It was like a journey on a good's train; the engine was bound to remain
for a certain time in the stations, and when the pressure of the steam
became too strong, from want of consumption of energy, a waste-pipe had
to be opened. The Board had drawn up the time-table and the train was
not permitted to arrive at the stations before its appointed time. That
was the principal thing which mattered.
The father noticed the boy's pallor, but he put it down to grief over
his mother's death.
Autumn came and with it the return to school. Theodore, by dint of
much novel-reading during the summer, and coming in this way, as it
were, in constant contact with grown-up people and their problems and
struggles, had come to look upon himself as a grown-up member of
society. Now the masters treated him with familiarity, the boys took
liberties which compelled him to repay them in kind. And this
educational institution, which was to ennoble him and make him fit to
take his place in the community, what did it teach him? How did it
ennoble him? The compendiums, one and all, were written under the
control of the upper classes, for the sole purpose of forcing the
lower classes to look up to their betters. The schoolmasters
frequently reproached their pupils with ingratitude and impressed on
them their utter inability to realise, even faintly, the advantage
they enjoyed in receiving an education which so many of their poorer
fellow-creatures would always lack.
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