He then gave us Thwaites--twittering sort of stuff, and interesting, not because Thwaites had got "the poet’s bay," whatever that is, but because he had landed Peacock’s guinea. Nobody much liked his prize poem except the masters, and even Thwaites himself said it wasn’t any real good, and was written when he had a beastly sore throat and was feeling utterly down on his luck. In fact, he was going to call it "Lines Written in Dejection at Merivale," like real poets do, only he got better before he finished the last verse, and so didn’t.
Suffer, sad earth; no pain can equal thine: Thy giant heart must ever be a shrine For all the sorrows of Humanity. As one by one the stricken ages die, The bright beams of the stars are turned to tears, And howling winds that whistle down the years Sigh "Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow!" and are gone Into the silence of oblivion. Suffer, great world; the poison fangs of Death Can only wound, not kill thee.... Lo! the breath Of everlasting dawn is in the wind; The distant throbbing of a giant Mind Shall set the music of the Universe Once more in time--with harmony coerce The discord of a warring race to cease And sorrow die within the arms of peace.
Thwaites spent his guinea almost entirely on tuck, and though he was very generous with it, and shared the grub with the competitors Rice and Sutherland minor, who were his friends, he still kept enough to make himself ill again. For it was one of the unlucky things about Thwaites that any muck really worth eating always bowled him over. He wrote a poem three times as long as his War poem, called "Effect of Cocoanut Rock on the Tummy of Thwaites"; but Dunston wouldn’t have purred much over that.
If anybody has done a crime, Dr. Dunston generally speaks to them before the school, so that all may hear what the crime is. And according to the way he speaks to them, we know the sort of fate in store.
If he says he remembers what it was to be a boy himself, there is great hope, for, as Mitchell pointed out, that means the Doctor has himself committed the crime in far-off times when he was young; but if he doesn’t say he remembers what it was to be a boy himself, then the crime is probably a crime he never committed; and these are the sort he punishes worst.