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f I tried my best, it would take a year to describe the life in that English Grammar School at R. . . . I had always been perfectly happy in every Irish school and especially in the Royal School at Armagh. Let me give one difference as briefly as possible. When I whispered in the class-room in Ireland, the master would frown at me and shake his head; ten minutes later I was talking again, and he'd hold up an admonitory finger: the third time he'd probably say, "Stop talking, Harris, don't you see you're disturbing your neigbour?" Half an hour later in despair he'd cry, "If you still talk, I'll have to punish you".

Ten minutes afterwards: "You're incorrigible, Harris, come up here" and I'd have to go and stand beside his desk for the rest of the morning, and even this light punishment did not happen more than twice a week, and as I came to be head of my class, it grew rarer.

In England, the procedure was quite different. "That new boy there is talking; take 300 lines to write out and keep quiet".