3._FR0M A TEACHER'8 WINDOW. 

 By T. Cornish, M.A. 



It was my original intention to use as the heading of my paper 

 ^'The South African B03'," but on reflection it struck me tliat this 

 title had already become rather too hackneyed, and I also felt that it 

 was too glaring a plagiarism of the title of Mr. Way's paper read some 

 years back at a meeting of the Teachers' Conference. Not that the sub- 

 ject need ever cloj^, however frequently it may be dealt with and through 

 however many different liands it may pass. The "human boy," to 

 borrow Eden Philpot's striking phrase, is always with us, but he is 

 never the same. There are certain strains which run through all the 

 generations of boy life, but there are endless varieties of type. Any 

 one who has studied boy life for years, as I have done, will bear me 

 out in this statement. Of the boy it may be truly said, " Age cannot 

 wither nor custom stale his infinite variety." This is the case in the 

 Old Country, and this strikes the student of boy life more and more 

 each year of his experience ; but how much more is this the case with 

 the colonial boy. " The study of mankind is man," and the studv of 

 boy nature is best attained by the study of the boy. 



There is this radical difference at the outset between the boy in 

 the Old Countiy and the boy in the colony : the one is the finished 

 article, the product of ages of tradition ; the other is " the boy in the 

 making," not the product of, but the germ of tradition. I do not 

 mean to imply that the boy in the Home Country is merely a machine 

 and merely the reflection of his environment, and therefore compara- 

 tively uninteresting. The boy is superior to his surroundings, and no 

 amount of tradition or " setting " can rob him of his individuality. 

 Even the finished article is human, and theiefore interesting. But the 

 interest is magnified ten times in the case of the "boy in the making," 

 as you find him in the colonies ; not the accretion of ages, but just fresh 

 virgin soil, or, to change the metaphor, the rough cast which has not 

 yet been put through the moulder's hands. It may repay the time 

 spent, if we roughly and on broad geneial lines compare the one type 

 with the other ; and here T think it right to mention that T never read 

 jVIr. Way's paper, and only .saw some short extracts, including one 

 striking phrase, U* which I shall refer later on in this paper. 



Let us take the points of comparison intellectually, physically 

 and, for want of a better word, ethically. A''iewing the two from the 

 intellectual standpoint first (though here I shall use many sweeping 

 generalisations, and leave the considci-ation of the question in detail to 

 a later part of this paper), it will, I think, be admitted by the warmest 

 friends of the colonial boy, and I rank myself as one of his warmest 

 admirers, that the Home Country boy is at a great advantage ; though, 

 wliile admitting this at tlie outset, and it would be ridiculous to deny 

 it or gloss it over, I wish to guard myself against making the admission 



