Irving for essay, when the subject was ’Describe a sunrise in the Australian back-blocks’.  As parent said, he could have used ’A moonlight stroll by the sea-shore’ and change the colour from silver to golden.  But the fool was ill—­so ill that he tried to kill himself and had not the strength.  He said he would rather go to the missionaries’ hell, full of Englishes, than go on learning Egbert, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelwulf, Ethelred, Alfred, Edward the Elder, Edred, Edwy, Edgar, Ethelred the Unready, and If two triangles have two sides of the one equal to two angles of the other each to each and the sides so subtended equal then shall the bases or fourth sides be equal each to each or be isosceles.

“Well, the progenitor kept our noses in the pie night and day and we all hated the old papa piously and wished he and we and all teachers and text-books were burned alive.

“But we were very much loved by everybody as we were so learned and clever, and whenever the Collector or anybody came to School, the Head Master used to put one of us in each room and call on us to answer questions and recite and say capes and bays without the map, and other clever things; and when my eldest brother left I had to change coat with another boy and do it twice sometimes, in different rooms.

“Sometimes the Educational Inspector himself would come, but then nothing could be done, for he would not ask questions that were always asked and were in the book, like the teachers and Deputy Inspectors did, but questions that no one knew and had to be thought out then and there.  That is no test of Learning—­and any fool who has not troubled to mug his book by heart might be able to answer such questions, while the man who had learnt every letter sat dumb.

“I hated the school and the books I knew by heart, but I loved Mr. Ganeshram Joshibhai.  He was a clever cunning man, and could always tweak the leg of pompous Head Master when he came to the room, and had beautiful ways of cheating him when he came to examine—­better than those of the other teachers.

“Before we had been with him a month he could tell us things while being examined, and no one else knew he was doing it.  The initial letters of each word made up the words he wanted to crib to us, and when he scratched his head with the right hand the answer was ‘No,’ while with the left hand it was ‘Yes’.  And the clever way he taught us sedition while teaching us History, and appearing to praise the English!

“He would spend hours in praising the good men who rebelled and fought and got Magnum Charter and disrespected the King and cheeked the Government and Members of Council.  We knew all about Oliver Cromwell, Hampden, Pim, and those crappies, and many a boy who had never heard of Wolsey and Alfred the Great knew all about Felton the jolly fine patriot who stabbed the Member of Council, Buckingham Esquire, in back.

“We learnt whole History book at home and he spent all History lessons telling us about Plots, all the English History Plots and foreign too, and we knew about the man who killed Henry of Navarre, as well as about the killing of French and American Presidents of to-day.  He showed always why successful plots succeeded and the others failed.  And he gave weeks to the American Independence War and the French Revolution.