Dr. Dunston had a way of introducing a new chap to the school after prayers. The natural instinct of a new chap, of course, is to slide in quietly and slowly settle down, first in his class and then in the school; but old Dunston doesn’t allow this. When a new boy turns up, he jaws over him, and prophesies about him, and says we shall all like him, and so on; and if the new chap’s father is anybody, which he sometimes happens to be, then Dunston lets us know it. The result is that he generally puts everybody off a new chap from the first; but the Fifth and Sixth allow for this. As Travers major pointed out, it’s a rum instinct of human nature to hate anything you are ordered to like, and to scoff at anything you are ordered to admire; so, thanks to Travers, who is frightfully clever in his way, and, in fact, going to Woolwich next term, we always allowed for the Doctor’s great hope about a new boy, and didn’t let it put us off him. As a matter of fact, Dunston often withdrew the praise afterwards, and we noticed, for some queer reason, that if a boy had a celebrated father, he always turned out to be the sort that Dunston hated most; and often and often, when he had to rag or flog that sort of boy, the Doctor fairly wept to think what the boy’s celebrated father would say if he could see him now.
When Jacob Wundt came to Merivale, Dunston just went the limit about him; and it was all the more footling because Wundt grinned, and evidently highly approved of what was said about him. He was the first German the Doctor had ever had for a pupil, I believe--anyway, the first in living memory--so, perhaps, naturally he got a bit above himself about it; and Wundt got a bit above himself, too.
"In Jacob Wundt we embrace one from the Hamlet among nations," began Dr. Dunston. "In Jacob Wundt we welcome the countryman of Kant and Schiller, the contemporary of Eucken and Harnack! Moreover, Colonel von Wundt, his esteemed parent, occupies a position of some importance in the Fatherland, and has done no small part to perfect the magnificent army that great nation is known to possess."
Well, we looked at Jacob Wundt, and saw one of the short, fat sort, with puddingy limbs and yellowish hair close-cropped, and a fighting sort of head. He looked straight at you, but he never looked at anybody as though he liked them, and we jolly soon found he didn’t.