The much abused
monitorial system has this in it of good, that it enables a clever and
kindly boy who is high up in the school to stop the cruelties (if he
hears of them) of a much bigger boy who is low in the school. But he
seldom hears of them. Habitual bullies are very cunning, and I am
acquainted with instances in which they carry their victims off to lonely
torture cells (so to speak) and deserted places fit for the sport. Some
years ago a small boy, after a long course of rope's-ending in out-of-the-
way dens, revealed the abominations of some naval cadets. There was not
much sympathy with him in the public mind, and perhaps his case was not
well managed. But it was made clear that whereas among men an unpopular
person is only spoken evil of behind his back, an unpopular small boy
among boys is made to suffer in a more direct and very unpleasant way.
Most of us leave school with the impression that there was a good deal of
bullying when we were little, but that the institution has died out. The
truth is that we have grown too big to be bullied, and too good-natured
to bully ourselves. When I left school, I thought bullying was an
extinct art, like encaustic painting (before it was rediscovered by Sir
William Richmond). But a distinguished writer, who was a small boy when
I was a big one, has since revealed to me the most abominable cruelties
which were being practised at the very moment when I supposed bullying to
have had its day and ceased to be.
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