FAGGING AT BUGBY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2140, 27 March 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

FAGGING AT BUGBY.

Another very important custom in which newcomers have to be instructed is thai of fagging. They are purposely allowed a fortnight's grace that they may carefully study the duties exacted of them. It is with fagging as with football and hare-and-hounda. Its greatest days are past. Think of a boy having to warm three or four beds on a cold night by lying in them until the heat of his) body had destroyed their chill, and then having to rise at four o'clock in the morning to run two miles to the Avon to 'attend to the fishing-lines of the sixth-form boys, and then to be back in time- for first lesson, Fancy his being obliged to* form one of a team of four' or twelve in, 'harness to be raced around the schoolyard or "close," by tbeprcepostertiof the Four-inV Hand Club, and compelled to make flower-beds for the same mighty beings, having half a pewter spoon aha a wholt fdrk for his only garden tools, and the flowers to be supplied by f*k means or foal? Vet these were » few of tbe services expected of fags in the (lay when "there wer* games in the land," as a Rugby song says! Now they are treated with much more leniency. Only the sixform boys are allowed to have fags. Tht younger boys must wait on them at breakfast, tea and supper, run their errands to the nearest pastry-cook shop, clean out their studies, attend to their wants in the dormitories, and sometimes "field" for them at cricket. As in several other public schools, when the six-form boys or praepostor wants anything, he calls out "F-a-a-g!" in answer to which call all the fagging boys must run, the last to arrive having to do the work. It is but for a short time, fortunately, that fagging is really a serious, and perhaps tiresome duty. For the rule is that during a boy's first 'terrr^ he must run at the first call ; during his second, at the second and so on*; so that at the end of the second school year he has comparatively little to do as a fag.-" St. Nicholas."

Charley Manhattan— * I thought Shakspere wrote "Charles the First I"' —Miss Arlington— • But you know Shakspere died so many years before j Charles the First was born that—' CM. —'Oh, yes, but Shakespeare is full of anachronisms I'

A female school-teacher was on intimate terms with the male teacher in the same school. He was in the habit of atrolljng into her room during the recess, and chatting with the object of his affection. His name was Smith. One day the lady teacher endeavoured to make the class .comprehend the omnipresence «f God. She explained to them that God was, everywhere. ' Now* my ,dear children, suppose you all go out of this room except.myself, and I stay in here. Am I alone ?' asked the female -teacher. /No,' exclaimed one;of the little girh, 'Mr Smith wjUl be with youY , . |