Wackford Squeers, Little League Coach

We are trying to persuade our Neighbor (that's him, pictured to the left) to take up co-blogging duties at G&S. He's a fellow who lives just around the next bend in this little stretch of the information country lane and, like the Hired Hand, would provide a somewhat different angle on topics we address from time to time. Reliably old-fashioned, he has little truck with a wide range of new-fangled notions.

The following is his. We retain the original manuscript, which was written in long-hand with a quill I do believe:

My younger children and I are currently watching together "Nicholas Nickleby" (the 9-hour Royal Shakespeare version, which I recommend), in which young boys are treated cruelly at the "school" of Mr. Wackford Squeers. (In particular, the very defective boy "Smike" is singled out for extravagant abuse, and is rescued by Nicholas--but I digress.)

The story is very melodramatic and Dickensian, of course, and watching it I found myself wondering whether it's completely over the top, so that such cruelty couldn't ever really happen.

This is obviously a failure of imagination on my part. Such cruelty could happen, and does:

(AP) — A youth baseball coach paid one of his players to hurt an 8-year-old mentally disabled teammate so the boy wouldn't be able to play in a game, state police said Friday.

Mark R. Downs Jr., 27, of Dunbar, offered one of his players $25 to hit the boy in the head with a baseball, police said. Witnesses told police Downs didn't want the boy to play in the T-ball game because of his disability.

The solicited player hit the boy in the head and in the groin with a baseball just before a game, and the disabled boy didn't play, police said....

"The coach was very competitive. He wanted to win," [state police Trooper Thomas B.] Broadwater said....

Ours is a fallen race; and, sadly, each of us and each of our neighbors has a nascent Wackford Squeers inside, ready to be cultivated and let loose. Cruelty is never very far away from us.

Hat Tip: Midwest Conservative Journal