Meanwhile the flood of letters
about my book, invitations from editors, offers from publishers,
continues to flow. I reply to these benignantly and courteously,
but undertake nothing, promise nothing. I seem to have recovered my
balance. I think no more about my bodily complaints, and my nerves
no longer sting and thrill. The day is hardly long enough for all I
have to do. It may be that when the novelty of the experiment in
education wears off, I shall begin to hanker after authorship
again. Alec will have to go to school in a year or two, I suppose;
but it shall be a day-school at first, if I can find one. As to the
question of a public school, I am much exercised. Of course there
are nightmare terrors about tone and morals; but I am not really
very anxious about the boy, because he is sensible and independent,
and has no lack of moral courage. The vigorous barrack-life is good
for a boy, the give-and-take, the splendid equality, the manly
code, the absence of affectation. But the intellectual tone of
schools is low, and the conventionality is great. I don't want Alec
to be a conventional man, and yet I want him to accept current
conventions instinctively about matters of indifference.
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