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were signs notwithstanding that even there changes were
coming; for a few, repeating what they had heard at home,
said that the Church was no longer what it used to be. It
wasn’t so much the money; but the class of people who went
in for it weren’t the same; and two or three boys knew cu-
rates whose fathers were tradesmen: they’d rather go out to
the Colonies (in those days the Colonies were still the last
hope of those who could get nothing to do in England) than
be a curate under some chap who wasn’t a gentleman. At
King’s School, as at Blackstable Vicarage, a tradesman was
anyone who was not lucky enough to own land (and here a
fine distinction was made between the gentleman farmer
and the landowner), or did not follow one of the four pro-
fessions to which it was possible for a gentleman to belong.
Among the day-boys, of whom there were about a hundred
and fifty, sons of the local gentry and of the men stationed
at the depot, those whose fathers were engaged in business
were made to feel the degradation of their state.
The masters had no patience with modern ideas of edu-
cation, which they read of sometimes in The Times or The
Guardian, and hoped fervently that King’s School would
remain true to its old traditions. The dead languages were
taught with such thoroughness that an old boy seldom
thought of Homer or Virgil in after life without a qualm of
boredom; and though in the common room at dinner one
or two bolder spirits suggested that mathematics were of
increasing importance, the general feeling was that they
were a less noble study than the classics. Neither German
nor chemistry was taught, and French only by the form-