[Sidenote: 1881.]
“Uncle Fritz,” said Horace, “why did you say, when we were talking of
Humboldt, that those were the days of boys?”
“Oh, my boy, I am very sorry I said so, if it seemed as if those were
more the days of boys than these are. There were never times when young
men, well-trained, came to the front more readily than they do now.
What I meant to say was, that in just that period of the Napoleon wars,
old things had been so thoroughly broken up that boys had chances they
had not fifty years before. Those boys have since become old men. They
have written their lives and adventures, and so there is a literature
of that time about the adventures of youngsters, which we do not have
of earlier times, and cannot, as yet, have of later.
“Will you go into Lady Oliver’s sitting-room, take the steps, and look
along the books at C till you find two little volumes of Cleveland’s
Travels?”
Horace found the book in a moment. It is a miscellaneous collection in
that room, and they catalogue themselves by the convenient way, for
such a collection, of standing in alphabetical order of the authors.
“Now, here,” continued Uncle Fritz, “is a charming little book of
adventures, written at the end of life by a gentleman who was sent out
from Salem very young, in command of a vessel which was to go to Mocha
for coffee. But they stopped at Havre, in France, first. There the
vessel was recalled, and poor Cleveland found himself in a strange port
without an adventure.
“What does he do but make one. He bought a little Dover packet-boat
of thirty-eight tons. Packet-boats between Dover and Calais were not
worth much when France was at war with England. He had fifteen hundred
dollars with which to buy a cargo. Two friends contributed each a
thousand, on condition that all three should share equally when the
voyage was over. This little vessel he meant to take to the Island of
Bourbon, knowing well what that market required. See what happened to
him.”