Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/74

Rh back any moment; the boy forgets himself, the old Adam is there, and bang goes the leg stump or l.b.w. The golfer has a habit of pulling his arms in when playing quarter shots with the iron; the billiard player feels happy when he has to play almost any stroke; but no matter how much practice he gives himself, he never feels confident or at ease when a stroke requiring half a screw presents itself.

I have heard it said of a wonderfully successful head-master—successful I mean in his boys getting scholarships—that his success is the result, not as may be imagined of his own teaching of the sixth form, but of his practice of taking classes and prowling about among the lower forms. This master had an eye, and an unerring eye, for youths who were likely to become scholars. He caught these boys when young and taught them himself, and in due time he passed them on to his most learned and experienced masters to be finished; they had the scholarship gloss put on them, and University rewards poured down. It might be the same, I believe, if a master or some other coach who had the same gift could, by observing