I've a broken-backed lexicon to this day which often used to fly across the room at his devoted head, and which he as regularly picked up and handed back to me.
Never was a czar more absolute than I during the brief years of my supremacy.
But it was monotonous work bullying a fellow who never showed fight; and one day, in reply to a touching lamentation on his part, I demanded, "Why don't you say you won't, then, and stick to it ?" Would you believe it?
the ungrateful fellow took me at my word! Next time I issued a decree, he made my hair stand on end by shouting, "Shan't!" I could not believe my wits; and when he not only refused, but (in accordance with my own unlucky advice) positively defied me, I was fairly nonplussed! In vain the lexicon performed its airy flight; in vain my ruler flourished over his knuckles; in rain I stormed and raged.

No martyr at the stake was ever more sublimely firm; and from that day my reign was over.
It was over as far as he was concerned; but as he resolutely declined to do his duty in knocking about number five, I had to sacrifice myself for the family good, and take that young scamp in hand too, and as he was the youngest, he had nothing to do but wait till he grew up, and then-- when he suddenly discovered he was six feet high--he took a turn at bullying me, who by that time was a married man with a family.
Now, perhaps, this sort of bullying within ordinary bounds does no great harm.

In our case we almost seemed to like one another the better for it, though each in his turn rent the air with his howls and lamentations.

Perhaps, however, we were exceptional boys, and I am not going to recommend the system.
The dog mother who routs up her little pup from his comfortable nap, and shakes him with her teeth, and knocks him down and rolls him over and worries him till he yaps and yelps as if his last day had come, is not such a bully as the cat who holds a mouse under his paw, and plays with it and torments it previous to making a meal of it.
In one case the discipline is salutary and serves a good end; in the other it is sheer cruelty.
Just let me introduce you to a bully of the true sort--one whom we might call a _professional_ bully--as contrasted with the _amateur_ big- brother bullies of whom I have been speaking.
Bob Bangs of our school was a big, ill-conditioned, lazy, selfish, cross-grained sort of fellow.

He was nearly the tallest fellow in the fifth form, but by no means the strongest.