Manly and Athletic Exercises, 383 



of the scaffold, although I had plenty of subsequent opportunities 

 of witnessing executions if I had pleased -, but I always made a 

 point of seeing a good prize-fight whenever I had a chance. It 

 speaks, I fancy, very poorly for a man's moral courage when he 

 acknowledges that he has seen "bloody fights enough at fairs and 

 races," attracted to them by a strange fascination, when "he knew 

 he was out of place." 



As to the practice of fighting at schools, I have lately read that 

 the boys at our large schools are more refined than they were — 

 "much above that sort of thing now," and that the custom is dis- 

 continued ', and this has been quoted as an instance that the present 

 age is becoming more polished, and that pugilism is on the decline. 



I know little of the habits of school-boys now-a-days. My school- 

 days (so grossly misnamed by some as the happiest days of one's 

 life) have left no single remembrance in my breast save that of 

 utter repugnance. It is probable that the proprietary schools of 

 the present day may turn out more " genteel young men " than the 

 schools of some thirty years ago. Still I should be very sorry to 

 allow that school-boys ought to set the fashions of the age j and 

 just as sorry should I be to acknowledge that a single lesson which 

 I learnt at school (save reading, writing, and arithmetic) was worthy 

 to be remembered in after life. 



A greater set of tyrants and bullies than the bigger boys 

 were I never hope to meet again, and as was natural with 

 slaves, the younger lads during their novitiate were a parcel 

 of unprincipled little sneaks, whose sole aim was to curry 

 favour with their tyrants at the expense of their comrades, and pass 

 the days of their slavery (for no slavery could be more abject and 

 pitiful than that of a fag to a bullying master) as best they might, 

 cheered by the sole reflection that when the time came, they would 

 pay off the debt they were incurring with full interest, which they 

 never failed to do when they rose to be masters ; and I fancy this 

 is much about the same at large schools of the present day. Fagging, 

 bullying, fighting, and flogging had full licence at the public school 

 where I was " dragged up." As for bullying and fagging, of course. 



