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TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS
By THOMAS HUGHES JUST as Tom was swallowing his last 4.1 mouthful (three o'clock in the morning), winding his comforter round his throat, and tucking the ends into the breast of his coat, the horn sounds, Boots looks in and says, `Tally-ho, sir,' and they hear the ring and the rattle of the four fast trotters and the town-made drag as it dashes up to the Peacock. "`Anything for us, Bob?' says the burly guard, dropping down from behind, and slapping himself across the chest. "'Young gen'l'm'n, Rugby,' answers a hostler. "'Tell young gent to look alive,' says the guard, opening the hind-boot and shooting the parcels in after examining them by the lamps. `Here, shove the portmanteau up atop-I'll fasten him presently. Now there, sir, jump up behind.' "`Good-by, father-my love at home.' A last shake of the hand. Up goes Tom, the guard catching his hatbox and holding on with one hand, while with the other he claps the horn to his mouth. Toot, toot, toot ! the hostlers let go their heads, the four bays plunge at the collar, and away goes the Tally-ho into the darkness, forty-five seconds from the time they had pulled up." So Tom Brown started to begin his school days at Rugby when William the Fourth sat upon his throne. Squire Brown had meditated something as follows the night before: "Shall I tell him to mind his word and to make himself a good scholar? Well, but he isn't sent to school for that-at any rate, not for that mainly. I don't care a straw for Greek particles or the digamma; no more does his mother. What is he sent to school for? Well, partly because he wanted so to go. If he'll only turn out a brave, helpful, truth-telling Englishman, and a gentleman, and a Christian, that's all I want." Upon this view of the case he framed his last words to Tom. "And now, Tom, my boy, re-member you are going at your own earnest request, to be chucked into this great school, like a young bear with all your troubles before you-earlier than we should have sent you perhaps." (Tom was nine.) "If schools are what they were in my time, you'll see a great many cruel blackguard things done and hear a deal of foul bad talk. But never fear. You tell the truth, keep a brave and kind heart, and never listen, or say anything you wouldn't have your mother and sister hear, and you'll never feel ashamed to come home, or we to see you." Tom's father was a great asset to the boy. For though he belonged to what is called the upper middle class, the opinion which the squire loved to propound above all others was the belief that a man is to be valued wholly and solely for that which he is in himself, for that which stands up in the four fleshly walls of him, apart from clothes, rank, fortune, and all externals whatsoever. He held, further, that it didn't matter a straw whether his son associated with lords' sons or plowmen's sons, provided they were brave and honest. So Tom had a merry and right democratic time with the boys of the village, and learned much that stood him in good stead when he got to Rugby, among other things to value man or boy wholly for what was in him, whether it was Harry Win-burn, the quickest and best boy in the parish, who taught him the turns and holds which later carried him through his great fight with the bully of Rugby; or poor Jacob Doodle-calf (as the boys nicknamed him), in whose hands everything came to pieces and in whose head nothing would stick, or Job Rudkin, whose scandalized mother demanded, on the occasion of a visit from Madam Brown, "Job, Job, where's thy cap?" "What! beant 'e on ma head, mother?" replied Job, slowly extricating one hand from a pocket and feeling for the article in question, which he found on his head and left there, to his mother's horror and Tom's great delight. Rugby was a new world for Tom. He was a sturdy and combative urchin, able to fend for himself on his own heath; yet it was a great boon for him that he fell into the hands of a boy of his own age, but a bit ahead of him at Rugby. The first sight he encountered on his arrival was a lordly crowd of youngsters who looked quite as if they owned the place. One of these young heroes ran out from the rest and accosted Tom. "I say, you fellow, is your name Brown?" "Yes," said Tom, in considerable astonishment, glad, however, to have lighted on some one already who seemed to know him. "Ah, I thought so; you know my old aunt, Miss East; she lives somewhere down your way in Berkshire. She wrote to me that you were coming to-day, and asked me to give you a lift. You see," said his friend, as they strolled up toward the school gates, "a great deal depends on how a fellow cuts up at first. If he's got nothing odd about him, and answers straightforward and holds his head up, he gets on. You see, I'm doing the handsome thing by you because my father knows yours; besides, I want to please the old lady. She gave me half a soy this half, and perhaps '11 double it next if I keep in her good books." Thus began a friendship which lasted through all their school days and meant much to both of them. Friendship and loyalty and good sportsmanship are great features in this book, which shows an insight into the brain and heart of a boy which is just as wise in the year of our Lord 1920 as it was in the days of William the Fourth. Tom and East were together in games, in mischief, in fights, in good deeds, or in devil-try, as they were in ingenious syndicating methods of working out the mysteries of the Greek and Latin languages. And years later, when the wise "Doctor," Arnold of Rugby, decided that Tom was headed toward destruction, it was by means of friendship for a weaker boy who needed his protection that he rescued him. What was the marvel of the Doctor's power over boys? "We couldn't enter into half that we heard; we hadn't the knowledge of our own hearts or the knowledge of one another; and little enough of the faith, hope, and love needed to that end. But we listened, as all boys in their better moods will listen (aye, and men, too, for the matter of that), to a man whom we felt to be, with all his heart and soul and strength, striving against whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It was not the cold clear voice of one giving advice and warning from serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning be-low, but the warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us and by our sides, and calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another. And so, wearily and little by little, was brought home to the young boy, for the first time, the meaning of his life: that it was no fool's or sluggard's paradise into which he had wandered by chance, but a battle-field ordained from of old, where there are no spectators, but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes are life and death. And he who roused this consciousness in them showed them at the same time, by every word he spoke and by his whole daily life, how that battle was to be fought; and stood there before them their fellow-soldier and the captain of their guard. The true sort of captain, too, for a boys' army, one who had no misgivings and gave no uncertain word of command, and, let who would yield or make a truce, would fight the fight out (so every boy felt) to the last gasp and the last drop of blood. And so Tom lived his life from the first green days to the last memorable night, when he was "chaired" round the quadrangle by the eleven, shouting in chorus, "For he's a jolly good fellow," himself as great a boy as all the rest, despite the passage of the years and his dignity of captain. It is a story of humanness, with all its good points and its frailties, but especially of loyalty and of friendship; of games, so much like our own in spirit, and yet so different in details; of East and Arthur, of the brutalities of the old fagging system, the school bully and Tom's classic fight with him, of the final war of independence against what was mean and sordid. "`I want to leave behind me,' said Tom, speaking low, `the name of a fellow who never bullied a little boy nor turned his back on a big one.' And then, `I would sooner have the Doctor's good opinion of me as I really am than any man's in the world." |