SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS
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ways prodding, prodding away at one's mind to keep it up to the
right pitch of concentration, as one might keep a sleepy person awake
by sticking pins into him.
"Go on, you little slacker! Go on, you idle, worthless little boy!
The whole trouble with you is that you're bone and horn idle. You
eat too much, that's why. You wolf down enormous meals, and
then when you come here you're half asleep. Go on, now, put your
back into it. You're not
thinking.
Your brain doesn't sweat."
He would tap away at one's skull with his silver pencil, which,
in my memory, seems to have been about the size of a banana, and
which certainly was heavy enough to raise a bump: or he would
pull the short hairs round one's ears, or occasionally, reach out under
the table and kick one's shin. On some days nothing seemed to go
right, and then it would be: "All right, then, I know what you
want. You've been asking for it the whole morning. Come along,
you useless little slacker. Come into the study." And then whack,
whack, whack, whack, .and back one would come, red-wealed and
smarting-in later years Sim had abandoned his riding crop in favor
of a thin rattan cane which hurt very much more- to settle down
to work again. This did not happen very often, but I do remember
more than once being led out of the room in the middle of a Latin
sentence, receiving a beating and then going straight ahead with
the same sentence, just like that. It is a mistake to think such
methods do not work. They work very well for their special purpose.
Indeed, I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be
successfully carried on without corporal punishment. The boys
themselves believed in its efficacy. There was a boy named Beacham,
with no brains to speak of, but evidently in acute need of a scholar–
ship. Sim was flogging him toward the goal as one might do with a
foundered horse. He went up for a scholarship at Uppingham,
came back with a consciousness of having done badly, and a day or
two later received a severe beating for idleness. "I wish I'd had that
caning before I went up for the exam," he said sadly-a remark
which I felt to be contemptible, but which I perfectly well under–
stood.
The boys of the scholarship class were not all treated alike.
If
a boy were the son of rich parents to whom the saving of fees
