n rough,
but strong and just in the main, and a higher standard was beginning
to be set up; in fact, there had been a short foretaste of the good
time which followed some years later. Just now, however, all
threatened to return into darkness and chaos again. For the new
praepostors were either small young boys, whose cleverness had carried
them up to the top of the school while, in strength of body and
character, they were not yet fit for a share in the government; or
else big fellows of the wrong sort, boys whose friendships and tastes
had a downward tendency, who had not caught the meaning of their
position and work, and felt none of its responsibilities. So under
this no-government the School-house began to see bad times. The big
fifth-form boys, who were a sporting and drinking set, soon began to
usurp power, and to fag the little boys as if they were praepostors,
and to bully and oppress any one who showed signs of resistance.
The bigger sort of sixth-form boys just described soon made common
cause with the fifth, while the smaller sort, hampered by their
colleagues'[15] desertion to the enemy, could not make head against
them. So the fags were without their lawful masters and protectors,
and ridden over rough-shod by a set of boys whom they were not bound
to obey, and whose only right over them stood in their bodily powers;
and, as Old Brooke had prophesied, the house by degrees broke up into
small sets and parties, and lost the strong feeling of fellowship
which he set so much store by, and with it much of the prowess in
games, and the lead in all school matters, which he had done so much
to keep up.

[15] #Colleagues#: associates.

THE OLD BOY MORALIZETH THEREON.

In no place in the world has individual character more weight than at
a public school. Remember this, I beseech you, all you boys who are
getting into the upper forms. Now is the time, in all your lives,
probably, when you may have more wide influence, for good or evil, on
the society you live in, than you ever can have again. Quit[16]
yourselves like men, then; speak up, and strike out if necessary for
whatsoever is true, and manly, and lovely, and of good report; never
try to be popular, but only to do your duty and help others to do
theirs, and you may leave the tone of feeling in the school higher
than you found it, and so be doing good, which no living soul can
measure, to generations of your countrymen yet unborn. For boys follow
one a