I hope I may be pardoned for retelling this story, which I have already told elsewhere. But it seems to me to interpret perfectly the attitude towards bullying that exists in most houses. No doubt there was a great deal of bullying fifty years ago. And people think that what was true of the Rugby of _Tom Brown's Schooldays_ is true of the Shrewsbury of to-day. They still think that the three chief sins of a Public School are bullying, stealing, and midnight escapades into the town. But those days have passed. In Desmond Coke's _The Bending of a Twig_ the new boy who sought for bullies behind every cloister quickly won the nickname of Don Q. It is usually during the course of his fourth term that a boy first begins to swear. For swearing is, on the whole, confined to members of the Middle School. It is side for a fag to swear, and an oath, except on rare occasions, is considered beneath the dignity of a blood. He is supposed to dwell in an Olympian fastness beyond the reach of inconvenience, where the need for violent language is infrequently presented. For the second yearer, however, life is full of emotion that demands to be registered forcibly. I can never quite see why so many people refuse to believe that a schoolboy's conversation is punctuated with 'damns' and 'bloodys.' We employ the idiom of our surroundings. A boy does not swear at home; at school he does. And there is no particular reason why he should not. An oath means little to him. He knows that some indecency is implied. But the meaning of the word is not defined by his use of it. He rarely employs it appropriately. He recommends the most contradictory performances. A powerful expression is needed. He wishes the world to know that he has been moved powerfully either to anger, or to delight. That is all. Any word that would have this effect would suit him, and I remember a dormitory captain insisting that the only expletive to be used in his presence should be 'daggers'; this crasis satisfied every one. The language a boy uses is no index to his character. Swearing and 'talking smut' are very different things.