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. Now, the small boy need only have
mentioned the circumstances to any one of a score of big boys, and the
tormentor would have been first thrashed, and then, probably, expelled.

A friend of my own was travelling lately in a wild and hilly region on
the other side of the world, let us say in the Mountains of the Moon. In
a mountain tavern he had thrust upon him the society of the cook, a very
useless young man, who astonished him by references to one of our
universities, and to the enjoyments of that seat of learning. This youth
(who was made cook, and a very bad cook too, because he could do nothing
else) had been expelled from a large English school. And he was expelled
because he had felled a bully with a paving-stone, and had expressed his
readiness to do it again. Now, there was no doubt that this cook in the
mountain inn was a very unserviceable young fellow. But I wish more boys
who have suffered things literally unspeakable from bullies would try
whether force (in the form of a paving stone) is really no remedy.

The Catholic author of a recent book ("Schools," by Lieut.-Col. Raleigh
Chichester), is very hard on "Protestant Schools," and thinks that the
Catholic system of constant watching is a remedy for bullying and other
evils. "Swing-doors with their upper half glazed, might have their
uses," he says, and he does not see why a boy should not be permitted to
complain, if he is roasted, like Tom Brown, before a large fire. The
boys at one Catholic school described by Colonel Raleigh Chichester, "are
never without surveillance of some sort." This is true of most French
schools, and any one who wishes to understand the consequences (there)
may read the published confessions of a _pion_--an usher, or "spy." A
more degraded and degrading life than that of the wretched _pion_, it is
impossible to imagine. In an English private school, the system of
_espionnage_ and tale bearing, when it exists, is probably not unlike
what Mr. Anstey describes in _Vice Versa_. But in the Catholic schools
spoken of by Colonel Raleigh Chichester, the surveillance may be, as he
says, "that of a parent; an aid to the boys in their games rather than a
check." The relig