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The Bully
by
He was bad enough; but the wolf in Aesop’s fable was still worse. The poor lamb there owed nothing; it only chanced to be drinking of the same stream.
“What do you mean by polluting my water?” growls the wolf.
“I am drinking lower down than you,” replies the innocent, “and so that cannot be.”
“Never mind, you called me names a year ago.”
“Please, sir, a year ago I wasn’t born.”
“Well, then, it was your father, and it’s all the same thing; and, what’s more, you need not think I’m going to be done out of my breakfast by your talk–so here goes!” And we all know what became of the poor lamb. A gentleman cannot be a bully, and a bully cannot be a gentleman. By gentleman I mean not the vulgar use of the word. The rich snob who keeps his carriages, and counts his income with five or six figures, and considers that sufficient title to the name, may be, and often is, a bully. His servants may lead the lives of dogs, his tradesmen dread the sound of his voice, and his dependants shake in their shoes before him. But a gentleman–a man (or boy) of honour, kindliness, modesty, and sense–could no more be a bully than black could be white.
Bullying is essentially vulgar, and stamps the person who indulges in it as ill-conditioned and stupid. He tries to pass off his lack of brains with bluster, and to make up by tyranny for the contempt which his ill- bred manners would naturally secure for him. But he deceives nobody but himself. The youngsters tremble before him; but they despise him; in a year or two they will laugh at him, and after that–thrash him.
Yes; I am sorry to counsel that physic for anybody, but really it is the only one which can possibly cure the bully. The time must come when the little boy will find himself grown up and possessed of a muscle, and then the bully will find, to his astonishment, that he has tried his art once too often.
So it was with Bob Bangs. He found himself on his back one day with a small army of youngsters executing a war dance round him. He got roughly used, poor fellow, and at last changed his tune from threats to whines, and eventually, with the aid of a few parting kicks, was permitted to depart in peace. And he never tried on bullying with us again, except indeed when he was fortunate enough to get hold of one of us singly in a lonely comer. And even then he generally heard of it afterwards.
But, boys, mind this. There’s nothing more likely than that in your struggle for independence you will, if victorious, be tempted to become bullies yourselves. In your anxiety to “pay out” your old enemy, you may forget that you are yourselves falling into the very transgression for which you have chastised him. That would be sad indeed. A boy that can bear malice, and refuse quarter to a fallen foe, is very little different from a bully himself.
Rather be careful to show yourselves Christians and gentlemen, even in the way you rid yourselves of bullies. It is one thing, in self- defence, to right yourself, and it is another to return evil for evil. The best revenge you can have is, instead of dancing on his prostrate body, to set him an example of forbearance and self-control in your own conduct, which shall point him out a surer road to respect and authority than all the bullying in the world could ever give him.