“Let us consider how to
stir up one another to love and good works.” Hebrews 10:24
If there
were websites that allowed students to review boarding schools, I imagine that
most of you would have a few complaints to air.
It may be that a few of these slip out from time to time when you are
calling, or texting, or face booking a friend back home who hasn’t had the
fortune of ending up in this exotic place called Saint James. When I taught here, I was always very careful
not to look over the shoulders of my charges who flocked to the computers after
study hall was over, but I had some idea what was being said: can you believe
they give two hours of homework in this place?
You can’t imagine what they serve in that dining hall. I’ve never lived this far from a decent mall
in my life!
Last week, I
happened upon a letter written by a boarding school student to his father
nearly two hundred years ago, and believe me, next to him your life here is a
walk in the park. Young Henry describes
rations of black bread, mattresses stuffed with wheat chaff, all the boys
washing once a week at a long horse trough, with never enough soap to go
around. The headmaster, Henry said,
inspected all the letters, so he had to slip this one to a friend of his
father’s at church. When the lights were
out, in the dormitory, it was every man for himself. He begged his father to
let him come home for Christmas, if God permitted him to live so long. He closed the secret missive with these
words: “I assure you we are used more like Bears than Christians and believe me,
my dear Father, I would rather be obliged to work all my life time than remain here
another year.[1]”
