text:  Jack further reasoned the matter with the boys learnedly somewhat in this fashion--"That as no one could have so strong an interest in the matter so no one could be so good a judge of the qualifications of the schoolmaster as the schoolboy; that the close and intimate relation between these parties was of the nature of a mutual contract in the formation of which both had an equal right to be consulted; so that without mutual consent or as it were a harmonious call by the boys there could be no valid ushership but a mere usurpation of the power of the tawse and unwarrantable administration of the birchen twig; that further this latter power involved a fundamental feature in which they could not but feel they had all a deep interest--and which he might say lay at the bottom of the whole question; that he himself perfectly remembered that in former days the schoolboys had always exercised this privilege which he held to be equally salutary and constitutional; and that he would at his leisure show them a private memorandum-book of his own in which though he had hitherto said nothing about it he had found an entry to that effect made some thirty years before