The Good Influence of a Schoolboy
A THOROUGHLY good boy in a school is doing more good than he will ever know. We do not care to tell him, if we could, just how much good his behavior and words and sincere prayers and general example are effecting; but it is good to think of it. It makes us almost wish we might have a chance to have our boyhood over again, and try it with a clear start and go straight through. A writer in a recent number of Blackwood’s Magazine says of the famous school of Dr. Arnold, at Rugby, England, that, after all, the religious element which showed itself there in those days was not so entirely due to his own influence as some have supposed. The best helper he had was in one of his boys—Spencer Thornton. That great teacher spoke of him afterward as “a blessing to the school.” “Your son,” he wrote to his parents, “has done good to the school to an extent that cannot be calculated.” Religious, straightforward, upright, pure, generous, resolute, gentle—he was the face of honesty itself. Without either of them knowing how it was done, he was continually causing other lads to grow ashamed of vice and athirst for a good conscience and a right character.