Ars Recte Vivendi | Page 5

the petty bullying of hazing and the whole system of college
tyranny is a most contemptible denial of fair-play. It is a disgrace to the
American name, and when you stop in the wretched business to sneer at
English fagging you merely advertise the beam in your own eyes. It is
not possible, surely, that any honorable young gentleman now
attending to the lecture of the professor really supposes that there is any
fun or humor or joke in this form of college bullying. Turn to your
Evelina and see what was accounted humorous, what passed for
practical joking, in Miss Burney's time, at the end of the last century. It
is not difficult to imagine Dr. Johnson, who greatly delighted in
Evelina, supposing the intentional upsetting into the ditch of the old
French lady in the carriage to be a joke. For a man who unconsciously
has made so much fun for others as "the great lexicographer," Dr.
Johnson seems to have been curiously devoid of a sense of humor. But
he was a genuine Englishman of his time, a true John Bull, and the fun
of the John Bull of that time, recorded in the novels and traditions, was
entirely bovine.
The bovine or brutal quality is by no means wholly worked out of the
blood even yet. The taste for pugilism, or the pummelling of the human
frame into a jelly by the force of fisticuffs, as a form of enjoyment or
entertainment, is a relapse into barbarism. It is the instinct of the tiger
still surviving in the white cat transformed into the princess. I will not
call it, young gentlemen, the fond return of Melusina to the gambols of
the mermaid, or Undine's momentary unconsciousness of a soul,
because these are poetic and pathetic suggestions. The prize-ring is
disgusting and inhuman, but at least it is a voluntary encounter of two
individuals. But college bullying is unredeemed brutality. It is the
extinction of Dr. Jekyll in Mr. Hyde. It is not humorous, nor manly, nor
generous, nor decent. It is bald and vulgar cruelty, and no class in
college should feel itself worthy of the respect of others, or respect
itself, until it has searched out all offenders of this kind who disgrace it,
and banished them to the remotest Coventry.
The meanest and most cowardly fellows in college may shine most in
hazing. The generous and manly men despise it. There are noble and
inspiring ways for working off the high spirits of youth: games which

are rich in poetic tradition; athletic exercises which mould the young
Apollo. To drive a young fellow upon the thin ice, through which he
breaks, and by the icy submersion becomes at last a cripple, helpless
with inflammatory rheumatism--surely no young man in his senses
thinks this to be funny, or anything but an unspeakable outrage. Or to
overwhelm with terror a comrade of sensitive temperament until his
mind reels--imps of Satan might delight in such a revel, but young
Americans!--never, young gentlemen, never!
The hazers in college are the men who have been bred upon dime
novels and the prize-ring--in spirit, at least, if not in fact--to whom the
training and instincts of the gentleman are unknown. That word is one
of the most precious among English words. The man who is justly
entitled to it wears a diamond of the purest lustre. Tennyson, in
sweeping the whole range of tender praise for his dead friend Arthur
Hallam, says that he bore without abuse the grand old name of
gentleman. "Without abuse"--that is the wise qualification. The name
may be foully abused. I read in the morning's paper, young gentlemen,
a pitiful story of a woman trying to throw herself from the bridge. You
may recall one like it in Hood's "Bridge of Sighs." The report was
headed: "To hide her shame." "Her shame?" Why, gentlemen, at that
very moment, in bright and bewildering rooms, the arms of Lothario
and Lovelace were encircling your sisters' waists in the intoxicating
waltz. These men go unwhipped of an epithet. They are even enticed
and flattered by the mothers of the girls. But, for all that, they do not
bear without abuse the name of gentleman, and Sidney and Bayard and
Hallam would scorn their profanation and betrayal of the name.
The soul of the gentleman, what is it? Is it anything but kindly and
thoughtful respect for others, helping the helpless, succoring the needy,
befriending the friendless and forlorn, doing justice, requiring fair-play,
and withstanding with every honorable means the bully of the church
and caucus, of the drawing-room, the street, the college? Respect,
young gentlemen, like charity, begins at home. Only the man who
respects himself can be a gentleman, and no gentleman will willingly
annoy, torment, or injure