It cannot be denied that there is a generous and magnanimous tone about the boys of a school attended exclusively by the children of the better classes, which is unknown among the children of uncultivated boors.  I have observed, that, if you offer a prize to the cleverest and most industrious boy of a certain form in a school of the upper class, and propose to let the prize be decided by the votes of the boys themselves, you will almost invariably find it fairly given:  that is, given to the boy who deserves it best.  If you explain, in a frank, manly way, to the little fellows, that, in asking each for whom he votes, you are asking each to say upon his honor whom he thinks the cleverest and most diligent boy in the form, nineteen boys out of twenty will answer honestly.  But I have witnessed the signal failure of such an appeal to the honor of the bumpkins of a country school.  I was once present at the examination of such a school, and remarked carefully how the boys acquitted themselves.  After the examination was over, the master proposed, very absurdly, to let the boys of each class vote the prize for that particular class.  The voting began.  A class of about twenty was called up:  I explained to the boys what they were to do.  I told them they were not to vote for the boy they liked best, but were to tell me faithfully who had done best in the class-lessons.  I then asked the first boy in the line for whom he gave his vote.  To my mortification, instead of voting for a little fellow who had done incomparably best at the examination, he gave his vote for a big sullen-looking blockhead who had done conspicuously ill.  I asked the next boy, and received the same answer.  So all round the class:  all voted for the big sullen-looking blockhead.  One or two did not give their votes quite promptly; and I could discern a threatening glance cast at them by the big sullen-looking blockhead, and an ominous clenching of the blockhead’s right fist.  I went round the class without remark; and the blockhead made sure of the prize.  Of course this would not do.  The blockhead could not be suffered to get the prize; and it was expedient that he should be made to remember the occasion on which he had sought to tamper with justice and right.  Addressing the blockhead, amid the dead silence of the school, I said:  “You shall not get the prize, because I can judge for myself that you don’t deserve it.  I can see that you are the stupidest boy in the class; and I have seen reason, during this voting, to believe that you are the worst.  You have tried to bully these boys into voting for you.  Their votes go for nothing; for their voting for you proves either that they are so stupid as to think you deserve the prize, or so dishonest as to say they think so when they don’t think so.”  Then I inducted the blockhead into a seat where I could see him well, and proceeded to take the votes over again.  I explained to the boys once more what they had to do; and explained that any boy would be telling a