This book, originally published in 1907, is the nearest Barr came to writing an autobiographical novel. It concerns the Toronto Normal School and the experiences there in the 1870s of a young man who undoubtedly is Barr himself. In this novel, Barr is exorcising unhappy memories and is ironic, even bitter, about the school's quality of education, the rigid discipline observed by its staff and their i ndifference to their students, and the sexual segregation practised..As a realistic study of Ontario's only central teacher-training institution in the late nineteenth century, (it) will appeal both to those interested in Canadian fiction of the period and to those more concerned with the evolution of the system of education established by Egerton Ryerson.