Ars Recte Vivendi

rathful scorn for the English boy who makes another boy his fag, and you express a sneering pity for the boy who consents to fag. You have read _Dr. Birch and His Young Friends_, and you would like to break the head of Master Hewlett, who shies his shoe at the poor shivering, craven Nightingale, and you justly remark that close observation of John Bull seems to warrant the conclusion that the nature of his bovine ancestor is still far from eliminated from his descendant. And what is the secret of your feeling? Simply that you hate bullying. Why, then, young gentlemen, do you bully?

You retort perhaps that fagging is unknown in America, and that high-spirited youth would not tolerate it. But permit the professor to tell you what is not unknown in America: a crowd of older young gentlemen surrounding one younger fellow, forcing him to do disagreeable and disgusting things, pouring cold water down his back, making a fool of him to his personal injury, he being solitary, helpless, and abused--all this is not u