Schoolboys worship a successful athlete. There was a very pleasant
mathematical master named Tosswill, always known as "Tosher," who
at that time held the record for a broad jump, he having cleared,
when jumping for Oxford, twenty-two and a half feet. That record
has long since been beaten. Should one be walking with another boy
when passing "Tosher," he was almost certain to say, "You know
that Tosher holds the record for broad jumps. Twenty-two and a
half feet; he must be an awfully decent chap!" Tosswill had the
knack of devising ingenious punishments. I was "up" to him for
mathematics, and, with my hopelessly non-mathematical mind, I must
have been a great trial to him. At that time I was playing the
euphonium in the school brass band, an instrument which afforded
great joy to its exponents, for in most military marches the solo
in the "trio" falls to the euphonium, though I fancy that I evoked
the most horrible sounds from my big brass instrument. To play a
brass instrument with any degree of precision, it is first
necessary to acquire a "lip"--that is to say, the centre of the
lip covered by the mouthpiece must harden and thicken before "open
notes" can be sounded accurately.
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