William Osten was a wanderer by nature. He was born with a thirst for
adventure that nothing could quench, and with a desire to rove that
nothing could subdue.
Even in babyhood, when his limbs were fat and feeble, and his visage was
round and red, he displayed his tendency to wander in ways and under
circumstances that other babies never dreamt of. He kept his poor
mother in a chronic fever of alarm, and all but broke the heart of his
nurse, long before he could walk, by making his escape from the nursery
over and over again, on his hands and knees; which latter bore constant
marks of being compelled to do the duty of feet in dirty places.
Baby Will never cried. To have heard him yell would have rejoiced the
hearts of mother and nurse, for that would have assured them of his
being near at hand and out of mischief--at least not engaged in more
than ordinary mischief. But Baby Will was a natural philosopher from
his birth. He displayed his wisdom by holding his peace at all times,
except when very hard pressed by hunger or pain, and appeared to regard
life in general in a grave, earnest, inquiring spirit. Nevertheless, we
would not have it understood that Will was a slow, phlegmatic baby. By
no means. His silence was deep, his gravity profound, and his
earnestness intense, so that, as a rule, his existence was unobtrusive.
But his energy was tremendous. What he undertook to do he usually did
with all his might and main--whether it was the rending of his pinafore
or the smashing of his drum!
We have said that he seldom or never cried, but he sometimes laughed,
and that not unfrequently; and when he did so you could not choose but
hear, for his whole soul gushed out in his laugh, which was rich, racy,
and riotous. He usually lay down and rolled when he laughed, being
quite incapable of standing to do it--at least during the early period
of babyhood. But Will would not laugh at everything. You could not
make him laugh by cooing and smirking and talking nonsense, and
otherwise making an ass of yourself before him.
Maryann, the nurse, had long tried that in vain, and had almost broken
her heart about it. She was always breaking her heart, more or less,
about her charge, yet, strange to say, she survived that dreadful
operation, and ultimately lived to an extreme old age!
"Only think," she was wont to say to Jemima Scrubbins, her bosom friend,
the monthly nurse who had attended Will's mother, and whose body was so
stiff, thin, and angular, that some of her most intimate friends thought
and said she must have been born in her skeleton alone--"Only think,
Jemimar, I give it as my morial opinion that that hinfant 'asn't larfed
once--no, not once--durin' the last three days, although I've chirruped
an' smiled an' made the most smudgin' faces to it, an' heaped all sorts
o' blandishments upon it till--. Oh! you can't imagine; but nothink's
of any use trying of w'en you can't do it; as my 'usband, as was in the
mutton-pie line, said to the doctor the night afore he died--my 'art is
quite broken about it, so it is."
To which Jemima was wont to reply, with much earnestness--for she was a
sympathetic soul, though stiff, thin, and angular--"You don't say so,
Maryhann! P'raps it's pains."
Whereupon Maryann would deny that pains had anything to do with it, and
Jemima would opine that it was, "koorious, to say the least of it."
No, as we have said, Baby Will would not laugh at everything. He
required to see something really worth laughing at before he would give
way, and when he did give way, his eyes invariably disappeared, for his
face was too fat to admit of eyes and mouth being open at the same time.
This was fortunate, for it prevented him for a little from seeing the
object that tickled his fancy, and so gave him time to breathe and
recruit for another burst. Had it been otherwise, he would certainly
have suffocated himself in infancy, and this, his veracious biography,
would have remained unwritten!
To creep about the house into dangerous and forbidden places, at the
risk of life and limb, was our hero's chief delight in early childhood.
To fall out of his cradle and crib, to tumble down stairs, and to bruise
his little body until it was black and blue, were among his most
ordinary experiences. Such mishaps never drew tears, however, from his
large blue eyes. After struggling violently to get over the rail of his
crib, and falling heavily on the floor, he was wont to rise with a gasp,
and gaze in bewilderment straight before him, as if he were
rediscovering the law of gravitation. No phrenologist ever conceived
half the number of bumps that were developed on his luckless cranium.
We make no apology to the reader for entering thus minutely into the
character and experiences of a baby. That baby is the hero of our tale.
True, it is as a young man that he is to play his part; but a great
philosopher has told us that he always felt constrained to look upon
children with respect; and a proverb states that, "the child is the
father of the man."
Without either pinning our faith to the philosopher or the proverb, we
think it both appropriate and interesting to note the budding genius of
the wanderer whose footsteps we are about to follow.
Baby Will's mother was a gentle and loving, but weak woman. His father,
William Horace Osten by name, was a large, hearty, affectionate, but
coarse man. He appreciated his wife's gentle, loving nature, but could
not understand her weakness. She admired her husband's manly, energetic
spirit, but could not understand his roughness. He loved the baby, and
resolved to "make a man of him." She loved the baby, and wished to make
him a "good boy." In the furtherance of their designs the one tried to
make him a lion, the other sought to convert him into a lamb. Which of
the two would have succeeded can never be known. It is probable that
both would have failed by counteracting each other, as is no uncommon
experience when fathers and mothers act separately in such a matter. If
the one had succeeded, he would have made him a bear. The other, if
successful, would have made him a nincompoop. Fortunately for our hero,
a higher power saved him, and, by training him in the school of
adversity, made him both a lion and a lamb. The training was very
severe and prolonged, however.
It was long before the lion would consent to lie down in the same breast
with the lamb. Certainly it was not during the season of childhood.
The lion appeared to have it all his own way during that interesting
epoch, and the father was proportionately gratified, while the mother
was dismayed.
Boyhood came, and with it an increased desire to rove, and a more
fervent thirst for adventure. At school our hero obtained the name that
stuck to him through life--"Wandering Will." The seaport town in the
west of England in which he dwelt had been explored by him in all its
ramifications. There was not a retired court, a dark lane, or a blind
alley, with which he was unfamiliar. Every height, crag, cliff,
plantation, and moor within ten miles of his father's mansion had been
thoroughly explored by Will before he was eight years of age, and his
aspiring spirit longed to take a wider flight.
"I want to go to sea, father," said he one evening after tea, looking in
his father's face with much more of the leonine gaze than the father had
bargained for. His training up to that point had been almost too
successful!
This was not the first time that the boy had stated the same wish; his
gaze, therefore, did not quail when his father looked up from his
newspaper and said sternly--"Fiddlesticks, boy! hold your tongue."
"Father," repeated Will, in a tone that caused Mr Osten to lay down his
paper, "I want to go to sea."
"Then the sooner you give up the idea the better, for I won't let you."
"Father," continued Will, "you remember the proverb that you've often
told me has been your motto through life, `Never venture never win?'"
"Certainly; you know that I have often urged you to act on that
principle at school. Why do you ask the question?"
"Because I mean to act on it now, and go to sea," replied Will firmly.
"What? without permission, without clothes, and without money; for you
shan't have a six-pence from me?"
"Yes," replied Will.
Mr Osten was one of those stern, despotic men who cannot bear to be
thwarted. He was a rich merchant, and almost the king of the little
town in which he dwelt. His greatest ambition was to make his only son
a thorough man of business. To be spoken to in such a tone by that
rebellious son was too much for him. He lost his temper, leaped up,
and, seizing Will by the collar, thrust him out of the room.
The boy ran to his own bedroom, and, seating himself in front of the
dressing-table, hit that piece of furniture with his clenched fist so
violently that all its contents leaped up and rattled.
"Dear, dear Will," said a gentle voice at his side, while a loving hand
fell on his shoulder, "why do you frown so fiercely?"
"How can I help it, mother, when he treats me like that? He is harsh
and unfair to me."
"Not so unfair as you think, dear Will," said his mother.
We will not detail the arguments by which the good lady sought to combat
her son's desires. Suffice it to say that she succeeded--as only
mothers know how--in lulling the lion to sleep at that time, and in
awakening the lamb. Wandering Will went back to school with a good
grace, and gave up all idea of going to sea.