I am not among the detractors of the public-school system,
and a good many thousand new boys who will be making their first plunge in the next few days or so into the chill waters of their first boarding-school will find themselves adjusted to their surroundings in nearer a week than a fortnight. But the good-byes can be minor tragedies all the same, and no father, or son need be ashamed to confess it. If I want support for that judgement I call Lord Rosebery. This is what he wrote in his diary on the day in 1893 when his sons went to Eton : " We all spent a miserable morning, but boys very brave. I made all the children write their names in my Bible, and read John xiv. Then I went and bought the boys bibles, and frames to hold their parents' portraits. At last, at 3.25, they went off. Shall I ever forget the cab with the precise initialled new.luggage on top ? Today is the centenary of the execution of Louis XVI. I console myself by the incomparable anguish of the parting of January 20th, 1793." He was right. The guillotine is on the whole worse than Eton.
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