The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1871-04-22

bargains for you in the things you sell to the other
boys and now you see the consequence. Ii such
fellows as Ben and Hugh had been your flags, you
know very well this disgracefui scene would never
have taken place at all. You would have been suff-
GENTLY well trained and well equipped to command
the respect of the other monitors, and the two rivals
would not have dared to come to blows. There was
a time when, if you so much as held up your hnger,
the whole school would tremble. Nobody trembles
now. Nobody cares one farthing what you think or
say. And why? Because you have grown a sloven
and a screw, and boys despise both the one and the
other. You ought to have prevented the tight from
the first failing this, you ought, in conjunction with
the other monitors, to have stepped in the moment
the boys had proved their relative strength, and
struck a fair balance between them. Instead of
doing so, you sat coolly in your shop, supplying the
means of carrying on the fight, and coming a few
wretched coppers out of your school fellows blows
and wounds. You have been a bad friend TO both of
friends yourself. When you do. l hope you may find
them. Take care that William, the p~eaceable, unag-
gressive boy, does not contrive (as l fully believe he
will contrive) to get a footing on the river. where he
can keep a boat, and then one fine morning take
your pretty island by surprise"
"It was Louis's own fault, ma'am," urged John.
" He began it all. William was only defending his
fatherland."
Defending his grandmotherland,'' retorted the
dame contemptuously. cit looks very much like
sefdefense, to chase a boy half across the play
ground and threaten to kick down his arbor. Very
like self-defense, to train hard for six months, and
then propose something which is sure to create q
row. And although Louis had been in the wrong,
he had also been severely punished, and it is time
that he should be relieved. What are those who
make mistakes never to be helped out of them? Is
it any the less incumbent on the strong to protect the
weak, because the weak has got himself into a mess
by its own fault? However, there is some excuse for
William, who is half mad with the fever of success
but there is no excuse for you, who sat still in cold
blood and looked on. You have abused the trust
committed to you as one of the five monitors of the
school, and your Office shall be taken from you"
Please 'em,'' said a chorus of little boys to-
gether please 'em, do let him off this time. He
was so kind to Louis and William when they were
bad. He brought them water, and bathed their
faces, and stopped the bleeding, and did all sorts of
things for them. Please 'em, let him off"
"Well,'' said the dame, much affected, 81 kindness
to the wounded shall plead his own cause this once,
and 1 will think of some punishment less severe.
For l have hopes of Johnnie even yet, that he will
rise to a sense of his high position in the school and
learn that duties cannot be coolly ignored because
they are disagreeable that he who shirks the re-
sponsbilities of doing right does in very deed and
truth do wrong; that the true test of greatness is
the ability to grapple with great difficulties that it
is but a sorry thing to boast of bravery and skill
and power. if, just at the very instant when you are
called upon to act, your resources fail you, and you
whine out the miserable excuse that you don't
exactly see how you can interfere If, indeed, such
an excuse be allowed to stand-if it be really true
that the head and champion of the school is thoroughly
beaten by at a loss, at some
critical moment, what is the right thing to do let
him confess at once that he is unequal to his place
that he is not the boy we took him for-that his
courage has been overrated, and his reputation as a
hero too cheaply earned that for all his Wanted
influence with others he is too weak to stay an un-
righteous strife-to avert a storm of cruel. savage
blows-to spare the inhiction of wounds which will
: lie gaping, and unhealed for long, long years to
come. bearing on their CHASTITY face a bitter hatred
for the foe that dealt them, and contempt for the
6 neutral friend who looked calmly on