I still remember--my hands and my fingertips still remember--what used to lie in store for us on our return to school from the holidays. The trees in the school yard would be in full leaf again and the old leaves would be lying around in scattered heaps like a muddy sea of leaves. 'Get that all swept up!' the headmaster would tell us. 'I want the whole place cleaned up, at once!' There was enough work there, to last for over a week. Especially since the only tools with which we were provided were our hands, our fingers, our nails. 'Now see that it's done properly, and be quick about it,' the headmaster would say to the older pupils, 'or you'll have to answer for it!' So at an order from the older boys we would all line up like peasants about to cut and gather in crops. If the work was not going as quickly as the headmaster expected, the big boys, instead of giving us a helping hand, used to find it simpler to whip us with branches pulled from the trees. In order to avoid these blows, we used to bribe our tyrants with the juicy cakes we used to bring for our midday meal. And if we happened to have any money on us the coins changed hands at once. If we did not do this, if we were afraid of going home with an empty stomach or an empty purse, the blows were redoubled. They hit us so violently and with such devilish enjoyment that even a deaf and dumb person would have realized that we were being flogged not so much to make us work harder, but rather to beat us into a state of obedience in which we would be only too glad to give up our food and money. Occasionally one of us, worn out by such calculated cruelty, would have the courage to complain to the headmaster. He would of course be very angry, but the punishment he gave the older boys was always very small--nothing compared to what they had done to us. And the fact is that however much we complained our situation did not improve in the slightest. Perthaps we should have let our parents know what was going on, but somehow we never dreamed of doing so I don't know whether it was loyalty or pride that kept us silent, but I can see now that we were foolish to keep quiet about it, for such beatings were completely foreign to our nature. At the beginning of the passage, the writer says 'My hands and my flnger-tirps still remember!' because ______.