Bully

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the female bully is without fear as without shame. She elbows her way through and past her timid sisters, takes tranquil possession of the standing-places they have reserved by occupation, and scatters them to flight as the fierce hawk the pavid doves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ The father felt the satisfaction of a bully in having such a tall, strong, daring and insolent son, a boy who compelled respect in cafes and clubs more with his fists than with the special privileges conferred in small towns by wealth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As you go on, innumerable are the different forms you meet, in every shape of degradation: the fierce bludgeoned bully, the dexterous pickpocket, the wretched woman who acts as their decoy, the boys and girls serving an apprenticeship to vice, the hoary prompters of all evil, who, in the shape of receivers, profit by the crimes of the younger and more active. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By way of illustration, if a bully were kicking a little tot, my friend would rather have his boy fight the bully and get licked and rolled in the dust, than to see his boy win first prize and much applause, for out-boxing a boy smaller than himself. ”

“ The trouble is that of an innocent blue pointlet, now alas! in the toils of a perfect bully of a whelk, a worthless rough who is thus victimising the innocent to save himself from ending his paltry existence in your inside. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was the age when men of physical prowess walked down the street shouldering lesser men into the gutter, and the lesser men had never a word to say for themselves. It was the age when if you expressed opinions contrary to those of a bully he was confidently expected to kill you or somehow maltreat you. ”

“ There was a dead silence, when the bully brought down his fist on the table with tremendous force, and fiercely shouted, 'I say that any man who don't like good apple-pie is a d—d rascal!' This was more than human nature could endure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Bullies and tyrants, or would-be bullies and tyrants, are to be found everywhere; but when any little fellow complained to them, they never failed to punish the bully, and to bring to light any act of injustice, making the unjust doer right the wronged one. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was an amateur at manly sports. He rejoiced in his muscular strength, and, in many a tavern brawl and midnight riot of his own provoking, had proved the fallacy of the proverb which teaches that a bully is always a coward. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the World, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it come off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away timid adventurers. ”

“ When I am pushed, I push. Placing my hand against his chest, he went backwards across the pavement at a run.
"Manners, sir! Manners!" I observed.
He seemed surprised—as a man is apt to do, who, proposing to play the bully, finds himself bullied instead. ”

“ In considering the social functions of the bully, it is necessary to distinguish him from several classes of persons, to any one of which he may belong, but from each one of which he may be different. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The word bully was at one time a word which showed affection, and meant even "lover." In English now, of course, a bully is a person, especially a boy, who tyrannizes over people weaker than himself; but the Americans still use the word in a good sense when they say "bully for you," meaning "bravo." ”

“ The drunken bully, powerful though he was, had much difficulty in shaking her off, and by the time he had succeeded, I had reached the girl and stood in front of her. Finding a man to deal with and one much slighter than himself, he elbowed himself clear of the throng round him and prepared to knock me into the next world. ”

“ The means of enforcing these exactions is always at hand, and is expressed in one fateful and compound noun, law-suit. The bully who understands his business is well acquainted with every one at the district yamên, and is in fact one of their best customers, or rather the man who brings them their custom. The yamên is the spider’s web, and the bully is the large insect which drives the flies into the net, where it will go ill with them ere they escape. ”

“ Who have been the bullies of London town, with their Mohocks and Hell Fire Clubs, but the nobility and royal princes? No, believe me, sir;” and Noah's lip twitched sarcastically, “the bully's blood is sometimes blue.” ”

“ But these things do not flourish in the full daylight and common consciousness of the school, and no more does cruelty. A tiny trio of sullen-looking boys gather in corners and seem to have some ugly business always; it may be indecent literature, it may be the beginning of drink, it may occasionally be cruelty to little boys. But on this stage the bully is not a braggart. The proverb says that bullies are always cowardly, but these bullies are more than cowardly; they are shy. ”

“ Probably a corruption of BULL-FENCE, a fence made to prevent cattle straying either in or out.
Bull the Cask, to pour hot water into an empty rum puncheon, and let it stand until it extracts the spirit from the wood. The mixture is drunk by sailors in default of something stronger.—Sea.
Bully, a braggart; in the language of the streets, a man of the most degraded morals, who protects fallen females, and lives off their miserable earnings.—Shakspeare, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, uses the word in its old form, as a term of endearment. ”

“ We have spoken of the literary bully as one of those most to [Pg 223] be dreaded in China. But there is another qualification which a bully may possess, either with or without that of learning, which makes him an almost irresistible enemy. If he belongs to a family, one or more members of which are in official life and have a certain degree of power with the official class, such a man is a dangerous foe. ”

“ 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. ”