is yet another most excellent reason why a father is ill-advised in attempting to play the schoolmaster. The power of imparting knowledge is by no means a necessary accompaniment of the possession of knowledge, nor does it at all follow that an able man is ipso facto an able teacher. In the initial stages teaching is a laborious and apparently unrewarding occupation, and he who essays to practise the art

will shortly discover that it calls for an unusual amount of patience and self-control. In the mind of the most easytempered individual the sense of failure is apt to engender some sense of exasperation, and when Boy and teacher come to loggerheads, the failure, no matter which of the pair is primarily responsible, is generally visited upon the shoulders of the former. We can afford on the golf-course to laugh at the short-tempered player who smashes his putter when his ball lips the hole, or hurls his driver into the sea when he has foozled a tee-shot, but the man who loses his temper with the child he is trying to instruct is something far worse than ridiculous. A neophyte in the art of shaving is courting disaster if he tries his 'prentice hand upon a highly delicate skin, and it will be found that even the wisest and the keenest schoolmaster will decline to test his skill upon his own progeny, on the ground that their mutual good understanding might be impaired.

Who, then, is to prepare Boy for the plunge into school-life? In the earliest stage of all Paterfamilias has commonly very little to say in the matter. For Boy-and perhaps it is quite as well -is left under feminine surveillance in order that he may receive from the gentler sex that preliminary training in various details of the etiquette and convenance of social life which are among things to be learnt before he appears in public. It will be for his future advantage if the

a

nurse who presides over his destiny at this period be a person with not too soft a heart nor yet too hard slipper, a person with distinct ideas of refinement, or in any case free from pronounced vulgarity, whether of manner or idiom, and a point of no small importance-innocent of marked provincial dialect. For Boy is essentially an imitative animal, more so, I believe, than any other creature except perhaps Parrot; and when Mr Kipling, in his picture of Mowgli, the wolf-boy, assigns to him so many characteristics of his foster mother and fosterbrothers, he is simply exemplifying the rule that the young human animal will so far as possible imitate the habits, manners, and language of its earliest educators. Many a boy has been seriously handicapped in the earlier days of his school career by reason of his inability to speak his own mother tongue in a way "to be understanded of the people," and although a few months' herding with other boys-unsparing critics ever of their own species—will in most cases correct this failing, a common or vulgar intonation, originally picked up from a

or nursery maid, has before now stamped a man to the bitter end. The Scot, Paddy, Taffy, or even the Yankee, may pass muster in Piccadilly; but he whose speech smacks of life's highways and byways starts, as it were, with a bad mark against his name. "Delicta majorum immeritus luit."

To the nurse in due course

will succeed the nursery governess, a trained teacher it is to be hoped, but in no sense of the word to be regarded as an either infallible or an irresponsible agent. In a large business house a confidential clerk may be empowered to sign cheques, but the senior partner will periodically inspect the firm's pass-book; in a limited liability company the managing director regulates the expenditure, but an outside firm of accountants either will or ought to audit the accounts. The advent of the governess is a signal for the father to play his part in Boy's intellectual life,not the part of teacher, which may lead to disagreeable complications, but that of an an occasional superintendent of the teaching, a school inspector who once in the course of six months may pay a visit of surprise to the schoolroom, an auditor of Boy's mental account, whose duty it is to see that this most important business is being worked upon sound principles. In the nursery days Boy is a "jolly little chap," a thing to play or to be played with, but from the day that he enters the schoolroom he establishes his claim to be treated as a rational and intellectual companion instead of as an amusing toy. There is no necessity to expose him to the ordeal of a formal test examination,-that will be better left to the schoolmaster later on; but any man with his wits about him should be able to tell in the course of occasional conversations with a child whether the latter is learning anything or not, and

most certainly no man who has not got his wits about him has any right to be the father of a family. Excellent woman as the governess may be and so often is, it is merely tempting Providence to take it for granted that Boy is being properly taught. Time even in these early years is a precious commodity, and bad teaching in the initial stages may cause infinite trouble later on. And the production of faultless exercises or high-sounding little themes as evidence of Boy's intellectual progress is about as valuable as the balance-sheet of the London and Globe Corporation. What reader of Thackeray will not recall Master George Osborne's wise remarks on the subject of selfishness, or Princess Angelica's pictures of a warrior in 'The Rose and the Ring'? Not only will no teacher, whether man or woman, if he or she be worth their salt, resent occasional outside inspection of a pupil's work, but most of them are ready to admit that apart from extraneous inspection it is practically impossible to ascertain what progress is being made or where the weak points lie, and that an examination conducted by the person who has been teaching a child is valueless as compared with the work of an independent examiner.

It will not always follow that Boy's failure, or comparative failure, argues incompetence or carelessness on the teacher's part. As that humorous individual, the Claimant in the great Tichborne trial, is reported to have said, "Some