“Ah!” replied my father; “you are a thorough advocate for the system, I can see; but I am dead against it. I think it brutalises boys, and makes bullies of them in afterlife.”
“I don’t think that,” replied Howard. “I believe men who are bullies will be so under any circumstances, and are not inclined to be so by being first fags and then having the power to fag. In my day, also, at the Academy downright bullying was discountenanced by all the old cadets, or at least nearly all of them, and any cadet known to be a regular bully was stopped from being allowed to fag.”
“That’s not the case now,” I remarked. “A cadet may bully as much as he likes.” I thought of Snipson and Brag as I said this, and the amount of suffering I had gone through on first joining came fresh to my memory.
“Then the Academy is degenerating,” said Howard; “and if what I may call wholesome fagging goes out, it will be because a bad style of men get to be old cadets, and carry things so far that the authorities will stop it altogether.”
On the following morning I took a walk with Howard, and took the opportunity of telling him of my having been obliged to hang by my arms whilst I was pegged at by racket-balls; and I asked if any such thing was done in his day.
“The fellow who did that must be a snob,” said Howard, “and deserves to be kicked by the old cadets! Unless you or the other neuxes had struck, or been cool in some way, that kind of thing ought not to have been done.”
Four days Howard stayed with us, and I had learnt much from him during that time. He advised me to work hard all next half, particularly in academy, so as to pass my probationary well, and to make friends with D’Arcy, who, he said, was a very good fellow, and had a brother who was a cadet with him. He also gave me some useful hints about examinations, and recommended a system of artificial memory for remembering formulae and various dates. He also told me I should find the advantage all my life of becoming skilled as a boxer and single-stick player, and that one of the Academy sergeants was a first-rate instructor at both.
“You’re not a fellow,” said Howard, “who would get into a row for the sake of showing off—a gentleman never does that sort of thing—so the knowledge of how to use your fists would not be likely to make you quarrelsome; but it is a pleasure to know that when you see some hulking lout who is a bully, and who is doing what he ought not to do, you can give him a thrashing if you like. I’ve always felt a sort of pleasure,” said Howard, “when walking through the streets of Paris, to think that I could thrash at least ninety-nine out of the hundred of the men one meets, for Frenchmen cannot use their fists. You should go in strong also for rackets and cricket; there is nothing more indicative of a muff than a fellow who is not good at some game or other. I remember hearing once of some general who said he would always select his staff from the men who were best across country, and you may depend on it that there’s great truth in the suggestion. I’ve generally found the best officers were men who were good at games. You can play chess well, I know, as your father told me you were within a pawn of him. So take my advice, and follow the maxim, that ‘what is worth doing at all is worth doing well!’”
My time passed pleasantly enough during the vacation, for I fully appreciated the quiet of the forest and its splendid trees, after having been crowded by my fellows and surrounded by houses during the past year. I did not look forward with much pleasure to my return to the Academy. I knew that some second-half cadets were fagged as much as if they were last-joined, and it was quite possible that such might be my fate; the novelty, too, of being a cadet and wearing uniform was departing, and I looked more to realities than I had at first. The prospect of being turned out at six o’clock a.m. to go and brush clothes in another room was not pleasant, nor did I relish the idea of being once more placed on a table as the target for boots and brushes. In fact, I was getting older rapidly; and as I grew very fast and became much stronger, a rebellious feeling came over me that was not favourable to my future obedience as a neux.
On comparing Brag and Snipson with Howard, or oven with several of the other old cadets I knew, I could not but feel that these two were very bad specimens of the cadet of that day. They were both bullies; they excelled in nothing, were low down in their class, and in spite of this were both very conceited. Their style of conversation, too, was inferior to what I had heard from other old cadets. Their ideas were cramped, and they seemed to take a mean or malicious view of everything, and to attribute to all other persons bad motives for what they did or said. I remarked, also, that neither Brag nor Snipson had a good word for any one. If any cadet’s name was mentioned, one or the other of these would commence with “Oh, yes! he’s all very well in his way, but then he’s not such a swell as he thinks himself, for I have good reason to believe that he,” etc, etc, etc; and here would follow some disparagement of the individual whose name was mentioned.