We hear a great deal about the value of home influence, but what does home mean for the day boy? He rushes home at the end of the day, has his tea, and then settles down to prepare his lessons. By the time he has finished them it is time for him to go to bed. He has had little opportunity for talking either to his father or his mother. In the morning he has only time to rush his breakfast and hurry off to school. It must be remembered also that the parents who send their sons to day schools are usually not particularly well off. It is one thing to come home at the end of a hard day to the quiet seclusion of a warm and cosy study where everything will be quiet and undisturbed. It is another thing to come back to a house that is making strenuous efforts to get things straight before the master of the house returns. Middle-aged business men expect to find things made snug for them; they do not want schoolboys kicking about the place at the end of the day.
Nothing is more uncomfortable than breakfast in the average suburban family. There is the flutter over the post, the opening and shutting of the paper, the constant glances at the clock. There is a banging of doors, and running up of stairs, and the shouting over banisters. A sigh of relief is heard when the front door closes behind the wage-earner.
In a large, well-run house the domestic machinery moves so smoothly that it is unnoticed. In a small suburban villa these moments of arrival and departure provide constant friction, and it is from the small suburban villa that the majority of day boarders are recruited.
In consequence the day boy starts his day's work at a disadvantage. It is like playing a cricket match on an opponent's ground. One arrives a little jaded. The boarder is on the spot. He has twenty-five minutes' leisure between chapel and breakfast. It is possible, of course, that he will pass these twenty-five minutes in a feverish attempt to prepare the 'con' for which he had been allotted an hour on the time-table of the previous night. But that is his own fault. He has every chance of starting the day fresh.
I cannot think that the rush of getting off in the morning and the journey to school can be good for a boy of fifteen. It is a strain for a full-grown man. That twenty minutes' jolt in tubes and lifts is exhausting. No one arrives at the office perfectly fresh. By the time one gets back at night one is really tired. The tube journey at the end of a hard day completes one's weariness. And on top of that weariness the day boarder has to do an hour and a half's preparation. It is not the ideal setting for successful work.