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Certainly not a schoolmaster--and my many years of apprenticeship
did not make me one. They only turned me into an automaton,
feared by myself, bantered by my colleagues, and sometimes good-
humouredly tolerated by the boys.
Seven years ago the lawyer's letter came. The post used to
arrive just before first school. I opened the letter in the
class-room and sat down at my desk, sick with horror. The awful
wholesale destruction of my relatives paralysed me. My form must
have seen by my ghastly face that something had happened, for,
contrary to their usual practice, they sat, thirty of them, in
stony silence, waiting for me to begin the lesson. As far as I
remember anything, they waited the whole hour. The lesson over,
I passed along the cloister on my way to my rooms. I overheard
one of my urchins, clattering in front of me, shout to another:
"I'm sure he's got the sack!"
Turning round he perceived me, and grew as red as a turkey-cock.
I laughed aloud. The boy's yell was a clarion announcement from
the seventh heaven.


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