With the satisfying feeling that our duty has been done.
Oh! philosophers may sing
Of the troubles of a king
But of pleasures there are many and of troubles there are none,
And the culminating pleasure
Which we treasure beyond measure
Is the satisfying feeling that our duty has been done.
W. S. Gilbert
Work is supposed to be the centre round which school life revolves—the hub of the school wheel, the lode-star of the schoolboy's existence, and a great many other things. 'You come to school to work', is the formula used by masters when sentencing a victim to the wailing3 and gnashing of teeth provided by two hours' extra tuition on a hot afternoon. In this, I think, they err4, and my opinion is backed up by numerous scholars of my acquaintance, who have even gone so far—on occasions when they themselves have been the victims—as to express positive disapproval5 of the existing state of things. In the dear, dead days (beyond recall), I used often to long to put the case to my form-master in its only fair aspect, but always refrained from motives6 of policy. Masters are so apt to take offence at the well-meant endeavours of their form to instruct them in the way they should go.
What I should have liked to have done would have been something after this fashion. Entering the sanctum of the Headmaster, I should have motioned him to his seat—if he were seated already, have assured him that to rise was unnecessary. I should then have taken a seat myself, taking care to preserve a calm fixity of demeanour, and finally, with a preliminary cough, I should have embarked7 upon the following moving address: 'My dear sir, my dear Reverend Jones or Brown (as the case may be), believe me when I say that your whole system of work is founded on a fallacious dream and reeks8 of rottenness. No, no, I beg that you will not interrupt me. The real state of the case, if I may say so, is briefly9 this: a boy goes to school to enjoy himself, and, on arriving, finds to his consternation10 that a great deal more work is expected of him than he is prepared to do. What course, then, Reverend Jones or Brown, does he take? He proceeds to do as much work as will steer11 him safely between the, ah—I may say, the Scylla of punishment and the Charybdis of being considered what my, er—fellow-pupils euphoniously12 term a swot. That, I think, is all this morning. Good day. Pray do not trouble to rise. I will find my way out.' I should then have made for the door, locked it, if possible, on the outside, and, rushing to the railway station, have taken a through ticket to Spitzbergen or some other place where Extradition13 treaties do not hold good.
But 'twas not mine to play the Tib. Gracchus, to emulate14 the O. Cromwell. So far from pouring my opinions like so much boiling oil into the ear of my task-master, I was content to play the part of audience while he did the talking, my sole remark being 'Yes'r' at fixed15 intervals16.
And yet I knew that I was in the right. My bosom17 throbbed18 with the justice of my cause. For why? The ambition of every human new boy is surely to become like J. Essop of the First Eleven, who can hit a ball over two ponds, a wood, and seven villages, rather than to resemble that pale young student, Mill-Stuart, who, though he can speak Sanskrit like a native of Sanskritia, couldn't score a single off a slow long-hop.
And this ambition is a laudable one. For the athlete is the product of nature—a step towards the more perfect type of animal, while the scholar is the outcome of artificiality. What, I ask, does the scholar gain, either morally or physically19, or in any other way, by knowing who was tribune of the people in 284 BC or what is the precise difference between the various constructions of cum? It is not as if ignorance of the tribune's identity caused him any mental unrest. In short, what excuse is there for the student? 'None,' shrieks20 Echo enthusiastically. 'None whatever.'
Our children are being led to ruin by this system. They will become dons and think in Greek. The victim of the craze stops at nothing. He puns in Latin. He quips and quirks21 in Ionic and Doric. In the worst stages of the disease he will edit Greek plays and say that Merry quite misses the fun of the passage, or that Jebb is mediocre22. Think, I beg of you, paterfamilias, and you, mater ditto, what your feelings would be were you to find Henry or Archibald Cuthbert correcting proofs of The Agamemnon, and inventing 'nasty ones' for Mr Sidgwick! Very well then. Be warned.
Our bright-eyed lads are taught insane constructions in Greek and Latin from morning till night, and they come for their holidays, in many cases, without the merest foundation of a batting style. Ask them what a Yorker is, and they will say: 'A man from York, though I presume you mean a Yorkshireman.' They will read Herodotus without a dictionary for pleasure, but ask them to translate the childishly simple sentence: 'Trott was soon in his timber-yard with a length 'un that whipped across from the off,' and they'll shrink abashed23 and swear they have not skill at that, as Gilbert says.
The papers sometimes contain humorous forecasts of future education, when cricket and football shall come to their own. They little know the excellence24 of the thing they mock at. When we get schools that teach nothing but games, then will the sun definitely refuse to set on the roast beef of old England. May it be soon. Some day, mayhap, I shall gather my great-great-grandsons round my knee, and tell them—as one tells tales of Faery—that I can remember the time when Work was considered the be-all and the end-all of a school career. Perchance, when my great-great-grandson John (called John after the famous Jones of that name) has brought home the prize for English Essay on 'Rugby v. Association', I shall pat his head (gently) and the tears will come to my old eyes as I recall the time when I, too, might have won a prize—for that obsolete25 subject, Latin Prose—and was only prevented by the superior excellence of my thirty-and-one fellow students, coupled, indeed, with my own inability to conjugate26 sum.
Such days, I say, may come. But now are the Dark Ages. The only thing that can possibly make Work anything but an unmitigated nuisance is the prospect27 of a 'Varsity scholarship, and the thought that, in the event of failure, a 'Varsity career will be out of the question.
With this thought constantly before him, the student can put a certain amount of enthusiasm into his work, and even go to the length of rising at five o'clock o' mornings to drink yet deeper of the cup of knowledge. I have done it myself. 'Varsity means games and yellow waistcoats and Proctors, and that sort of thing. It is worth working for.
But for the unfortunate individual who is barred by circumstances from participating in these joys, what inducement is there to work? Is such a one to leave the school nets in order to stew28 in a stuffy29 room over a Thucydides? I trow not.
Chapter one of my great forthcoming work, The Compleat Slacker, contains minute instructions on the art of avoiding preparation from beginning to end of term. Foremost among the words of advice ranks this maxim31: Get an official list of the books you are to do, and examine them carefully with a view to seeing what it is possible to do unseen. Thus, if Virgil is among these authors, you can rely on being able to do him with success. People who ought to know better will tell you that Virgil is hard. Such a shallow falsehood needs little comment. A scholar who cannot translate ten lines of The Aeneid between the time he is put on and the time he begins to speak is unworthy of pity or consideration, and if I meet him in the street I shall assuredly cut him. Aeschylus, on the other hand, is a demon32, and needs careful watching, though in an emergency you can always say the reading is wrong.
Sometimes the compleat slacker falls into a trap. The saddest case I can remember is that of poor Charles Vanderpoop. He was a bright young lad, and showed some promise of rising to heights as a slacker. He fell in this fashion. One Easter term his form had half-finished a speech of Demosthenes, and the form-master gave them to understand that they would absorb the rest during the forthcoming term. Charles, being naturally anxious to do as little work as possible during the summer months, spent his Easter holidays carefully preparing this speech, so as to have it ready in advance. What was his horror, on returning to School at the appointed date, to find that they were going to throw Demosthenes over altogether, and patronize Plato. Threats, entreaties33, prayers—all were accounted nothing by the master who had led him into this morass34 of troubles. It is believed that the shock destroyed his reason. At any rate, the fact remains35 that that term (the summer term, mark you) he won two prizes. In the following term he won three. To recapitulate36 his outrages37 from that time to the present were a harrowing and unnecessary task. Suffice it that he is now a Regius Professor, and I saw in the papers a short time ago that a lecture of his on 'The Probable Origin of the Greek Negative', created quite a furore. If this is not Tragedy with a big T, I should like to know what it is.
As an exciting pastime, unseen translation must rank very high. Everyone who has ever tried translating unseen must acknowledge that all other forms of excitement seem but feeble makeshifts after it. I have, in the course of a career of sustained usefulness to the human race, had my share of thrills. I have asked a strong and busy porter, at Paddington, when the Brighton train started. I have gone for the broad-jump record in trying to avoid a motor-car. I have played Spillikins and Ping-Pong. But never again have I felt the excitement that used to wander athwart my moral backbone38 when I was put on to translate a passage containing a notorious crux39 and seventeen doubtful readings, with only that innate40 genius, which is the wonder of the civilized41 world, to pull me through. And what a glow of pride one feels when it is all over; when one has made a glorious, golden guess at the crux, and trampled42 the doubtful readings under foot with inspired ease. It is like a day at the seaside.
Work is bad enough, but Examinations are worse, especially the Board Examinations. By doing from ten to twenty minutes prep every night, the compleat slacker could get through most of the term with average success. Then came the Examinations. The dabbler43 in unseen translations found himself caught as in a snare44. Gone was the peaceful security in which he had lulled45 to rest all the well-meant efforts of his guardian46 angel to rouse him to a sense of his duties. There, right in front of him, yawned the abyss of Retribution.
Alas47! poor slacker. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. Where be his gibes48 now? How is he to cope with the fiendish ingenuity49 of the examiners? How is he to master the contents of a book of Thucydides in a couple of days? It is a fearsome problem. Perhaps he will get up in the small hours and work by candle light from two till eight o'clock. In this case he will start his day a mental and physical wreck50. Perhaps he will try to work and be led away by the love of light reading.
In any case he will fail to obtain enough marks to satisfy the examiners, though whether examiners ever are satisfied, except by Harry51 the hero of the school story (Every Lad's Library, uniform edition, 2s 6d), is rather a doubtful question.
In such straits, matters resolve themselves into a sort of drama with three characters. We will call our hero Smith.
Scene: a Study
Dramatis Personae:
SMITH
CONSCIENCE
MEPHISTOPHELES
Enter SMITH (down centre)
He seats himself at table and opens a Thucydides.
Enter CONSCIENCE through ceiling (R.), MEPHISTOPHELES through floor (L.).
CONSCIENCE (with a kindly52 smile): Precisely53 what I was about to remark, my dear lad. A little Thucydides would be a very good thing. Thucydides, as you doubtless know, was a very famous Athenian historian. Date?
SMITH: Er—um—let me see.
MEPH. (aside): Look in the Introduction and pretend you did it by accident.
SMITH (having done so): 431 B.C. circ.
CONSCIENCE wipes away a tear.
CONSCIENCE: Thucydides made himself a thorough master of the concisest of styles.
MEPH.: And in doing so became infernally obscure. Excuse shop.
SMITH (gloomily): Hum!
MEPH. (sneeringly): Ha!
Long pause.
CONSCIENCE (gently): Do you not think, my dear lad, that you had better begin? Time and tide, as you are aware, wait for no man. And—
SMITH: Yes?
CONSCIENCE: You have not, I fear, a very firm grasp of the subject. However, if you work hard till eleven—
SMITH (gloomily): Hum! Three hours!
MEPH. (cheerily): Exactly so. Three hours. A little more if anything. By the way, excuse me asking, but have you prepared the subject thoroughly54 during the term?
SMITH: My dear sir! Of course!
CONSCIENCE (reprovingly):???!!??!
SMITH: Well, perhaps, not quite so much as I might have done. Such a lot of things to do this term. Cricket, for instance.
MEPH.: Rather. Talking of cricket, you seemed to be shaping rather well last Saturday. I had just run up on business, and someone told me you made eighty not out. Get your century all right?
SMITH (brightening at the recollection): Just a bit—117 not out. I hit—but perhaps you've heard?
MEPH.: Not at all, not at all. Let's hear all about it.
CONSCIENCE seeks to interpose, but is prevented by MEPH., who eggs SMITH on to talk cricket for over an hour.
CONSCIENCE (at last; in an acid voice): That is a history of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides on the table in front of you. I thought I would mention it, in case you had forgotten.
SMITH: Great Scott, yes! Here, I say, I must start.
CONSCIENCE: Hear! Hear!
MEPH. (insinuatingly): One moment. Did you say you had prepared this book during the term? Afraid I'm a little hard of hearing. Eh, what?
SMITH: Well—er—no, I have not. Have you ever played billiards55 with a walking-stick and five balls?
MEPH.: Quite so, quite so. I quite understand. Don't you distress56 yourself, old chap. You obviously can't get through a whole book of Thucydides in under two hours, can you?
CONSCIENCE (severely): He might, by attentive57 application to study, master a considerable portion of the historian's chef d'oeuvre in that time.
MEPH.: Yes, and find that not one of the passages he had prepared was set in the paper.
CONSCIENCE: At the least, he would, if he were to pursue the course which I have indicated, greatly benefit his mind.
MEPH. (looking towards bookshelf): Hullo, you've got a decent lot of books, pommy word you have. Rodney Stone, Vice30 Versa, Many Cargoes59. Ripping. Ever read Many Cargoes?
CONSCIENCE (glancing at his watch): I am sorry, but I must really go now. I will see you some other day.
Exit sorrowfully.
MEPH.: Well, thank goodness he's gone. Never saw such a fearful old bore in my life. Can't think why you let him hang on to you so. We may as well make a night of it now, eh? No use your trying to work at this time of night.
SMITH: Not a bit.
MEPH.: Did you say you'd not read Many Cargoes?
SMITH: Never. Only got it today. Good?
MEPH.: Simply ripping. All short stories. Make you yell.
SMITH (with a last effort): But don't you think—
MEPH.: Oh no. Besides, you can easily get up early tomorrow for the Thucydides.
SMITH: Of course I can. Never thought of that. Heave us Many Cargoes. Thanks.
Begins to read. MEPH. grins fiendishly, and vanishes through floor enveloped60 in red flame. Sobbing61 heard from the direction of the ceiling.
Scene closes.
Next morning, of course, he will oversleep himself, and his Thucydides paper will be of such a calibre that that eminent62 historian will writhe63 in his grave.
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1
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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2
attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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3
wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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4
err
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| vi.犯错误，出差错 | |
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disapproval
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| n.反对，不赞成 | |
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6
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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7
embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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8
reeks
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| n.恶臭( reek的名词复数 )v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的第三人称单数 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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9
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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10
consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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11
steer
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| vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶 | |
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12
euphoniously
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| adj.悦耳的 | |
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13
extradition
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| n.引渡（逃犯） | |
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14
emulate
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| v.努力赶上或超越，与…竞争；效仿 | |
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15
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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16
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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17
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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18
throbbed
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| 抽痛( throb的过去式和过去分词 )； （心脏、脉搏等）跳动 | |
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19
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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20
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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21
quirks
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| n.奇事，巧合( quirk的名词复数 )；怪癖 | |
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22
mediocre
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| adj.平常的，普通的 | |
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23
abashed
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| adj.窘迫的，尴尬的v.使羞愧，使局促，使窘迫( abash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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24
excellence
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| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
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25
obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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26
conjugate
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| vt.使成对，使结合；adj.共轭的，成对的 | |
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27
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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28
stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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29
stuffy
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| adj.不透气的，闷热的 | |
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30
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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31
maxim
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| n.格言，箴言 | |
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32
demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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33
entreaties
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| n.恳求，乞求( entreaty的名词复数 ) | |
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34
morass
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| n.沼泽，困境 | |
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35
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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36
recapitulate
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| v.节述要旨，择要说明 | |
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37
outrages
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| 引起…的义愤，激怒( outrage的第三人称单数 ) | |
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38
backbone
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| n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气 | |
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39
crux
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| adj.十字形；难事，关键，最重要点 | |
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40
innate
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| adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的 | |
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41
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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42
trampled
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| 踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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43
dabbler
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| n. 戏水者, 业余家, 半玩半认真做的人 | |
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44
snare
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| n.陷阱，诱惑，圈套；（去除息肉或者肿瘤的）勒除器；响弦，小军鼓；vt.以陷阱捕获，诱惑 | |
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45
lulled
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| vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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46
guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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47
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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48
gibes
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| vi.嘲笑，嘲弄（gibe的第三人称单数形式） | |
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49
ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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50
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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51
harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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52
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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53
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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54
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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55
billiards
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| n.台球 | |
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56
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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57
attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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58
derisive
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| adj.嘲弄的 | |
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59
cargoes
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| n.（船或飞机装载的）货物( cargo的名词复数 )；大量，重负 | |
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60
enveloped
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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61
sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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62
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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63
writhe
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| vt.挣扎，痛苦地扭曲；vi.扭曲，翻腾，受苦；n.翻腾，苦恼 | |
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