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admirable to observe one who is dexterous at this art, singling out a weak adversary, getting the laugh on his side, and then carrying all before him. Who has not observed this sort of thing! Among refined grownups there may be little of it. But in schools and factories, the amount of conversational bullying is vast. Not until the last judgment will there be an estimate of the enormous amount of pang and agony, mostly silent, that is piled up on the world by careless, unkind teasing, teasing against the ones who are precisely least able to meet it. I beg you with all earnestness not to offend on this score. As a preliminary precaution, you ought to make it a cast-iron rule not to tease any person whom you in any way dislike or who may imagine himself to be disliked. If you really like a person, then any teasing is likely to end with the edge taken off — if not by the words, then by the tone. But if deep in your heart you do not like a person, then almost any teasing is likely to end with the edge imbedded — either by the words, or the tone. In any circle you should direct your shafts at those who most certainly know that you like them. You should side with those with whom friendship needs further cementing against those who are known, as Shakespeare would say, to be grappled to our souls "with hoops of steel." If a husband and wife get along well and are thought to get along well, then they may well direct some of the teasing against each other. They should very rarely gang up together against another — unless he is known to all to be their best mutual friend, such as the best man at the wedding, or the like. As a teacher, I sometimes tease the students collectively and individually. But I make it a point never to tease a class if I have just had difficulty with it about grades, or any |
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