CHAPTER XI.
JOHN CRAVEN'S METHOD Mr.John Craven could not be said to take his school-teaching seriously; and indeed, any one looking at his face would hardly expect him to take anything seriously, and certainly those who in his college days followed and courted and kept pace with Jack Craven, and knew his smile, would have expected from him anything other than seriousness.

He appeared to himself to be enacting a kind of grim comedy, exile as he was in a foreign land, among people of a strange tongue.
He knew absolutely nothing of pedagogical method, and consequently he ignored all rules and precedents in the teaching and conduct of the school.

His discipline was of a most fantastic kind.

He had a feeling that all lessons were a bore, therefore he would assign the shortest and easiest of tasks.

But having assigned the tasks, he expected perfection in recitation, and impressed his pupils with the idea that nothing less would pass.