It was wholesome in a sense; but a bad boy
who was a good athlete might and did wield a very evil influence.
Such boys were above criticism. The moral tone was not low so much
as strangely indifferent. A boy's private life was his own affair,
and public opinion exercised no particular moral sway. Yet vague
and guileless as I myself was, I gratefully record that I never
came in the way of any evil influence whatever at Eton, in any
respect whatever. Talk was rather loose, and one believed evil of
other boys easily enough. To express open disapproval would have
been held to be priggish; and though undoubtedly the tone of
certain houses and certain groups was far from good, there yet ran
through the place a mature sense of a boy's right to be
independent, and undesirable ways of life were more a matter of
choice than of coercion. It was, in fact, far more a mirror of the
larger world than any other school I have ever heard of; and I know
of no school story which gives any impression of a life so
curiously free as it all was. There was none of that electrical
circulation of the news of events and incident that is held to be
characteristic of school life. One used to hear long after or not
at all, of things which had happened. There were rumours, there was
gossip; but I cannot imagine any place where a boy of solitary or
retiring character might be so entirely unaware of anything that
was going on.
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