Page:Tom Brown's School Days (6th ed).djvu/24



timid boy into a bold one. But now we know well enough that is not true. Gradually training a timid child to do bold acts would be most desirable; but frightening him and ill-treating him will not make him courageous. Every medical man knows the fatal effects of terror or agitation or excitement to nerves that are oversensitive. There are different kinds of courage, as you have shown in your character of Arthur.

"A boy may have moral courage and a finely organized brain and nervous system. Such a boy is calculated, if judiciously educated, to be a great, wise, and useful man; but he may not possess animal courage; and one night's tossing, or bullying, may produce such an injury to his brain and nerves that his usefulness is spoiled for life. I verily believe that hundreds of noble organizations are thus destroyed every year. Horse-jockeys have learned to be wiser; they know that a highly nervous horse is utterly destroyed by harshness. A groom who tried to cure a shying horse by roughness and violence would be discharged as a brute and a fool. A man who would regulate his watch with a crowbar would be considered an ass. But the person who thinks a child of delicate and nervous organization can be made bold by bullying is no better.

"He can be made bold by healthy exercise and games and sports; but that is quite a different thing. And even these games and sports should bear some proportion to his strength and capacities.

"I very much doubt whether small children should play with big ones—the rush of a set of great fellows at football, or the speed of a cricket-ball sent by a strong hitter, must be very alarming to a mere child, to a child who might stand up boldly enough among children of his own size and height.

"Look at half a dozen small children playing cricket by themselves; how feeble are their blows, how slowly they bowl! You can measure in that way their capacity.

"Tom Brown and his eleven were bold enough playing against an eleven of about their own calibre; but I suspect they would have been in a precious funk if they had played against eleven giants whose bowling bore the same proportion to theirs that theirs does to the small children's above.

"To return to the tossing. I must say I think some means might be devised to enable school-boys to go to bed in quietness and peace, and that some means ought to be devised and enforced. No good, moral or physical, to those who bully or those who are bullied, can ensue from such scenes as take place in the dormitories of schools. I suspect that British