Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/250

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238

��S. PauVs School.

��and play. And these buildings point to the future. They are plaiuh' but temporary buildings, and yet they show well the business principle upon which the school is managed. As soon as the money is in hand they will be combined in one new struct- ure, where, opportunity being then afforded for a further increase, sev- enty-five to one hundred of the youngest boys will live altogether, not only eating and sleeping there, but studying, reciting, and playing. For already it has been intimated that there are three main divisions in the school.

It is interesting to note in this con- nection that there is at S. Paul's the very system suggested in a preface to the last edition of Tom Brown's School Days," for putting a stop to those outrageous evils of English school-life, fagging and bullying, so common before Arnold taught the boys at Rugby that the chief element in these customs was the basest kind of cowardice. After some prefatory remarks on the dangerous results of such customs, Mr. Hughes continues to quote from a letter of his corre- spondent : "I believe there is only one complete remedy. It is not in magisterial supervision, nor in telling tales, nor in raising the tone of pub- lic opinion among school-boys, but in the separation of hoys of different ages into different schools. There should

��be at least three different classes of schools, — the first for boys from nine to twelve, the second for boys from twelve to fifteen, the third for those above fifteen. And these schools should be in different localities."

It is sufficient to say that at S. Paul's, where for the past fifteen years such exactl}' has been the sys- tem, both bullying and fagging are absolutely unknown.

The writer may be pardoned if he here records a fact which has ever had the deepest significance to his mind, that though on the cricket or foot-ball field nearly every afternoon of his life here from the " shell" or preparatory part of the sixth form, he never heard an oath of any kind on the play-ground.

We must make an end to this arti- cle, but before closing must confess that it seems just as absurd to speak of Rugby without Dr. Arnold as to mention 8. Paul's without its rector. But he still lives, and his daily work — his life work — tells its own story. The day will come, however, — may it be far away in the future, — when the name of him who under God has made S. Paul's what it is, shall be as well known among these granite hills, which really know so little of it now, and in America at large, as that fa- mous schoolmaster's name is known in England, which stands so high in the honor roll of its great and good.

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