Apart from these heroic names the atmosphere of Haverton House was not
inspiring. It reduced the world to the size and quality of one of those
scratched globes with which Uncle Henry demonstrated geography. Every
subject at Haverton House, no matter how interesting it promised to be,
was ruined from an educative point of view by its impedimenta of dates,
imports, exports, capitals, capes, and Kings of Israel and Judah.
Neither Uncle Henry nor his assistants Mr. Spaull and Mr. Palmer
believed in departing from the book. Whatever books were chosen for the
term's curriculum were regarded as something for which money had been
paid and from which the last drop of information must be squeezed to
justify in the eyes of parents the expenditure. The teachers considered
the notes more important than the text; genealogical tables were exalted
above anything on the same page. Some books of history were adorned with
illustrations; but no use was made of them by the masters, and for the
pupils they merely served as outlines to which, were they the outlines
of human beings, inky beards and moustaches had to be affixed, or were
they landscapes, flights of birds.
Mr. Spaull was a fat flabby young man with a heavy fair moustache, who
was reading for Holy Orders; Mr.
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