The metaphor in the last two stanzas in this page is strangely mixed.
Footprints could hardly be seen by those sailing over the main.]




* * * * *




BOYHOOD'S WORK.

In no place in the world has individual character more weight than at
a public school. Remember this, I beseech you, all you boys who are
getting into the upper forms. Now is the time in all your lives,
probably, when you may have more wide influence for good or evil in the
society you live in than you ever can have again. Quit yourselves like
men, then; speak up, and strike out, if necessary, for whatsoever
is true, and manly, and lovely, and of good report; never try to be
popular, but only to do your duty, and help others to do theirs, and you
may leave the tone of feeling in the school higher than you found it,
and so be doing good, which no living soul can measure, to generations
of your countrymen yet unborn. For boys follow one another in herds like
sheep, for good or evil; they hate thinking, and have rarely any settled
principles. Every school, indeed, has its own traditionary standard of
right and wrong, which cannot be transgressed with impunity, marking
certain things as low and blackguard, and certain others as lawful and
right. This standard is ever varying, though it changes only slowly, and