Excerpt from The Gift: Christmas, New Year, and Birthday Present Let it not be supposed that Master Horner was of a cruel and ogrish nature - a babe-eater - a Herod - one who delighted in torturing the helpless. Such souls there may be, among those endowed with the awful control of the ferule, but they are rare in the fresh and natural regions we describe. It is, we believe, where young gentlemen are to be crammed for college that the process of hardening heart and skin together goes on most vigorously. Yet among the uneducated there is so high a respect for bodily strength, that it is necessary for the school master to Show, first of all, that he possesses this inamissible requisite for his place. The rest is more readily taken for granted. Brains he may have - a strong arm he must have so he proves the more important claim first. We must there fore make all due allowance for Master Horner, who could not be expected to overtop his position so far as to discern at once the philosophy of teaching. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.