We see that
every day. The biggest boy licks the one just below him, he whips
the next, and so down, and there's not one that don't lick somebody
and don't stand licked himself--for the master licks the biggest.
The desire to fight and flog is natural, and this being the case,
it stands to reason that we must lick our neighbor or he'll be sure
to lick us."
"Pshaw! you speak like a boy yet. This is schoolhouse philosophy."
"And very good philosophy too. I'm thinking the schoolhouse and
the play-ground is pretty much a sort of world to itself. It's no
bad show of what the world without is; and one of its first lessons
and that which I think the truest, is the necessity of having a
trial of strength with every new-comer; until we learn where he's
to stand in the ranks, number one or number nothing. You see there
just the same passions, though, perhaps, on a small scale, that
we afterward find to act upon the big world of manhood. There, we
fight for gingerbread, for marbles, top and ball; not unfrequently
because we venture to look at our neighbor's sweetheart; and
sometimes, quite as often, for the love of the thing and to know
where the spirit and the sinew are.
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