Grain or Chaff?; The Autobiography of a Police Magistrate (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III WESTMINSTER School illustrates, in a remarkable degree, the strength of Public School sentiment among Englishmen. Unlike Eton and Winchester and other great schools situated amid beautiful surroundings, Westminster has nothing but her traditions, and association with the glorious Abbey, to keep alive the loyalty of her sons. Once indeed she could boast like Eton of the silvery Thames, but those days are gone never to return, and the sentiment of the school has to survive as best it can in the midst of a wilderness of bricks and mortar, which make it difficult to say where the boundaries of the school begin or end. Much the same fate overtook Charterhouse and St. Paul's, but whereas those two great schools thought it best to accept facts and meet them by transporting themselves to more favoured sites, the religio loci at Westminster is so strong that whenever the question of removal has been discussed at meetings convened for the purpose, there has been an overwhelming feeling in favour of non-removal. It has been said indeed of Westminster that everything there is antique and nothing antiquated, and I am sure it was because he felt so strongly the spirit of the place, that my father determined to adhere to the old school which he loved so well, notwithstanding the outward change that had taken place since the days he had been there himself. And so it was as the inheritor of these feelings, and with no little pride, that I drove under the great doorway of Dean's Yard, and found myself enrolled as a boarder at "Rigaud's," a house which was really under the management of one of the assistant masters, the Reverend B. F. James. All the boys at a big school have to submit to much inquisitive questioning, and the first boy to interrogate me in the us...