(2 of 2)
Biblical Boarders. Old Sawney introduced the honor system ("Don't do anything on the sly"), prohibited smoking, required attendance at Sunday church and his own Sunday afternoon chapel talks. Old Webb boys remember the talks best. He always began on the minute but stopped only when he had a mind to: sometimes at the end of a single sentence, or once at the end of six hours. Old Sawney soaked his listeners thoroughly in the Bible, boasted he could find a Biblical parallel for any problem. (When a student defied him to mention a boy in the Bible who was packed off to boarding school, Sawney triumphantly produced four—Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.) Once a vocational educator wound up a speech by saying: "I would rather see to it that a boy could milk a cow than be able to read Caesar." Old Sawney, who liked his boys to milk cows and chop wood too, got to his feet, declared: "If I had to make a choice, I would rather my children could do something a calf couldn't beat them at."
The Webb sons, chips off the old block, like to recall the initial investment Old Sawney made for his school: $8,000 for books, $400 for a building to put them in.