But it is no more discreditable for a scavenger to be dirty than for a deep-sea diver to be wet. A sweep is no more disgraced when he is covered with soot than Michelangelo when he is covered with clay, or Bayard when he is covered with blood. Nor have these extenders of the public school tradition done or suggested anything by way of a substitute for the present snobbish system which makes cleanliness almost impossible to the poor; I mean the general ritual of linen and the wearing of the cast clothes of the rich. One man moves into another man’s clothes as he moves into another man’s house. No wonder that our educationists are not horrified at a man picking up the aristocrat’s secondhand trousers, when they themselves have only taken up the aristocrat’s secondhand ideas.
The Outlawed Parent