Through Literature To Life

CASSELLS POCKET LIBRARY THROUGH LITERATURE TO LIFE To THE EDITOR AND READERS OF THE TEACHERS WORLD WHO GAVE TO THE SERIAL FORM OF THIS BOOK IN THE COLUMNS OF THEIR JOURNAL SO LONG A HOSPITALITY AND SO KIND A WELCOME THROUGH LITERATURE TO LIFE AN ENTHUSIASM AND AN ANTHOLOGY by ERNEST RAYMOND CASSELL COMPANY LTD LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE, SYDNEY PREFACE WHT. N I was about thirteen years old, and a lazy, unbiddable pupil at St. Pauls school, I chanced to have a master as will be told in the first chapter of this book whose sheer burning enthusiasm for literature and stuttering expositions of his favourite passages and long spoutings of them all delivered when he ought to have been teaching us something else suddenly lit in me the same flame, and determined the whole trend of rny life. From that moment I I of all people had a passion for books and the things of the mind, so they were not school books. ii 4 en resolved to commence on the practice of literature at once and having no originality and very few brains, I floated a new magazine on the school, in collaboration with another Pauline. My first contribution to it was a poem one begins with poetry always. I had cast around for a worthy subject, and found a truly magnificent one in the illness of King Edward VII and the post ponement of his coronation and, as far as IO PREFACE I can remember, my opening stanza was the following There will be no Coronation, The King is stricken down, Oh, who will occupy the Stands, Oh, who will fill the Crown which, though not good, was no worse than the output of a distinguished poet of that day, who achieved the couplet Along the line the electric message came He is not worse, but much the same. In duetime I became a schoolmaster myself and attempted with my boys the methods of this master to whom I owed all things then I became a lecturer tfffd attempted something similar from the platform and now I am attempting it in a book. This book is no more than the enthusiasm of one man, with many of the passages that he loves embedded in it but so much, I fancy, is all that is wanted and it is my hope that it may prove a book for those who long to catch a love for literature and those who long to give it for those who want to write, and those who want to help others to write for teachers to put in the PREFACE II hands of their senior pupils, and for parents to give to their elder children, when-they see the dawn breaking. I have not, alas, the wide know ledge and the wealth of allusion of that tireless hunter on the hills of literature, my master, Mr. Elam of St. Pauls but I have a small portion of his spirit and I pray that, if the hands that have written this book be the hands of a veritable Jacob, the voice may sound like the voice of Elam. CONTENTS THROUGH LITERATURE TO LIFE CHAPTER I PORTRAIT OF ELAM AS I look back upon my schooldays I fill to the brim with theories on education and with criticisms, mostly damaging, of public schools as I knew them twenty years ago, as they are now, and as they certainly will be twenty years hence. These theories are all in line with the journalistic attacks in the silly seasons. I could write a magnificent series of articles for the next outbreak of anti-public-school agitation and very wordy, very highly-seasoned, quite sincere articles they would be...