You have been guilty of an act for which, were you not schoolboys, but
grown up, you would be put in prison. It is this kind of thing that
leads people to penal servitude."
After the reading over was finished and the lessons that followed
immediately on it, and the boys went out to wash their hands for
luncheon, the boys of the second division crowded round Hart Minor
and asked him how he could have perpetrated such a horrible and daring
crime. The matter, however, was soon forgotten by the boys, but Hart
Minor had not heard the last of it. On the following Sunday in chapel,
at the evening service, the Head Master preached a sermon. He chose as
his text "Thou shalt not steal!" The eyes of the whole school were fixed
on Smith and Hart Minor. The Head Master pointed out in his discourse
that one might think at first sight that boys at a school might not have
the opportunity to violate the tremendous Commandments; but, he said,
this was not so. The Commandments were as much a living actuality in
school life as they were in the larger world. Coming events cast their
shadows before them; the child was the father of the man; what a boy
was at school, such would he be in after life. Theft, the boys perhaps
thought, was not a sin which immediately concerned them. But there were
things which were morally the same if not worse than the actual theft
of material and tangible objects--dishonesty in the matter of marks, for
instance, and cheating in order to gain an undue advantage over one's
fellow-schoolboys.
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