Bullion

“ The once modest street row with a bully twice his size was enlarged in cast. There were now, as befitted a king, two bullies, who writhed in pain, each with a broken arm, while the slight but muscular youth with a knowledge of jiu-jitsu walked coolly off, flecking dust from one of his capable shoulders. Sometimes he paused long enough to explain the affair, in a few dignified words, to an admiring policeman who found it difficult to believe that this stripling had vanquished two such powerful brutes. ”

“ A bully in an assault may do much which his victim cannot even report to another person,—by his attitude, his look, his voice,—when he insults, when he attacks as an enemy, when he smites with his fist, when he strikes a blow on the face. ”

“ It was perfectly impossible to explain them, so I said a bully was the worst name I could call him, and that a coward was the meanest thing a man could be. Then the provoking boy said, "Is bully a worse name than devil?" ”

“ I must add, that she keeps in her service three or four rough blustering bullies, with puffed cheeks, who when they are let loose, think they have nothing to do but drive the world before them. She sometimes joins with my first sister, and their violence occasionally throws me into such a trembling, that, though naturally of a firm constitution, I shake as if I was in an ague fit. ”

“ A classmate of mine at school excelled in strength nearly all his fellows. His strength indeed possessed him as it were a devil. He was as willing to exhibit it by hectoring the weak as by tussling with those who could put up a defense. It is fallacious to assert that the bully is always a coward. This boy was in many respects an egregious bully, but he was without fear. ”

“ This is a step in the right direction. The bully, whether in school, in the street, in business, or among nations, should be taught that his bullying is unsafe, and that if he must fight he must choose a "fellow of his own size." ”

“ Perhaps that pale, quiet friend of yours, who looks as though he had scarcely strength enough to lift his heavy satchel full of books, and who always turns and walks meekly away whenever the great, hulking bully of the school says a harsh word to him, would, if placed in a situation of extreme danger, stand his ground and show the greatest coolness and courage, while that same bully would run for his life. ”

“ I cried. “You can only shoot men in the back. You don’t like me, don’t you?” I cried, taunting them. “I’m a braggart, am I? Yes. I’m a bully, am I? Well, here’s your chance. Get rid of me! Once again now. ”

“ I therefore add a few extracts from the letter of an old friend and school-fellow, than whom no man in England is better able to speak on the subject:—
"What's the use of sorting the boys by ages, unless you do so by strength: and who are often the real bullies? The strong young dog of fourteen, while the victim may be one year or two years older. . . . I deny the fact about the bedrooms: there is trouble at times, and always will be; but so there is in nurseries;—my little girl, who looks like an angel, was bullying the smallest twice to-day. ”

“ There was another circumstance also which rendered the bully's presence decidedly unpleasant at this time—an event that had occurred during his absence, the particulars of which he had received from his mother. ”

“ By the plan which we have proposed the balance of pain would be fearfully against the aggressor; and that noxious animal, the bully, must soon become extinct. At present he stands on equal ground with his antagonist; or rather, from having made a just estimate of the worthlessness of his own life, he is aware that the stakes are in his favour. Add to this, he generally has no better occupation for his time than to become very expert at his weapons. In England, these creatures are happily become rare ”

“ This time the bully had aroused the wrong man, for our hero possessed the strongest arm and hand anyone was known to have in the locality, and in a few blows he thrashed the bully clean and fair, felling him to the ground, and giving the prostrate man a vigorous kick as a parting salute. ”

“ If you could stand coolly by, and see the cruelty you could check, or the wrong you could right, and move no finger to do it, you are not the reader I want, nor the human being I choose to know. I hold the cautious and sagacious man, who can look on at an act of bullying without stopping it and punishing it, as a worse and more despicable animal than the bully himself. ”

“ It is exemplified in the child who teases or injures household pets and punishes animals; and in a symbolical way by destroying dolls and toy animals. It is most strongly evidenced in the bully and all individuals who subject others to acts of cruelty and punishment. ”

“ You would kill a poor cat, you infernal coward. You would fly at a starving beggar, you infernal coward. Anything that you can surprise unawares—anything that is afraid of your big body, and your wicked white teeth, and your slobbering, bloodthirsty mouth, is the thing you like to fly at. You could throttle me at this moment, you mean, miserable bully, and you daren't so much as look me in the face, because I'm not afraid of you. ”

“ A bully will fight a duel, upon occasion, to prove himself a man of brute 223 courage, and kill or be killed for so low a cause. A coward will fight a duel, because he is afraid to refuse, on account of what bullies might say of him, and kill, or be killed, from so mean a motive. A man maddened by wrongs, and raging with wrath, will fight a duel to be revenged upon his adversary, to slay or to be slain, and is eager to risk his own life, in the hope of taking his enemy’s. But no man ever fought a duel from any motive of pure honor. ”

“ He was an insolent bully, of a type common in that day; a man of brutal and dangerous character, who lived by his wits and his sword, with just enough surface manners when it suited him to pass muster with those with whom he wished to consort, but whose chief pleasure was to ruffle it through the world and take the wall of those less well placed than himself. ”

“ In no mood for a temperance harangue, the men drowned, or would have drowned aught but his short incisive sentences, in clamours for their beer, and one big bully pushed forward to attack him. His left hand was still in the sling, but with the other he caught hold of the fellow by the collar, and swung him over the side of the stone steps as helpless as a puppy dog, shaking him till his teeth chattered ere setting him on his feet. ”

“ And as the hair, long before, curled in close rings to the nape of the bull-like neck, you saw before you one of those useful instruments to ambition and fraud which recoil at no danger, comprehend no crime, are not without certain good qualities, under virtuous guidance,—for they have the fidelity, the obedience, the stubborn courage of the animal,—but which, under evil control, turn those very qualities to unsparing evil: bull-dogs to rend the foe, as bull-dogs to defend the master. ”

“ The bully had begun to unfasten the halter which held the horse, when Fred and myself rose to our feet. The crowd kept at a respectful distance, for they knew that Bully was a man who did not stop to consider who were for or against him, when in a rage, and that he had been known to discharge a pair of pistols in the midst of a party of friends, if he felt that it was necessary to keep up his reputation for fierceness and decision. ”

“ It affords me particular pleasure to reflect that, notwithstanding my previous total want of training, I was, from the very outset of my school career, an especial favourite with my fellow-pupils, never having had more than one quarrel serious enough to result in a fight, on which occasion I succeeded in giving my antagonist—a great bully who had been cruelly tyrannising over a smaller boy—so severe a trouncing that a resort to this rough-and-ready mode of settling a dispute never again became necessary, so far as I was concerned. ”

“ I hold duels in abhorrence, as unjustifiable acts of violence, and savage devices of revenge. I have offended against my own conviction,—but, transported with passion at his infamous charges, I was not master of my reason; I accused hum of his perfidy; he denied it; I told him I had it from my father,—he changed the subject to pour abuse upon him; I insisted on a recantation to clear you; he asked by what right? I fiercely answered; by a husband's! His countenance, then, explained at least the motives of his treachery,—he loves you himself! ”

“ Now the servants had had enough of this young bully; and thought they, “What if we pitch him into the river, where the current is strong, and just leave him there! [50] We can easily pretend he was carried away where we could not reach him; and if the King finds us out, and puts us to death—anyhow, death is better than his eternal bullying.” So they pitched him head over heels into the water, though he screamed and struggled, and then they went home and told the King that he had gone in to bathe, and a flood carried him away. ”

“ Numbers five, six, and seven, are hulking, idle, slouching young men, patched and shabby, too short in the sleeves and too tight in the legs, slimily clothed, foul-spoken, repulsive wretches inside and out. In all the party there obtains a certain twitching character of mouth and furtiveness of eye, that hint how the coward is lurking under the bully. ”

“ I have watched a big boy thrashing a little one, in the presence of half a dozen other big boys, not one of whom interfered on behalf of the oppressed little fellow. You may be sure I did not watch the transaction longer than was necessary to ascertain whether there was a grain of generosity in the hulking boors; and you may be sure, too, that that thrashing of the little boy was, to the big bully, one of the most unfortunate transactions in which he had engaged in his bestial and blackguard, though brief, life. ”

“ The bully looked at him fixedly for a moment, and then drawing back his short upper lip after a way he had, and which made his face resemble that of a snarling wolf, with fangs exposed, he remarked:
"It makes me laugh to think of such a lot of tenderfeet in the woods. Be careful not to shoot yourselves, kids. Guns are mighty dangerous sometimes. And just make up your minds that we ain't agoing to be scared by big words. The fellows that train with me have been up against hard knocks too often to knuckle down before a lot of bluster and brag. ”

“ A bully Bottom of the old, allowed sort, makes up his face—even as the rustic wag of a horse-collar—to goggle and grin; and is as like to the sweet bully of Phelps—bears the same relation in art to the Bottom of Sadler's Wells—as the sign-post portrait on the village green to a head, vital by a few marvellous dots and touches of Richard Doyle. ”

“ The very fact that the boy should be manly and able to hold his own, that he should be ashamed to submit to bullying without instant retaliation, should, in return, make him abhor any form of bullying, cruelty, or brutality. ”

“ The one is all head and arrogance, the other all paws and grudge. The bone is only the pretext. A first condition of the being of Bully is that he shall hate the prowling great paws of the Plebs, whilst Plebs by inherent nature goes mad at the sight of Bully's jowl. "Drop it!" cries Plebs. "Hands off!" growls Bully. It is hands against head, the shambling, servile body in a rage of insurrection at last against the wrinkled, heavy head.
Labour not only wants his debt. He wants his pound of flesh. It is a quandary. In our heart of hearts we must admit the debt. ”

“ I saw some of the spectators smile, and some look pityingly upon me, and this decidee my course of action. My temper rose, my eyes flashed, and my cheeks burned, as I thought of the insulting words of the other.
"Some men live by bullying," I replied, pointedly; " and I suppose you are one of them; if not, you will keep your advice till one of us is the victor." ”

“ It is then that one of them steps forward and sometimes, to disguise his intention, holds out the hand of friendship, and the poor drunkard receives a blow in the face instead. Of course, this exasperates him, and he attacks them all. If it is day, the young bullies escape laughing, but if it is night, and the place quiet, they will all try their strength on him, and probably leave him insensible in the gutter. ”

“ When as a bull, whose lustful veins betray The maddening tumult of inspiring May; If, when his rage with fiercest ardour glows, When in the shade the fragrant heifer lows, If then perchance his jealous burning eye Behold a careless traveller wander by, With dreadful bellowing on the wretch he flies, The wretch defenceless torn and trampled dies. ”

“ I wish I could. But I can down with a bully of theirs. Come, will you fight for them?’
‘No,’ said I.
‘You won’t?’
‘No,’ said I; ‘though, from what I have seen of them, I should say they are tolerably able to fight for themselves.’
‘You won’t fight for them,’ said the Radical triumphantly; ‘I thought so; all bullies, especially those of the aristocracy, are cowards. Here, landlord,’ said he, raising his voice, and striking against the table with the jug, ‘some more ale—he won’t fight for his friends.’
‘A white feather,’ said his companion.
‘He! he!’ tittered the man in black. ”

“ Having to no purpose used all peaceable endeavours, the collected part of the semen, raised and inflamed, became adust, converted to choler, turned head upon the spinal duct, and ascended to the brain. The very same principle that influences a bully to break the windows of a woman who has jilted him naturally stirs up a great prince to raise mighty armies and dream of nothing but sieges, battles, and victories. ”