not always did sanderson carry things off with an equal dignity. his temperament was choleric, and ever and again his smouldering indignation at the obstinate folly and jealousy that hampered his work blazed out violently. dignified silence is impossible as a permanent pose for a teacher whose duty is to express and direct. sanderson's business was to get ideas into resisting heads; he was not a born orator but a confused, abundant speaker, and he had to scold, to thrust strange sayings at them, to force their inattention, to beat down an answering ridicule. he was often simply and sincerely wrathful with them, and in his early years he thrashed a great deal. he thrashed hard and clumsily in a white-heat of passion—'a hail of swishing strokes that seemed almost to envelop one.' a newspaper or copybook at the normal centre of infliction availed but little. cuts fell everywhere on back or legs or fingers. he had been sorely tried, he had been overtried. it was a sort of heartbreak of blows.

[pg 41]

the boys argued mightily about these unorthodox swishings. it was all a part of sanderson being a strange creature and not in the tradition. it was lucky no one was ever injured. but they found something in their own unregenerate natures that made them understand and sympathise with this eager, thwarted stranger and his thunderstorms of anger. generally he was a genial person, and that, too, they recognised. it is manifest quite early in the story that sanderson interested his boys as his predecessor had never done. they discussed his motives, his strange sayings, his peculiar locutions with accumulating curiosity. two sorts of schoolmasters boys respect: those who are completely dignified and opaque to them, and those who are transparent enough to show honesty at the core. sanderson was transparently honest. if he was not pompously dignified he was also extraordinarily free from vanity; and if he thrust work and toil upon his boys it was at any rate not to spare himself that he did so. and he won them also by his wonderful teaching. in the early days he did a lot of the science teaching himself; later on the school grew too big for him to do any of this.[pg 42] all the old boys i have been able to consult agree that his class instruction was magnificent.

every year in the history of sanderson's headmastership shows a growing understanding between the boys and himself. 'beans,' they called him, but every year it was less and less necessary to 'give 'm beans,' as the vulgar say. the tale of storms and thrashings dwindles until it vanishes from the story. in the last decade of his rule there was hardly any corporal punishment at all. the whole school as time went on grew into a humorous affectionate appreciation of his genius. it was a sunny, humorous school when i knew it; there was little harshness and no dark corners. no boy had been expelled for a long time.