solitary way, and generally mean an intellectual home in the
background.

In the moral region, I think we have much to answer for; there is a
code of morals among boys which, if it is not actively corrupting,
is at least undeniably low. The standard of purity is low; a
vicious boy doesn't find his vicious tendencies by any means a bar
to social success. Then the code of honesty is low; a boy who is
habitually dishonest in the matter of work is not in the least
reprobated. I do not mean to say that there are not many boys who
are both pure-minded and honest; but they treat such virtues as a
secret preference of their own, and do not consider that it is in
the least necessary to interfere with the practice of others, or
even to disapprove of it. And then comes the perennial difficulty
of schoolboy honour; the one unforgivable offence is to communicate
anything to masters; and an innocent-minded boy whose natural
inclination to purity gave way before perpetual temptation and even
compulsion might be thought to have erred, but would have scanty,
if any, expression of either sympathy or pity from other boys;
while if he breathed the least hint of his miserable position to a
master and the fact came out, he would be universally scouted.

This is a horrible fact to contemplate; yet it cannot be cured by
enactment, only from within. It is strange that in this respect it
is entirely unlike the code of the world. No girl or woman would be
scouted for appealing to police protection in similar
circumstances; no man would be required to submit to violence or
even to burglary; no reprobation would fall upon him if he appealed
to the law to help him.