Your book is flat out wonderful, Peter. Funny how the same place and people can be utterly different in one’s memory. I remember savage bullying (… ask Silvin about his time there, for example or Porges or DeMassis) with teachers turning blind eyes because impressed by their charges’ names or parents’ wealth and standing, uneven teachers , though some were great (Mastelli, Cobb, Nahman, Arnold) , some were decidedly sub-par. There also was the absurdly harsh and bizarre discipline (morning fire-hosing downs of naked adolescent boys by the head master after long runs). To be fair, some kids , particularly among the seniors ( I only went there for 3 years, as a very young ’Moyen’) were great: Sicre I, Weems, McKelvy, and Ammendola for example, but some of my classmates were little better than savage off-spring of South American or Middle Eastern henchmen. What saved me, after a double concussion playing hockey age 11, was that I became the best athlete among the moyen for 2 years running ( winning the Cup with names like Saltonstall engraved on it decades years earlier) thus got respect and a measure of peace.