At another time, when several boys had been sent away, and there was much discontent in consequence, he said, "It is not necessary that this should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen."
He trusted the boys, and never seemed to watch them. Their word was not doubted. "If you say so, that is quite enough; of course I believe your word," was his frequent statement.
"There grew up in consequence," says Stanley, "a general feeling that it was a shame to tell Arnold a lie—he always believes one." If falsehood was discovered, the punishment was severe.
He usually had great patience. When living at Laleham he once spoke sharply to a dull pupil. "Why do you speak angrily, sir?" said the youth, looking up in his face; "indeed, I am doing the best that I can."
Years afterward Arnold used to say to his children, "I never felt so much ashamed in my life—that look and that speech I have never forgotten."
For mere "intellectual acuteness" he had no admiration, unless united with goodness. "If there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable," he said, "it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated.... I would stand to that man hat in hand."
Arnold's consistent and noble life won the undying regard of his pupils. One pupil writes: "I am sure that I do not exaggerate my feelings when I say that I felt a love and reverence for him as one of quite awful greatness and goodness, for whom, I well remember, that I used to think I would gladly lay down my life.... I used to believe that I, too, had a work to do for him in the school, and did, for his sake, labor to raise the tone of the set I lived in."
Who can ever forget the description of Arnold in that natural and fascinating book, "Tom Brown's School Days"?
"And then came that great event in his, as in every Rugby boy's life of that day—the first sermon from the Doctor.... The tall, gallant form, the kindling eye, the voice, now soft as the low notes of a flute, now clear and stirring as the call of the light infantry bugle, of him who stood there Sunday after Sunday, witnessing and pleading for his Lord, the King of righteousness, and love, and glory, with whose spirit he was filled, and in whose power he spoke....