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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 83

Excelsior Classes

Excelsior Classes.

New York's problem is its Hoodlum, Baltimore's its Plug Ugly, San Francisco's its Tough, and Melbourne's its Larrikin.

About ten years ago a Mr. Samuel Manger, in Fitzroy, gave his Christian and teetotal energies to the work of establishing a Lifeboat Crew, in connection with the Band of Hope, something page 31 which was a faint precursor of the Salvation Army. The Crew was formed of boys who were to be preserved from shipwreck by drink. Among them was a little lad named William Groom, who carefully observed the methods of Mauger, and determined upon initiating a gigantic movement to dynamite larrikinism.

Arrived at man's estate, Groom began by collaring half-a-dozen boys in the streets of North Fitzroy, and with these young strangers he started weekly meetings at a chapel. However, he would not have any religious element in his class, and to this resolve he has adhered all throughout, so that he receives little support from the clergy.

In twelve months' time he had wrought up his class, termed the Excelsior, to forty members, these boys being wonderfully imbued with respect and affection for their teacher. All along he has displayed absolute genius, and it rises buoyantly to the occasion when he has fourteen hundred boys to manage, instead of forty or four.

About a couple of years ago he brought off the first public soiree of the Excelsior Boys at their meeting house in North Fitzroy. Invitations were sent to all the Melbourne newspapers but only one responded—the Herald. The representative of this paper wrote the thing up so lengthily and enthusiastically that public attention was arrested by an evident solving of the problem which troubled it most.

Mr. Groom's methods are so peculiar and variable that we hardly know how to describe them. He finds that the boys of each quarter in Melbourne and its suburbs have their characteristics, not only individually but in the mass. In one locality the bias is for gymnastics, in another for elocution, and so on. As the Mayor of Melbourne, Mr. Carter, aptly said at the monster soiree of the Excelsiors in the City Hall, Mr. Groom's aim is proper education, drawing out what is in the boys.

At the little gathering in North Fitzroy, where Mr. Groom first introduced his pupils to the public, there was universal surprise to notice the control which he had established. People could not understand how a group of wild boys, collected at random, could be reduced to such complete submission without the cane or any coercive measures whatever. The same thing was noticeable when Mr. Groom showed over a thousand of his boys massed on the orchestra tiers of the Melbourne Town Hall. They might be applauding vociferously, but you could almost hear a pin drop the moment he held up his hand. These were rough boys who had volunteered at random from Melbourne City, Fitzroy, South Melbourne, Richmond, and Toorak, such being the places where the Excelsior Classes were then in operation in April last. What an answer to those reformers who can find no remedy but the lash. Shame on them!

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The first newspaper notice of the North Fitzroy class, already referred to, had the effect of bringing to light a similar movement initiated by Mr. W. Forster, of Toorak, under the title of the "Try Society." As he said, "We wanted to try what could be done." His procedure was very like Mr. Groom's. Both of these excellent men have been moved by the same sympathy, and they naturally hit upon much the same lines.

Forster and Groom joined their forces, and the result has been the splendid development of the Try Excelsior Classes. Mr. Groom's second annual demonstration marked a leap from a little hall in North Fitzroy to the Fitzroy Town Hall, where 200 Excelsior lads, of the local class only, made a deep impression with their display. We can never forget that evening, and especially the time when the Excelsior Banner was brought in and the 200 boys, all together, delivered Longfellow's "Excelsior,' partly in recitation, partly in song.

Here are things worth living for; a vindication of generosity and sympathy in the government of boys and men. Mr. Groom has been compared to Professor Sample, whose display's of the racy type, with horses, have excited so much interest here.

Well, Mr. Forster took up the business side of the movement, while Mr. Groom attended to the teaching. We have mentioned how the Fitzroy class spread up from half-a-dozen to 40, and to 200. It now numbers something like 500. Altogether, Mr. Groom's boys do not run very far short now of a couple of thousand, and yet most of the Melbourne suburbs are untouched, while nothing has been done outside Melbourne.

The public must do its duty. Collingwood, Hotham, Richmond, Prahran, Ballarat, Sandhurst, and all the centres of population must have their Excelsior Classes. Messrs. Forster and Groom maintain that they require Excelsior Halls, solely devoted to this movement. Why not? Mr. Groom has drafted the plan of a hall, with its class-room, gymnasium, reading-room, and so on. The matter is yet nebulous and inchoate, but, as Cromwell once said, "We never rise so high as when we do not know where we are going."

The Excelsior demonstration at the Melbourne Town Hall was glorious. Messrs. Groom and Forster had so fought their way up that His Excellency the Governor, and Mr. Service, the Premier, were present, together with the Mayor of Melbourne. There was a free and easy character about the display which we liked. The boys gave their gymnastics, songs, dances, and elocution—which included three original compositions. They were remarkably able, and all expressive of the devotion of the lads to the "Excelsior."

We cannot help contrasting the behaviour of these boys from the poorer class, with the disgraceful rowdyism of the under- page 33 graduates at the Melbourne University. Bishop Moorhouse, as chancellor, could not quieten them, in the presence of His Excellency the Governor. But Mr. Groom's thousand pupils were hushed, as we have said, in a moment, merely by the uplifted hand. Perhaps the contrast presented itself to the mind of Sir Henry Loch.

Mr. Groom's strongest claim is afforded by his city class in Lonsdale-street. It co-operates with the useful and beneficent work of the Scots' Church District Visiting Society, at their hall, under the direction of the Rev. Charles Strong. We ought to have referred higher up to the Toorak Boys' Camp, organised by Mr. and Mrs. Forster, under whose direction their local class enjoyed over a week of tent life at Picnic Point, Brighton, by the sea, at holiday time.

For many months Mr. Groom carried on his Excelsior Classes while he followed the trade of a journeyman hatter, but a committee of subscribers set him free to devote all his energies to the Excelsiors. Among the numerous gentlemen who responded at once to Mr. Forster's appeal, in this regard, were Bishop Moor-house, Messrs. Service, Berry, Sargood, and Coppin.

Mr. Forster urges that the Gordon Memorial subscription might well be applied to a Gordon Hall for lads, in connection with the Excelsior classes. We all know how deeply Gordon was interested in the poor boys. He would be the first to object to such a meaningless, useless thing as a statue, which, like the Burke and Wills Monument, and the Wellington Statue in London, might have to be moved on, as a nuisance and obstruction, by the generation which knows not Joseph.