A sneak,
therefore, has in all ages been invested with a badge of infamy, which no
amount of strictly scholastic success has ever availed to remove from him;
and his fellows, recognising that he has saved his own skin at the expense
of theirs, do their best to make up the difference to him in contempt and
abuse. Schoolboys are not distinguished for a fastidious reticence. If they
dislike, they never hesitate to say so, and they have a painfully downright
way of giving reasons for their behaviour, which is apt to jar on a
temperament so sensitive that its owner always and only treads the path of
high principle when self-interest points him in the same direction.
The school career of the future pastor was not, therefore, a very happy
one, for at school there are no feeble women to be captivated by
heartrending revelations of a noble nature at war with universal
wickedness, and all but shattered by the assaults of an unfeeling world.
Nor, strange to say, do schoolmasters, as a rule, value the boy who ranges
himself on their side in the eternal war between boys and masters.
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