Litchfield enquirer., 1872-12-19

told upon his constitution. mating him nervous and anxious, and hindeFin0 Ille
 < As.v-lcs N.a.N In ms ssaules. or
 The following is even more emp | am living st Winchester, to wnteh oxsE a delicate boy who went in top 0f th8 xalt of scholars this year. III health prevent cd him from joining til three weeks ego. and out of this be was exempt from col lege discipline for a fortnight. No sooner did he commence his course, as 1t is called, than so did his sorrows. He has had four ickings in five days, one for not knowing the organist's slang name.
 Other letters supply details far too nu-
 merous to be quoted in full. Frank, the writer of the first letter, challenges de. nial of the fact that forty juniors had
 been clicked" in one day by one prefect,
 or that as many as hundred hckingB have been administered this Autumn alone. "An Enquirer" who announces himself as Tory of the deepest dye, des- crlbes his own service under a monitor who invented a pair of thumb-screws and used his invention freely on the flags. He had also weakness for borrowing money from them, and reminding him of it led indirectly to disagreeable consequences MT. Mande adds that cone day, when the Master came on, very few answered to their names. and for this very grave off, fense, he gave those absent 50 lines; at the same time he sad to the Prmfect who called names, 'The Prsefacts ought to send the men on to the names calling So anxious was the Captain of College to do his duty that on the next haf-hoIiday
 ha Vn1 h A.. Master being present, some 50 of 60 were and six, he licked the whole lot. The floor of the room looked like faeot yard, so many ashes were broken" omit the testimony about what went on in past days. It is no worse than the hor- TOTS of to-day; and pass over that re- latlng to other schools with the remark that the atrocities brought to light in
 Winchester are scarcely worse than those described elsewhere.
 To-day we have the official answer, . letter to The Times from the Head Mas ter of Winchester, Dr. Kidding. He hss suggested to the Governing Body of the School that they should inquire fully in- to the particular case, and he has no doubt that they will do so, and will both judge what has been done and consider the regulations on the subject. That is all. Not 20 much as an expression of re- gret or adherence or any repugnance to the system. But there is, happily, force stronger than the Head Master, even at Winchester. There is the press, and there is Public Opinion. MT. Emerson says of the English nation that it has tough, acrid, animal nature, which centuries of churching and civihzing have not been able to sweeten; that the English uncul- tured are brutal nation; that the public schools are charged with being bear-gar- dens of brutal strength and are liked by the people for that cause. The tagging IS, he says, Q trait of the same quality, and he quotes from Medwin's Life of Shell ley how they rolled up a young man in a snowbau and left him in his room while the others went to church, and crippled him for life; that bit of playfulness, however, having occurred at a military school. What Emerson observed a quarter of . century ago is true of great part to-day, but 1t is pleasant to be able to add that the brutality of Winchester has brought down upon its perpetrators and apologists and upon the school which permits it, c
 burst of genuine indignation. To The Daily Telegraph belongs the credit of @S@SS4S UAO SOACAdA PNOGCSbs NOGu1u& could be better than the two leading arti- cles in which that powerful journal de- nounced the system as to the last degree brutal, degrading and demoralizing. The Daily News spoke out in much the same tone; The Times with less. emphasis but still in clear condemnation of the prac- tice. think there can be no doubt that public attention has at last been drawn to the subject, and that the days of legaliz- ed fagging and fogging school-boys by other school-boys are numbered. To some extent this discussion raised also the question whether fogging by masters is an essential means of school discipline. l fear it will take longer to get that abol- ished, but there is reason to hope that the day is not far distant when English parents will decline to subject their child ren to punishment which is all but ban ished from the army and navy, and which public opinion only half tolerates even for garroters. English Correspondence of The NeW York Tribune