Page 104 - of-human-bondage-

truth, which was possibly of greater service to them in after
life than an ability to read Latin at sight.
Then they fell into the hands of Tar. His name was Turn-
er; he was the most vivacious of the old masters, a short man
with an immense belly, a black beard turning now to gray,
and a swarthy skin. In his clerical dress there was indeed
something in him to suggest the tar-barrel; and though on
principle he gave five hundred lines to any boy on whose
lips he overheard his nickname, at dinner-parties in the
precincts he often made little jokes about it. He was the
most worldly of the masters; he dined out more frequent-
ly than any of the others, and the society he kept was not
so exclusively clerical. The boys looked upon him as rath-
er a dog. He left off his clerical attire during the holidays
and had been seen in Switzerland in gay tweeds. He liked
a bottle of wine and a good dinner, and having once been
seen at the Cafe Royal with a lady who was very probably a
near relation, was thenceforward supposed by generations
of schoolboys to indulge in orgies the circumstantial details
of which pointed to an unbounded belief in human deprav-
ity.
Mr. Turner reckoned that it took him a term to lick boys
into shape after they had been in the Upper Third; and now
and then he let fall a sly hint, which showed that he knew
perfectly what went on in his colleague’s form. He took it
good-humouredly. He looked upon boys as young ruffians
who were more apt to be truthful if it was quite certain a lie
would be found out, whose sense of honour was peculiar to
themselves and did not apply to dealings with masters, and

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