But a character for steadiness once gone is not easily recovered, as Tom found; and for years afterwards he went up the school without it, and the masters’ hands were against him, and his against them.  And he regarded them, as a matter of course, as his natural enemies.

Matters were not so comfortable, either, in the house as they had been; for old Brooke left at Christmas, and one or two others of the sixth-form boys at the following Easter.  Their rule had been 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 prepostors 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 prepostors, and to bully and oppress any 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’ 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.

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 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 another in herds like sheep, for good or evil; they hate thinking, and have rarely any settled principles.  Every school, indeed, has