Old times seemed come back again at the Grange. There was frequent visiting betwixt it and Cotmanhaye Manor—a coming and going without ceremony, and full of pleasantness. George had made a journey to Yorkshire to give some account of his stewardship, and there were wise people who foresaw the return of Elizabeth Drury, at least some day, to Bilts’ Farm. Thorsby and his once more joyous, handsome wife, and cherub-looking boy with them, were often driving over, and again commonly spending the Sundays there. Thorsby again made his little, familiar visits amongst the cottages of Woodburn Green, and talked over his travels in America with Howell Crusoe, the inquiring schoolmaster, who seemed half tempted to migrate thither himself some day.
“Well,” said Mr. Woodburn, as Thorsby mentioned this at dinner one day, “I should be sorry for Crusoe to leave us. He has his faults, but I don’t know where we should mend him. He has confessedly very warm Welsh blood, and though naturally amiable and humane, he has been given to thrashing his boys a little too freely. When I have reasoned with him, he always quoted Solomon as ungainsayable authority, ‘Spare the rod, and spoil the child.’ It was in vain that I told him I would rather spoil the rod and spare the child. He always used to tell the boys, in the established language of the schoolmasters, that it hurt him much more to flog a boy than it hurt the boy. But one day, as he said this to a little boy, who sat sobbing and snorting, with his eyes, nose, and very red cheeks all dashed and drowned in tears, the poor lad cried out, ‘I only wish I could believe it’—at which the whole school burst into an uncontrollable shout of laughter. Enraged at this, and feeling the keen satire in the boy’s words, Howell dealt about him, in a regular Welsh tantrum of passion, with his cane on the heads and shoulders of the scholars. This settled the riot, except for an isolated burst-up of smothered merriment, here and there, which he visited with strokes of lightning.
“But what was the consequence? The lads who had caught the full fury of Crusoe’s angry blows, commenced a conspiracy which they cherished for a proper opportunity; and one Saturday afternoon, when Crusoe had gone into Cotmanhaye woods to gather nuts, suddenly the whole school issued from a thicket, and surrounding him, gave him such a pounding with hazel cudgels, as inspired him with a wonderful agility in running through the wood, leaping the fence, and scouring homewards at a pace that vastly amused the troop of little rebels. It was necessary to send for the doctor, who, being a bit of a wag, carried the story as a rich morsel of news all round the country. He enlivened his narrative by making the boys cry, all the time they thrashed their domine, ‘Well, does it hurt you as much as it does us?’
“That is the reason, I suspect, that Crusoe thinks so much of America. I doubt, however, if he would find the children of Yankees more passive under his rhabdomancy than those of us Britishers. For my part, I wish all the boys in the universe would follow the example of the Woodburn lads. There would then soon be an end of the villanous practice of a big fellow with a big stick seizing a little, tender, shrinking boy, who is but a linnet in the claws of an eagle, and misusing his brute strength to torture the poor little fellow.”
Thorsby said, “But what of Solomon’s wisdom on the subject?”
“What of Solomon?” said Mr. Woodburn. “Why, that was wisdom enough for the Jews of those semi-barbarous ages, who massacred all the nations round, and stoned to death any old woman who gathered a few sticks on a Sabbath; but it is not wisdom enough for Christians who are to do as they would be done by. Would any of these great, cowardly schoolmasters, who clutch little, shrinking children, and flog them brutally, like some one twice or three times their own size and strength to treat them so? Certainly not. Of all the contemptible examples of cowardice, this is the most contemptible. A big overpowering fellow thus to mishandle a child, who would learn both manners and letters ten times better by gentleness and persuasion; he is a monster, sir, and no man! Violence and injustice, and this is the worst of injustice, excite only the worst passions in a child’s heart, and lay the sure foundation of violence and tyranny in those who are embittered by it.
“I only hope,” added Mr. Woodburn, “that King Solomon has been set upon by exasperated schoolboys in the other world, and treated as the brave Woodburn lads treated Crusoe; and I hope that till this odious custom is abolished, the boys everywhere will match their strength, by union, with that of their masters, and let them see how they like a good cottoning.”
“Well,” said Thorsby, “but the custom has been made venerable by time, and sanctioned by all our great schools, and if we may judge from effects, has answered well, for no country has produced greater scholars.”
“Sanctioned!” said Mr. Woodburn, “so have wars and wholesale robberies, under the name of reprisals in other countries, been sanctioned. Duelling was an old and venerable institution, and had the sanction of great names, but this did not make any of these barbarous and insane practices the less base, or unchristian. My dear fellow, we must not be led by past sanctions, or by the nose, we must be led by reason and humanity. Our ancestors were savages, shall we on that account remain savage? Take my word for it, Thorsby, however our public schools may have answered, they would have answered much better, had they been conducted on better principles; and I hope you don’t call outrage of the weak by the strong a good principle. Let full-grown men, if they will, be brutes, and stand up in fair fight against one another, equally matched; but I repeat it, a big man who assaults a little creature, who cannot help or defend himself, is a coward of the vilest, the most odious stamp, and ought to be scouted from society.” With this he stepped to the book-case, took down the second volume of Addison’s “Spectator,” and opening at No. 157, said, “now hear what a really enlightened man, who had passed through our public schools, thought on such things.” Having read that admirable article, he said:—
“There! Thorsby, you may lend that to Howell Crusoe if you like.”