His Successes are with Children who have been trained at Home––’You can do anything with So-and-so; his parents have turned him out so well.’ Observe, the master takes little credit to himself (by no means so much as he deserves); and why? Experience makes fools wise; and what then of those who add experience to wisdom? ‘People send us their cubs to lick into shape, and what can we do?’ Now the answer to this query concerns parents rather closely: what and how much can the schoolmaster do to make the boy ’sit up’ who has not been to the manner bred?
No suasion will make you ’sit up’ if you are an oyster; no, nor even if you are a cod. You must have a backbone, and your backbone must have learned its work before sitting up is possible to you. No doubt the human oyster may grow a backbone, and the human cod may get into the way of sitting up, and some day, perhaps, we shall know of the heroic endeavours made by schoolmaster and mistress to prop up, and haul up, and draw up, and anyhow keep alert and sitting up, creatures whose way it is to sprawl. Sometimes the result is surprising; they sit up in a row with the rest and look all right; even when the props are removed they keep to the trick of sitting up for a while. The schoolmaster begins to rub his hands, and the parents say, ‘I told you so. Didn’t I always say Jack would come right in the end?’ Wait a bit. The end is not yet.