Morning journal and courier., 1892-11-19
wAKEMAN,s wANDERINGS.

's[CoNCLUDED FROM FIRST PAGE.
entire relation of parent or guardian.
There is now perhaps an average attend
ance of one thousand boys. Fully eight
hundred are non-residents. All of these
live in boarding houses, formerly conduct
ed by women or "dames," and while now
all but one are under the supervision of
boarding masters, who each care for from
thirty to fifty youths, they are still known
as ''dames houses" These boarding mas
ters are assistant masters of and teachers
in the college. So far as college life and
discipline are concerned all of these houses
are as strictly subject to college law and
regulation as though they were set down
and securely locked within either of the
two college quadrangles.
The principal and original buildings
form two huge quadrangles. The first,
| entered from the highway through much
| battered archway, is adorned by central
| statue of the royal founder in bronze.
This equsre, called the ''sohool yard" is
enclosed by the chapel, schools, dormato-
ries, masters chambers, clock-tower and
"election chamber" where the highest
| gifts of the college, the scholarships at
| Kings college, Cambridge, are annually be-
slowed.
The lesser quadrangle, nearest the
Thames, which Eton college properly
l
the residences of the provost and fellows,
| and the library, which is reached by q
| fight of steps to the left of the entrance
| of the cloisters. Beyond the cloisters are
the fine college gardene. and still beyond
these, through a small postern gate luxu-
riantly mantled with ivy and "Weston's
yard" you come up on the Playing
Field" where on holiday evenings, In
what is..called poets Walk" the cricketers
| 10 @o11 fhair Too
ing Fields" dearest of all things at Elton
to all Etonians past and present, comprise
| an extensive tract of ground, tntersected
by a pretty stream, and crossed by q small
bridge. They are crowded with rich YER
dure and shaded by venerable elms, the
Thames calmly ripping along their banks,
and Windsor castle in the distance.
= Here, in the silent memorials to those
who have rendered the old school famous
by their own subsequent greatness; in the
upper school adorned with its marble
busts of Etonian worthless who became
| England's greatest statesmen, divines, phi
| losophers and poets; and In the host OF
noted names carved everywhere upon the
!, ancient woodwork by erst boyish hands
one finds the real answer to all impulse Of
criticism upon what seems at first to ar
American dead age system of education
!, of the British youth of to-day. Two fog
| hofo boO1 III Pooo 9hhlOo VII
, umphantly borne away, but another standl
in it's place. 1t was not 80 long ago tina
the famous DIR. Keate QS09-3D fogget
f eighty boys in one night. thus quelling al
: incipient rebellion. That "odious system
| of tagging" still remains. If your boy O.
q mine, or the boy of the proudest earls O.
L England, enters Eton, there is no power t
J prevent him doing the most mental druid
i gerry for the fifth and sixth form lads. H
i Is their slave until he himself reaches tn
fagmaster's estate.
1t is a wonderful leveler. Lord Sails
' bury, Gladstone, Lord Randolph Church
i'll, Chief Justice Coleridge, Lord Chat
ham, Lord Shelburne, Canning, Pussy
. Bolingbroke, Pitt, Sir Humphrey Gilbert
:. Horace Walpole, Fielding, Hallam, an
f the poets Waller, Anstey. Shelley. Broome
Praed and Gray. were all in their time fag
y at Eton-carrying the beer, cleaning th
= boots, grillipg the herring, smudging tn
toast and lodging the boot-jacks of the!
s. fagmasters above them. The Elton syl
II tenn, in brief, makes boys know how
.s endure and to rule. Behind all, an imp,
rial scourge to ambitious effort, are impel
ishable memorials of these dead and Twin
3. hosts who have made it noble honor
have merely once been an Elton boy.
30 EDGAR L. WAKEMAN.