"No. On the whole it isn't good enough. And yet you mustn't think I
mind the martyrdom. Only of course I don't want to be utterly martyred
and done for before I grow up."
He evidently meant to be a martyr in rather a biggish way in foreign
parts, like the Germans in China; because when they are bashed by the
heathen, Germany always gets a few miles of China as payment. And so
Germany is proud of her martyrs, and the Emperor too.
What did become of Richmond minimus I can't tell you. He ran away once,
to do good on a large scale, but he was captured and brought back before
he had time to do much worth mentioning. He'll tell you that story
himself. Anyway, he never preached again, and the whole affair, if it
did nothing else, helped to show what Stopford was.
*THE 'BOLSOVER' PRIZE*
*No. VI*
*THE 'BOLSOVER' PRIZE*
*I*
There was once a chap at Dunstan's, ages and ages ago, called Bolsover,
who turned into a novelist afterwards; and he was so frightfully keen
about other chaps turning into novelists too that he gave a prize for
composition. It was a book worth a guinea, and Dr. Dunstan had to
choose it each year, and only the junior school was allowed to enter for
it, according to the conditions made by the chap who gave it. Gideon
calculated it out, and said that as twenty pounds is about good for one
pound at simple interest in an ordinary way, the novelist chap must have
handed twenty pounds over to Dr. Dunstan; and Steggles said he rather
doubted if the novelist chap would have much cared for the books that
Dr. Dunstan chose for the prizes; because they were not novels at all,
but very improving books--chiefly natural history; which Steggles said
was not good for trade from the novelist chap's point of view.
No doubt old Dunstan ought to have bought stories; and Steggles went
further and said that it would have been a sporting thing for Dr.
Dunstan to get the novelist chap's own books, of which he wrote a great
many for a living. Steggles had read one once in the holidays, but he
didn't tell me much about it, excepting that there was a man who
appeared to have about four wives in it, and that it had three hundred
and seventy-five pages and no pictures.
Anyway, the composition prize always interested us in the lower school,
and it interested me especially once, because the subject was 'Wild
Flowers,' and my cousin, Norman Tomkins, happened to be a frightful dab
at them. When he heard about it, Tomkins went instantly to Gideon, who
lends money at usury, being a Jew, and said, "Look here, Gid., I'll sell
you the 'Bolsover' prize for ten shillings now on the spot. As it's
worth a pound, you'll make fifty per cent. profit." And Gideon said,
"The profit would be about right, but where's the prize?" And Tomkins
said, "I've got to write for it on Monday week; but it's as good as
mine, because nobody in the lower school knows anything about wild
flowers excepting me, and I can tell you the name of thirty-four right
off the reel; so there's an end of it, as far as I can see." Which
shows what a hopeful sort of chap Tomkins was.
But unfortunately Gideon knew the great hopefulness of Tomkins about
everything, and also knew that it did not always come off. He said,
"Who are in for the prize?" And I said, "First Tomkins, then Walters,
then Smythe, and also Macmullen."
"There you are," said Tomkins. "Just take them one by one and ask
yourself. If it was wild animals, or queer old customs, Smythe might
run me close, or even beat me; but in the subject of wild flowers he is
nothing. Then young Walters doesn't know anything about anything, and
his English is frightfully wild, owing to his having been born in India.
Well, that only leaves Macmullen, and Macmullen's strong point is
machinery. He never looked at a flower in his life. When we went out
of bounds on the railway embankment, he simply sat and watched the
signals work, and took down the number of a goods engine that was new to
him. And when he got up, I discovered that he'd actually been sitting
on a bee orchis--one of the rarest flowers in the world! When I showed
him what he'd done, he merely said, 'A bee orchis? Lucky it don't
sting!' So that shows he's no use. In fact, when he hears the subject
hasn't got anything to do with steam power, I doubt if he'll go in."
[Illustration: "WE WENT OUT OF BOUNDS ON THE RAILWAY EMBANKMENT."]
But Gideon knew Macmullen better.
"He'll go in," he said. "His age is just right, and he won't be able to
try again. He's not the chap to throw away the chance of getting a
pound book just because the subject doesn't happen to be steam power.
Besides, there's always time allowed to swat up the thing. I bet by
Monday week Mac. will know as much about wild flowers as you do--perhaps
more."
"Of course, as a chum of his, you say that," answered Tomkins. "But
I've made a lifetime study of wild flowers, and it's childish to think
that Macmullen, or anybody else, is going to learn all I know in a
week."
"He can spell, anyway," said Gideon, "which is more than you can."
In fact, Gideon didn't seem so hopeful about Tomkins getting the prize
as you might have thought, and it surprised Tomkins a good deal. Gideon
had a right to speak, because in his time he'd won this prize himself.
When he won it, the subject happened to be 'Postage Stamps'; which was,
of course, like giving the prize to Gideon, owing to his tremendous
knowledge about money in every shape.
The time was July, and so next half-holiday Tomkins and me went into the
country for a walk, for Tomkins to freshen up his ideas about the wild
flowers.
He certainly knew a lot, but several things that I picked bothered him,
and once or twice, I think, he was altogether wrong about them. He also
picked a good many that he evidently didn't know at all, and carried
them back to school to ask Mr. Briggs the names of them and anything
worth mentioning about them.
Then, coming back through Merivale, who should we see but Macmullen,
with his nose flat against the window of an old book shop there!
"Look here," he said, "there's a second-hand botany in here for
sevenpence, and I've only got fivepence. I tried the man by showing him
the fivepence all at once, but he wouldn't come down. Can one of you
chaps lend me twopence till next week?"
He looked at the flowers Tomkins had picked as he spoke.
"D'you know many of them?" said Tomkins, knowing well that Mac.
wouldn't.
"Only that--that nettle," said Macmullen rather doubtfully.
"It isn't a nettle," said Tomkins. But he was so pleased to see what a
frightful duffer Macmullen really was, that he lent him twopence on the
spot.
I thought he was rather a fool to increase Macmullen's chances like
this; but Tomkins said, in his large way, that a few facts out of a
botany book wouldn't help Macmullen now, especially if he didn't know
the difference between sage and nettles.
"By Jove, I don't believe he knows the difference between sage and
onions, for that matter!" said Tomkins.
Then Mac. came out with the book, and we all went back together.
*II*
It was frightfully interesting to see the different ways those four
chaps went about trying for the 'Bolsover' prize. Tomkins got special
leave off games, and spent his spare time in the lanes. He confessed to
me that he was frightfully ignorant about grasses, and thought, on the
whole, that it would be safer to leave them out of the essay. Macmullen
told me that the whole subject bored him a good bit, but he thought he
could learn enough about it to do something decent in a week, because a
pound book was worth the fag. He was always pulling flowers to pieces,
and talking about calyxes and corollas, and seed-cases and stamens, and
other wild things of that sort. I asked Tomkins if it promised well for
Macmullen to learn about stamens and so on, and how to spell them; and
Tomkins thought not.
Tomkins said, "Briggs may very likely favour him, as we know he has
before, owing to his feeling for everything Scotch, from oatmeal
downwards; but, all the same, the subject is wild flowers, not botany.
It's rather a poetical subject in a way, and that's no good to
Macmullen. No, I don't think Mac. has any chance, though he did ask old
Briggs to lend him the number of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ with
'Botany' in it, to read in playtime."
"I believe Briggs was pleased, though," I said, "for I heard him answer
that Mac. was going the right way to work. Anyway, Mac. read quite half
the article and copied some out on a bit of paper before he chucked it
in despair."
Tomkins nodded, and I think he saw that it was rather a grave thing for
Macmullen to have done.
"I might read it myself," he said. "I'm a little foggy between genera
and species, and varieties and natural orders, and so on. Not that all
that stuff matters. What you want is really the name of the wild
flowers themselves and their colours and ways. Do you happen to know
any poetry about flowers of a sort easily learned by heart?"