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He will perhaps be in charge of his aunt, a large dowager to whom this represents the last great event of the Season. She will have been to the Private View of the Royal Academy, to Ascot, to at least one of the Courts, and her flowered garden party frocks (indispensable to London ladies in the Season) will have been put through a strenuous series of functions. She will be glad when she can get off to the country, for during these three days she will find her hands full with taking her nephew to teashops, grill-rooms, music halls. After the last ball has been bowled at Lord's, she will chaperone at the Eton-Harrow dance at Hurlingham, and Monday send the "nipper" back to school, along with the other small Etonians (under 5 ft. 4 in.) in toppers and truncated jacket, large Etonians in toppers and morning coats; small Harrovians in jackets and straw "boaters," large Harrovians in tails and that same straw headgear which the school wears in all seasons. For the rest of the termuntil the last of JulyBritish public school boys have no such pother of examinations and commencements as occupy the attention of U. S. students. They study, perhaps with less application than during winter months. Most of their time they devote to sport: cricket, tennis, fives, swimming, and in a number of schools, rowing. Eton is a rowing school, and Eton's distinction between Wet Bobs (crew men) and Dry Bobs (land sports) has become almost universal in British public schools. So keen is rivalry between Wets & Drys, each regarding his sport as gentlemanly, typically British, that a master becomes known as Wet or Dry according to the prevalent temper of his sympathies. Predominantly Dry Bob and cricketish is Harrow; but Eton began playing cricket in 1730 and Harrow has no record of it before 1771. Eton has lost no Eton-Harrow match since 1908 (but eight were drawn), and Old Etonians like to remember that Old Etonian Wellington said: "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton!" Harrovians counter by pointing out that Eton has some 1,100 students from which to choose its cricketers; Harrow only 700. Seven weeks of holiday stretch from the end of the Summer Term to the beginning of the Autumn Term. To Eton (King's College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor) will then come a new batch of 13 and 14-year-oldsters. As pupils in Britain's largest, most expensive (average total yearly cost: $2,000) and most famed public school, they will spend some five years on the green campus in the shadow of many a fine Gothic building, across the Thames from Windsor Castle. Some of them will go up to Oxford when they finish their course, spend three years there, return then to Eton to teach Latin and cricket to the boys. Their progress through the school depends quite upon their own aptitudes. They must finish the Lower School before the age of 16. Then, under the guidance of the masters of the 28 houses and the tutors who supervise outside work, they must advance through a series of divisions, a new one every term, until the course is finished. One may complete one's course at any time during the year: there is no graduation. But at the end of the term the "Head Beak" (beak = master) delivers a Leaving Address and presents each graduate with a Leaving Book. Head Beak of Eton, and perhaps Head Beak of all British Beaks, is Rev. Dr.
