Such a boy is often no good at games, because public
performance disconcerts him; he cannot make a ready answer, he has
no aplomb, no cheek, no smartness; and he is consequently thought
very little of.
To what extent this sort of instinctive preference can be altered,
I do not know; it certainly cannot be altered by sermons, and still
less by edicts. Old Dr. Keate said, when he was addressing the
school on the subject of fighting, "I must say that I like to see a
boy return a blow!" It seems, if one considers it, to be a curious
ideal to start life with, considering how little opportunity
civilisation now gives for returning blows! Boys in fact are still
educated under a system which seems to anticipate a combative and
disturbed sort of life to follow, in which strength and agility,
violence and physical activity, will have a value. Yet, as a matter
of fact, such things have very little substantial value in an
ordinary citizen's life at all, except in so far as they play their
part in the elaborate cult of athletic exercises, with which we
beguile the instinct which craves for manual toil.
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