Bullies are cowards, and one coward makes many; so good-bye to the School-house match if bullying gets ahead here.” (Loud applause from the small boys, who look meaningly at Flashman and other boys at the tables.) “Then there’s fuddling about in the public-house, and drinking bad spirits, and punch, and such rot-gut stuff.  That won’t make good drop-kicks or chargers of you, take my word for it.  You get plenty of good beer here, and that’s enough for you; and drinking isn’t fine or manly, whatever some of you may think of it.

“One other thing I must have a word about.  A lot of you think and say, for I’ve heard you, ’There’s this new Doctor hasn’t been here so long as some of us, and he’s changing all the old customs.  Rugby, and the Schoolhouse especially, are going to the dogs.  Stand up for the good old ways, and down with the Doctor!’ Now I’m as fond of old Rugby customs and ways as any of you, and I’ve been here longer than any of you, and I’ll give you a word of advice in time, for I shouldn’t like to see any of you getting sacked.  ‘Down with the Doctor’s’ easier said than done.  You’ll find him pretty tight on his perch, I take it, and an awkwardish customer to handle in that line.  Besides now, what customs has he put down?  There was the good old custom of taking the linchpins out of the farmers’ and bagmen’s gigs at the fairs, and a cowardly, blackguard custom it was.  We all know what came of it, and no wonder the Doctor objected to it.  But come now, any of you, name a custom that he has put down.”

“The hounds,” calls out a fifth-form boy, clad in a green cutaway with brass buttons and cord trousers, the leader of the sporting interest, and reputed a great rider and keen hand generally.

“Well, we had six or seven mangy harriers and beagles belonging to the house, I’ll allow, and had had them for years, and that the Doctor put them down.  But what good ever came of them?  Only rows with all the keepers for ten miles round; and big-side hare-and-hounds is better fun ten times over.  What else?”

No answer.

“Well, I won’t go on.  Think it over for yourselves.  You’ll find, I believe, that he don’t meddle with any one that’s worth keeping.  And mind now, I say again, look out for squalls if you will go your own way, and that way ain’t the Doctor’s, for it’ll lead to grief.  You all know that I’m not the fellow to back a master through thick and thin.  If I saw him stopping football, or cricket, or bathing, or sparring, I’d be as ready as any fellow to stand up about it.  But he don’t; he encourages them.  Didn’t you see him out to-day for half an hour watching us?” (loud cheers for the Doctor); “and he’s a strong, true man, and a wise one too, and a public-school man too” (cheers), “and so let’s stick to him, and talk no more rot, and drink his health as the head of the house.”  (Loud cheers.) “And now I’ve done blowing up, and very glad I am to have done.  But it’s a solemn thing to