3 2o SCIENCE PROGRESS 



in X we are not told. Presumably, the Boarders are to wait at the station until 



the House Masters arrive ; but how if the House Masters arrive in X by motor 



car ?] and none may return, except by special leave obtained from their House 

 Masters, by any train that is due at X later than 8 o'clock." 



If this had been written by a common vulgar Board School person who knew 

 no Latin or Greek, we should have sworn that it contained a false concord, and 

 that the plural demonstrative pronoun "their" referred to the singular numeral 

 " none " ; but this was written by a classical scholar, a Master of Arts of the 

 University of Oxford, Scholar of Y Z College, a man whose knowledge of Latin 

 and Greek has conferred upon him that mastery of the English tongue which a 

 classical education always does confer, and which can be attained in no other way. 

 That such a master of English should ever perpetrate a false concord is not to 

 be thought of; but that he should perpetrate an obvious and elementary false 

 concord in composing official instructions for the boys of the school of which he 

 is headmaster is such a wild improbability that it must be dismissed from 

 conjecture, and we must find some other meaning in this remarkable regulation, 

 which is so important that in the original before me it is underlined. According 

 to the ordinary rules for the composition of English, the pronoun "their" should 

 refer to the next preceding plural noun, and the next preceding plural noun is 

 House Masters, so that we must " conclusively presume," as the lawyers say, that 

 none may return except by special leave obtained from the House Masters of the 

 House Masters. It would appear, therefore, that in this public school the House 

 Masters are arranged in a hierarchy, like the big fleas and the little fleas in Swift's 

 epigram. Perhaps that is why it rises above the common designation of a school, 

 and is called a College. 



" Boys are subject to all College rules from the moment of their arrival in X." 

 Quite right, but when do the rules arrive in X 1 When they issue from the pen 

 of the headmaster, whose classical education has conferred upon him a head- 

 mastery of English ? or at what other time ? And how are the boys to know at 

 what moment the rules arrive ? A little explanation here would have been kind to 

 the boys, but it is probably beneath the dignity of a headmaster to be kind to 

 the boys. 



" All boys (whether previously at the College or not) are to be in School at 

 8.30 a.m. on Thursday, May 3rd." There are two nice distinctions here that no 

 doubt the boys are taught, in their studies of English, to appreciate, but that are 

 puzzling to an outsider. " All boys are to be in the School at 8.30," that is plain 

 enough, but are all boys subject to all College rules from the moment these rules 

 arrive in X ? We are not told so. We are told that " boys " are subject to 

 these rules — that is to say, boys as distinguished from girls, men, and women. 

 Presumably, therefore, the College receives girls as well as boys, and it is to the 

 boys alone that the regulation applies. The girls need not conform to the rules 

 the moment the rules arrive in X; but are all boys to conform to them? Boys, 

 as any Master of Arts of the University of Oxford must know, since it is a well- 

 known logical rule, and Oxford is the home of logic — boys may mean all boys or 

 some boys, and which the term means in this context is not explained. However, 

 all boys (whether previously at the College or not) are to be in the School at 

 8.30 a.m. on Thursday, and this introduces us to a nice distinction between the 

 College and School, a distinction familiar, no doubt, to boys, but whether to all 

 boys or to some boys we are left to conjecture. 



" Boys who are not prevented by illness, or some other equally urgent cause, 

 ?nust return punctually to the day, and will be held personally responsible for their 



