Work is supposed to be the centre round which school life revolves⁠—the hub of the school wheel, the lodestar of the schoolboy’s existence, and a great many other things. “You come to school to work,”...

It has always seemed to me one of the worst flaws in our mistaken social system, that absolutely no distinction is made between the master who forces the human boy to take down notes from dictation an...

In the days of yore, when these white hairs were brown⁠—or was it black? At any rate, they were not white⁠—and I was at school, it was always my custom, when Fate obliged me to walk to school with a c...

The man in the corner had been trying to worry me into a conversation for some time. He had asked me if I objected to having the window open. He had said something rather bitter about the War Office, ...

The qualities which in later years rendered Frederick Wackerbath Bradshaw so conspicuous a figure in connection with the now celebrated affair of the European, African, and Asiatic Pork Pie and Ham Sa...

Pillingshot was annoyed. He was disgusted, mortified; no other word for it. He had no objection, of course, to Mr. Mellish saying that his work during the term, and especially his Livy, had been disgr...

The attitude of Philip St. H. Harrison, of Merevale’s House, towards his fellow-man was outwardly one of genial and even sympathetic toleration. Did his form-master intimate that his conduct was not h...

From Richard Venables, of St. Austin’s School, to his brother Archibald Venables, of King’s College, Cambridge: Dear Archie⁠—I take up my pen to write to you, not as one hoping for an answer, but rath...

From Richard Venables, of St. Austin’s School, to his brother Archibald Venables, of King’s College, Cambridge: Dear Archie⁠—I take up my pen to write to you, not as one hoping for an answer, but rath...

Telegram from Major-General Sir Everard Venables, V.C., K.C.M.G., to his son Richard Venables: Venables, St. Austin’s. What all this about Uncle John. Says were grossly rude. Write explanation next po...

Letter from Mrs. James Anthony (née Miss Dorothy Venables) to her brother Richard Venables: Dear Dick⁠—What have you been doing to Uncle John? Jim and I are stopping for a fortnight with father, and h...

Part of letter from Richard Venables, of St. Austin’s, to his father Major-General Sir Everard Venables, V.C., K.C.M.G.: … So you see it was really his fault. The Emperor of Germany has no right to co...

Letter from Richard Venables, of St. Austin’s, to his sister Mrs. James Anthony: Dear Dolly⁠—Thanks awfully for your letter, and thank Jim for his message. He’s a ripper. I’m awfully glad you married ...

From Archibald Venables, of King’s College, Cambridge, to Richard Venables, of St. Austin’s: Dear Dick⁠—Just a line to thank you for your letter, and to tell you that since I got it I have had a visit...

From Mr. John Dalgliesh to Mr. Philip Mortimer, of Penge: Dear Sir⁠—In reply to your letter of the 18th inst., I shall be happy to recommend your son, Reginald, for the vacant post in the firm of Mess...

From Richard Venables, of St. Austin’s, to his father Major-General Sir Everard Venables, V.C., K.C.M.G.: Dear Father⁠—Uncle John writes, in answer to my apology, to say that no apologies will meet th...

Telegram from Major-General Sir Everard Venables, V.C., K.C.M.G., to his son Richard Venables, of St. Austin’s: Venables, St. Austin’s. Very well.⁠—Venables...

Extract from Letter from Richard Venables, of St. Austin’s, to his father Major-General Sir Everard Venables, V.C., K.C.M.G.: … Thanks, awfully⁠— Extract from The Austinian of October: The following O...

The one o’clock down express was just on the point of starting. The engine-driver, with his hand on the lever, whiled away the moments, like the watchman in The Agamemnon, by whistling. The guard ende...

The Bradshaw who appears in the following tale is the same youth who figures as the hero⁠—or villain, label him as you like⁠—of the preceding equally veracious narrative. I mention this because I shou...

The annual inter-house football cup at St. Austin’s lay between Dacre’s, who were the holders, and Merevale’s, who had been runner-up in the previous year, and had won it altogether three times out of...

“Might I observe, sir⁠—” “You may observe whatever you like,” said the referee kindly. “Twenty-five.” “The rules say⁠—” “I have given my decision. Twenty-five!” A spot of red appeared on the official ...

“Might I observe, sir⁠—” “You may observe whatever you like,” said the referee kindly. “Twenty-five.” “The rules say⁠—” “I have given my decision. Twenty-five!” A spot of red appeared on the official ...

It was about a week after the Bargees’ match that the rules respecting bounds were made stricter, much to the popular indignation. The penalty for visiting Stapleton without leave was increased from t...

The Easter term was nearing its end. Football, with the exception of the final House-match, which had still to come off, was over, and life was in consequence a trifle less exhilarating than it might ...

“I shall go, Babe,” said Charteris on the following night. The Sixth Form had a slack day before them on the morrow, there being a temporary lull in the form-work which occurred about once a week, whe...

Fortunately the road was mainly level. On the other hand, he was hampered by an overcoat. After the first hundred yards he took this off, and carried it in an unwieldy parcel. This, he found, answered...

By special request the Doctor dropped Charteris within a hundred yards of Merevale’s door. “Good night,” he said. “I don’t suppose you will value my advice at all, but you may have it for what it is w...

It was Walkinshaw’s affair from the first. Grey, the captain of the St. Austin’s Fifteen, was in the infirmary nursing a bad knee. To him came Charles Augustus Walkinshaw with a scheme. Walkinshaw was...

It was Walkinshaw’s affair from the first. Grey, the captain of the St. Austin’s Fifteen, was in the infirmary nursing a bad knee. To him came Charles Augustus Walkinshaw with a scheme. Walkinshaw was...

He did. At the beginning of the game the ropes were lined by some thirty spectators, who had come to derive a languid enjoyment from seeing the First pile up a record score. By halftime their numbers ...

J. S. M. Babington, of Dacre’s House, was on the horns of a dilemma. Circumstances over which he had had no control had brought him, like another Hercules, to the crossroads, and had put before him th...

The struggle between Prater’s cat and Prater’s cat’s conscience was short, and ended in the hollowest of victories for the former. The conscience really had no sort of chance from the beginning. It wa...

Some quarter of a century before the period with which this story deals, a certain rich and misanthropic man was seized with a bright idea for perpetuating his memory after death, and at the same time...

Of all the useless and irritating things in this world, lines are probably the most useless and the most irritating. In fact, I only know of two people who ever got any good out of them. Dunstable, of...

Dunstable had his reasons for wishing to obtain Mr. Montagu Watson’s autograph, but admiration for that gentleman’s novels was not one of them. It was nothing to him that critics considered Mr. Watson...

The whole thing may be said to have begun when Mr. Oliver Ring of New York, changing cars, as he called it, at Wrykyn on his way to London, had to wait an hour for his train. He put in that hour by st...

The whole thing may be said to have begun when Mr. Oliver Ring of New York, changing cars, as he called it, at Wrykyn on his way to London, had to wait an hour for his train. He put in that hour by st...

Those who knew and liked Dunstable were both pained and disgusted at his behaviour during the ensuing three days. He suddenly exhibited a weird fondness for some of Wrykyn’s least deserving inmates. H...

“You think the food is unwholesome, then?” said the headmaster after dinner that night. “Unwholesome!” said the school doctor. “It must be deadly. It must be positively lethal. Here we have six ordina...

The house cricket cup at Wrykyn has found itself on some strange mantelpieces in its time. New talent has a way of cropping up in the house matches. Tail-end men hit up fifties, and bowlers who have n...

The painful case of G. Montgomery Chapple, bachelor, of Seymour’s house, Wrykyn. Let us examine and ponder over it. It has been well said that this is the age of the specialist. Everybody, if they wis...

In his Sunday suit (with ten shillings in specie in the right-hand trouser pocket) and a brand-new bowler hat, the youngest of the Shearnes, Thomas Beauchamp Algernon, was being launched by the combin...

Life at St. Austin’s was rendered somewhat hollow and burdensome for Pillingshot by the fact that he fagged for Scott. Not that Scott was the Beetle-Browed Bully in any way. Far from it. He showed a k...