"Of course I am quite ready to admit that his first assaults, like
all first attempts that require a trained habit of mind, cannot be
free from mistakes, exaggerations, faults of all sorts. But is not the
master there to correct these errors with his lesson, and to bring his
pupil, who is inclined to go astray, back to the right path? Cannot the
leading strings be readjusted?
"The very fact that the master has had an opportunity of observing the
mistakes, to which his pupil is most liable, when left to himself,
enables him to devote all his care to overcome and correct them by
both practice and precept. More important still, he has also had an
opportunity of observing his pupil's bias; he notices the strokes which
come naturally to his hand, the parries he most affects, the natural
promptings of his impulse, impetuous or cautious as the case may be. He
makes a study of his artless scholar, who is clumsily feeling his feet,
reads him like a book, catches him in the act so to speak, and detects
the working of his character, and thenceforward he knows the way in
which his studies may be most profitably directed to give full play to
his individual temperament.
"The assault teaches the novice what no amount of lunging at the
master's pad can drill into him. It enters him to the sudden
emergencies, which in one shape or another arise at every moment, to
the movement and exertion and keen emulation of real fighting. The
assault is in fact a lesson subsidiary to the formal lesson, and you
may rest assured that the instruction it conveys is equally salutary."