Parkhurst Boys Part 19

"Well, you may think so; I don't. In fact, I don't see the fun of bathing after dinner at all. You don't expect _me_ to make a fool of myself hunting squirrels, do you, in those horrid woods? And you'll have to have tea, as you call it (though you might as well make one meal do for both), jolly early if you expect to drift down here by nine.

Why, you won't do it in anything like the time, and fine fun it will be, sitting like dummies in a boat going at a mile an hour."

This was cheerful, and no amount of argument would do away with our desirable friend's objections. The result was, we went, but tried to alter our programme in some points to please him: But he growled all the more, and would not enjoy the day himself, nor let us do so; and our grand picnic, thanks to him, was quite a failure.

It wouldn't have been so bad if the result of Growler's grumblings had been to give us something better in place of what he wanted us to give up. But that is a thing he never did. He could pick holes to any extent, but he couldn't fill them up. There was no scheme or project he couldn't pull to pieces with the utmost industry, but I never remember his originating any scheme of his own to take its place. This was hardly fair. If you take something away from a person, and give him nothing in exchange, it is robbery, and in this respect Growler was an awful thief.

Isn't it true that if you set yourself to it, you could find fault with nearly everything? But in order to do it, you would have to be very selfish in the first place, and very hard-hearted in the next. The dog in the manger is a good type of this happy combination. He trampled on the hay that the cows thought so sweet, and wouldn't touch it himself, and he wouldn't let them touch it either; and that is precisely the charge to which Growler lays himself open. Let us hope he is not quite such a bad sort as this dog. He had got into a regular habit of growling, and it would be against his nature altogether to praise anything cordially.

Supposing Growler to be grown to a man, now; what a desirable creature he must be! What a fine man to get on to a committee, or into parliament! What a delightful partner to have in business! Why, he'd wear out an ordinary man in a month. What complainings, and questionings, and disapprovals, and censures would he ever be loading on the head of his colleagues!--how ready people would be to avoid him and give him a wide berth! For, a.s.suredly, if in anything there was to be found a fault, Growler was the boy to find it. I remember a fairy tale about some folk who wanted to find out if a certain lady were a fairy princess or not; and the way they did it was to lay a pea on the floor of her room, and cover it with twenty feather beds one on the top of the other. Next morning they asked how she slept.

"Not at all," said she, "for there was a dreadful lump in the bed."

Then they knew she must be a fairy! Perhaps it would be a little too much to compare Growler with a fairy; but he certainly had a wonderful knack of discovering peas under the bed; and where there were none to discover, he found out something else. Now, you and I, I expect, in talking of the sun, would speak of it as a glorious light and heat- giving orb, without which we could none of us get on for a moment. But Growler's version of the thing would be quite different.

"A thing full of great ugly spots, that goes scorching up one part of the earth and leaving another in the cold, and is generally hidden by clouds from all the rest."

Such is the genial, bright view of things taken by our old schoolmate.

There are two sorts of growlers. There is the man who honestly attacks what is really wrong for the sake of making it right, and there is the man who instinctively grumbles at everything for the mere sake of growling. The former cla.s.s is as useful as the latter is tiresome, and if we must growl, by all means let us find out some real grievance to attack. Grumbling is a habit that grows quickly and with very little encouragement, and those who go in for it must make up their minds to have to do with very few friends. For who would consent to be the friend of a growler? It would be as bad as becoming the servant of a man who kept an electrical machine--he would always be trying it on you!

And he must be content also to find that very few people sympathise with him. For when a man is a confirmed grumbler at everything, no one afflicts himself much about his lamentations, but puts it all down to his infirmity.

"Poor fellow, his digestion isn't good, or his liver's out of order!"

they will say, and think no more about it.

Growler of our school was an able fellow in his way; and successful, too, but he wasn't liked. Some were afraid of him, some detested him, and most cared very little about him. I don't suppose he will ever do much good in the world, for this reason--his influence is so small. One would like to know if he is really as unhappy as he would make every one believe. I have a notion he is not, but is the victim of a habit which he has allowed to grow on him till it is past shaking off. Moral, boys: When you catch yourselves grumbling, make sure the grievance is a real one. If it is, don't be content with grumbling, but follow it up till the wrong is put right. But if you find yourself growling merely because it sounds a fine thing to do, then let growl number one be not only the first but the last performance of the kind; and no one then will be able to growl at you.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

THE BULLY.

There are bullies and bullies. There is the big brother, for instance, who considers it as much part of his duty to administer an occasional cuff to his youthful relative, as he does to stroke his own chin for the first sign of a beard, or to wear his tall hat on Sundays. That is not the sort of bullying any one complains of. Pretty sort of fellows some of us would have turned out if we hadn't come in for a little wholesome knocking about in our day! What's the use of big brothers, we should like to know, if it's not to chastise youngsters! and what are younger brothers made for, if they are not to be occasionally "whopped!"

When I first reached a "bullyable" age, I found myself number three of a set of five boys. I had looked on in awe at the discipline inflicted by my eldest brother on number two; I had been a trembling spectator of scuffles and tears, and pulled ears and sore knuckles, and knew my turn for the same hards.h.i.+ps was coming. And so it did. Number one went to college, and then number two was c.o.c.k of the walk, and didn't I catch it then? The ears that had recently smarted between another's finger and thumb were now deaf to my lamentations, and the knuckles that I had seen bruised and sore now played on my poor countenance as if it had been a tambourine. It wasn't pleasant while it lasted, of course; but then it was all in the regular course of things, and had to be grinned at and borne; and besides it was a splendid training for me, when I came to be left ruler of the roost with young number four at my mercy. Poor number four! he had a hard time of it. He was a meek sort of fellow, and took a lot of bullying. I've a broken-backed lexicon to this day which often used to fly across the room at his devoted head, and which he as regularly picked up and handed back to me.

Never was a czar more absolute than I during the brief years of my supremacy.

But it was monotonous work bullying a fellow who never showed fight; and one day, in reply to a touching lamentation on his part, I demanded, "Why don't you say you won't, then, and stick to it?" Would you believe it? the ungrateful fellow took me at my word! Next time I issued a decree, he made my hair stand on end by shouting, "Shan't!" I could not believe my wits; and when he not only refused, but (in accordance with my own unlucky advice) positively defied me, I was fairly nonplussed!

In vain the lexicon performed its airy flight; in vain my ruler flourished over his knuckles; in rain I stormed and raged. No martyr at the stake was ever more sublimely firm; and from that day my reign was over.

It was over as far as he was concerned; but as he resolutely declined to do his duty in knocking about number five, I had to sacrifice myself for the family good, and take that young scamp in hand too, and as he was the youngest, he had nothing to do but wait till he grew up, and then-- when he suddenly discovered he was six feet high--he took a turn at bullying me, who by that time was a married man with a family.

Now, perhaps, this sort of bullying within ordinary bounds does no great harm. In our case we almost seemed to like one another the better for it, though each in his turn rent the air with his howls and lamentations. Perhaps, however, we were exceptional boys, and I am not going to recommend the system.

The dog mother who routs up her little pup from his comfortable nap, and shakes him with her teeth, and knocks him down and rolls him over and worries him till he yaps and yelps as if his last day had come, is not such a bully as the cat who holds a mouse under his paw, and plays with it and torments it previous to making a meal of it.

In one case the discipline is salutary and serves a good end; in the other it is sheer cruelty.

Just let me introduce you to a bully of the true sort--one whom we might call a _professional_ bully--as contrasted with the _amateur_ big- brother bullies of whom I have been speaking.

Bob Bangs of our school was a big, ill-conditioned, lazy, selfish, cross-grained sort of fellow. He was nearly the tallest fellow in the fifth form, but by no means the strongest. He was narrow across the chest, and shaky about the knees, though we youngsters held him too much in awe to take this into account at the time. To the big boys of the sixth form Bob was cringing and snivelling; nothing was too menial, so only as he could keep in their good graces. If he had known how, I dare say he would have blacked their boots or parted their hair; as it was, he laid himself out to fetch and carry, to go and come just as their lords.h.i.+ps should direct; and their lords.h.i.+ps, I have a notion, winked at one another and gave him plenty to do.

But to us youngsters Bob was wholly different. For one of us to come so much as across his path was sufficient provocation to his spite. Like a spider in its web, he would waylay and capture the wretched small fry of our school and haul them away to his den. There he would screw their arms and kick them, just for the pleasure of seeing their faces and hearing their howls. Generally, indeed, he managed to invent some pretext for his chastis.e.m.e.nt. This one had made a grimace at him across the room yesterday; that one had spilt some ink on his desk; poor Jack Flighty had had the cheek to laugh outside his door while he was reading; or Joe Tyler had bagged his straw hat instead of his own.

One day, I remember, I, a little unfortunate of ten summers, fell into his awful clutches.

"Come here, you young beggar!" I heard him call out.

I dared not disobey, and stood before him shaking in my shoes.

"What are you laughing at?" he says.

"I'm not laughing," I said, feeling anything but in the humour for jocularity.

"Yes, you are, I tell you--take that!" and a smart box on the ear followed.

I writhed, but tried hard to suppress my e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of pain.

"What's that you called me?" demanded the bully.

"Nothing," I faltered, rubbing my head.

"Yes, you did," he said; "take that for telling a cram, and that for calling me names!" and suiting the action to the word he bestowed one cuff and one kick on my unoffending person, each of which I acknowledged by a howl.

"Now then," said he, "what did you mean by borrowing Tom Groby's _Gulliver's Travels_ yesterday when you knew I wanted to read it, eh?"

And he caught hold of my hand and gave my arm a suggestive preliminary screw.

"I didn't," I said.

"Yes, you did," said he, tightening the pressure, so as to make me catch my under lip in my teeth. "You knew well enough I was half through it."

"I mean, I _didn't_ borrow it. I never saw the book," I shrieked, truly enough too, for this was clearly a case of mistaken ident.i.ty.

"Yes, you did, for I was told so."

"I didn't; oh, let me go!" I cried, twisting under the torture; "it wasn't me!"

"I tell you it was;" another screw, and another dance and howl from me; "and what's the use of you saying it wasn't?"

"Indeed it wasn't!" I yelled, for by this time I was on my knees, and half dead with agony. "Oh! You'll break my arm! Oh! Oh!"

"Say you took it, then," replied my tormentor.

"It wasn't me," I shrieked. "Oh! _Yes it was_! Let go!"

Then he let go, and catching me by the collar of my coat with one hand, pulled my ear with the other, saying--