d it, and to take your own parts, and fight it through.
But depend on it, there's nothing breaks up a house like bullying.
Bullies are cowards, and one coward makes many; so good-bye to the
School-house match if bullying gets ahead here." (Loud applause from
the small boys, who look meaningly at Flashman and other boys at the
tables.) "Then there's fuddling about in the public-house, and drinking
bad spirits, and punch, and such rot-gut stuff. That won't make good
drop-kicks or chargers of you, take my word for it. You get plenty of
good beer here, and that's enough for you; and drinking isn't fine or
manly, whatever some of you may think of it.

"One other thing I must have a word about. A lot of you think and say,
for I've heard you, 'There's this new Doctor hasn't been here so long
as some of us, and he's changing all the old customs. Rugby, and the
Schoolhouse especially, are going to the dogs. Stand up for the good old
ways, and down with the Doctor!' Now I'm as fond of old Rugby customs
and ways as any of you, and I've been here longer than any of you, and
I'll give you a word of advice in time, for I shouldn't like to see any
of you getting sacked. 'Down with the Doctor's' easier said than done.
You'll find him pretty tight on his perch, I take it, and an awkwardish
customer to handle in that line. Besides now, what customs has he put
down? There was the good old custom of taking the linchpins out of the
farmers' and bagmen's gigs at the fairs, and a cowardly, blackguard
custom it was. We all know what came of it, and no wonder the Doctor
objected to it. But come now, any of you, name a custom that he has put
down."

"The hounds," calls out a fifth-form boy, clad in a green cutaway with
brass buttons and cord trousers, the leader of the sporting interest,
and reputed a great rider and keen hand generally.

"Well, we had six or seven mangy harriers and beagles belonging to the
house, I'll allow, and had had them for years, and that the Doctor
put them down. But what good ever came of them? Only rows with all the
keepers for ten miles round; and big-side hare-and-hounds is better fun
ten times over. What else?"

No answer.

"Well, I won't go on. Think it over for yourselves. You'll find, I
believe, that he don't meddle with any one that's worth keeping. And
mind now, I say again, look out for squalls if you will go your own way,
and that way ain't the Doctor's, for it'll lead to grief. You all know
that I'm n