of gold were snugly lying in the Captain's locker, my views on
blockade-running, boys, and things in general underwent a radical
change. I even began to have a tender feeling towards sharks,
particularly thrasher sharks who lure boys into getting rescued by Cuban
officers. And I mentally retracted all the then harsh things I had
thought about the folly of holding on to a shark from the bottom of an
upturned boat in a heavy sea. I asked the ragged young ship's boy why he
held on so long.
"Hold on!" he said. "Why, I couldn't help it. When we upset, Chimmie's
foot got tangled in de line, and it tied round his ankle. Hold on? Guess
I did. Chimmie'u'd be voyagin' round after dat shark now as dead as a
Baxter Street herrin' if we hadn't. Course I held on!"
A LOYAL TRAITOR.
A STORY OF THE WAR OF 1812 BETWEEN AMERICA AND ENGLAND.
BY JAMES BARNES.
CHAPTER II.
A DEFERRED SOLUTION.
It was very early the next morning when we started northward along the
turnpike. The doctor and I were driving in a tall chaise that swayed on
its hinges like a small-boat in a tide-rip.
Mr. Edgerton followed on horseback. The sun had not risen when I had
been awakened, and the morning chill was in the air; a mist hung low
over the marshes, and the waters of the bay looked dull and cold. I had
begun to shiver, and the kind physician threw a heavy cape around me,
and tucked me in carefully beside him.
We had not spoken, except for a morning's greeting, but now he began a
fire of questions, and I could not answer even the simplest. I had never
heard that my mother was a widow before her marriage to the man whose
name I bore; I did not know her maiden name, nor where she came from;
and if I was not born at the plantation on the Gunpowder, my birthplace
was a mystery to me; for, as I have said, my first recollection was the
warm day on the beach.
My mother had told me nothing from which I could formulate a suggestion
or give a reply that would throw any light upon my family history. What
was to become of me I did not know. Apparently my mother had left no
will, and my appearance upon the day of her conversation with Mr.
Edgerton had interrupted, probably, any disclosures which she had
intended making.
The lawyer had ridden alongside of the chaise as we slowly ascended a
slight hill.
"Know you anything, Master Hurdiss, of a large iron-bound chest in a
room on the second story of Marshwood House?" (I have forgotten to say
that the estate upon which we lived was known in the neighborhood as the
"Marshwood plantation," whether from the name of a previous owner or its
location, I have never been able to ascertain.)
To the lawyer's question I could only reply that I had often seen the
box and had once caught a glimpse of the interior, that it was full of
papers, and I had noticed it must have contained some money, for I saw
my mother take some gold pieces from a heavy leather bag that she had
afterwards replaced.
"Never mind; we will solve it all," continued the man of law, "so soon
as we get there. I have the keys. Come, doctor, press ahead!"
The horses lurched forward into a trot--we had now reached the top of
the hill--and tired and sleepy, I leaned back on my kind friend's
shoulder and fell asleep.
When I awakened the sun was high, but the chill was yet in the air, and
a damp breeze had sprung up from the eastward that presaged rain. Aloft
against the heavy clouds a V-shaped line of wild-geese were winging
their way to the south; their coarse honking fell down to us. The sound
caused me to look upward, and I followed the steady flight. I have
always been well versed in the signs of nature, and there is nothing so
sure to judge by as the flight of wild-fowl.
"We are going to have cold weather," I remarked to the doctor.
"Yes, the old gander is setting a pace for them as if the snow were
after him," he replied.
To my surprise, as I gazed about near to hand, I saw that we were almost
at the cross-roads, where it was our intention to stop and procure
something to eat, as we had had nothing since the gray of morning.
Two or three new houses had been added to the group that lined the
road-side, and a new sign-post waved its arms at the corner. A number of
negroes hurried out and took the horses.
As we entered the low-ceilinged front room of the tavern I overheard the
talk that the doctor and lawyer were having together. "It was certainly
most careless to leave such property unguarded," the latter was saying.
This made me listen.
"But no one would suspect anything in the way of treasure, and they are
honest people hereabouts," returned the doctor reassuringly.
For some reason I could scarcely swallow a mouthful of the meal that was
served for us, although it smelt most savory. As a special honor the
landlord himself insisted upon waiting upon the table, and I shrewdly
suspect, putting things together, that he was of a curious nature, and
longed for a chance to listen to the conversation; but if this was his
desire, it was not gratified, as the doctor and the lawyer were most
reserved in his presence.
At last, however, we were on the move again, a fresh horse having been
placed in the shafts of the old rattle-trap (upon the possession of
which, by-the-way, I found that the doctor prided himself most
mightily). Well, off we went at a tremendous pace, the new horse
charging down the road in a clumsy, heedless fashion, and the chaise
rocking behind him fit to capsize us.
The doctor at last succeeded in pulling the nag down to a steadier gait,
and Mr. Edgerton, coughing and choking, came trotting up beside us
through the trailing cloud of dust that, despite the damp, hung in our
wake. For two miles we drove on in silence, and then turned from the
main road into the lane that led to Marshwood. The old-fields on either
hand were grown breast-high with brambles, and the lane wheel-rucks were
almost hidden in the tall grass that swished softly and quietly under
the box of the chaise.
Marshwood House was built partly of brick and partly of wood. The brick
had come from England at the time when the colonies, because of the tax
on industries mayhap, brought even their building material from over the
water. It had once been very handsome, but during the Revolution the
outbuildings had been destroyed, and the right wing of the house had
fallen into sad decay. By the expenditure of some not inconsiderable
sum, however, the whole estate could have been restored to the beauty it
must once have possessed (but alas! that never has or never will happen,
I suppose). Now, at the time of which I speak, ruin was writ on
everything.
When the horses had been tied to two rusty staples driven into the trunk
of an oak-tree that stood before the door, we all stepped up on to the
piazza. The boards were sagged so badly that they had fallen away from
the body of the house, and even the stone-work had crumbled along the
foundations.
It appeared like the old place, and yet it was not; but there was the
same hornets' nest that I had watched building up (ages and ages ago, it
seemed to me); and there, hanging on a nail, was a fishing-rod with a
rusty iron hook dangling from a bit of rotten fish-line. I had stood on
tiptoe and put it there; now I could touch it with my elbow.
The lawyer had some difficulty in opening the door. However, at last he
succeeded, and gave a sigh of relief as he saw that there were no traces
of any one having preceded him.
"Come in, doctor," he said, cheerily, his voice echoing oddly down the
empty hallway.
"Come on, John, my son," reiterated the physician to me.
I turned, before I crossed the threshold, and looked out over the
sloping meadow and the stretch of yellow marsh to the blue-gray waters
of the Chesapeake. The rain that had been threatening all the morning
had begun to fall with that depressing, sun-filtered drizzle that
promises hours of it.
It was on such a day that I used to lie with my head in my mother's lap
while she read to me. I remembered this with a certain calmness, for
there had settled upon me a firmly assured belief that I should never be
happy again, and I accepted the feeling with a stoicism that now I
wonder at. But my pen runs from the main task of putting facts on paper.
To return:
I entered the house, and insensibly caught the doctor's great hand in
mine.
There was a musty, locked-up odor greeting us that checked full
breathing. The big room on the right smelt like a cellar, dank and
unhealthy.
The doctor drew aside a chair, and, opening a window and the shutters,
admitted some light. Dust was all about, everywhere; the heavy oak
centre table was littered with dead, starved flies; the whole place was
so chill and unhomelike that I shuddered. The doctor closed the window.
"By Jove, it grows cold!" he said.
The lawyer, who had deposited a pair of large empty saddle-bags on the
floor, stamped his feet.
"Heigho!" he cried, "let's cheer things up a bit. Here's a fire all
ready for the lighting; that's a godsend."
In the wide fireplace were some good-sized logs and a handful of
fat-wood. Drawing a flint and steel, he struck a light, and soon a tiny
blaze crept up the old chimney, and broadened with a burst of flame at
last into a cheerful, roaring, warming glow. It cleared the room of its
unhealthiness, and all three of us spread our hands out to it as if it
had been winter.
"I think the look of things has made us exaggerate the weather," said
the doctor, with an attempt at a laugh. "Come, let's set to work."
The lawyer drew from his pocket a small bunch of keys. "We will have to
try for it--they're not numbered," he replied, thrusting one into the
keyhole of the desk in the chimney-corner.
He tried them all before he found one that would fit. Then he turned the
bolt with a sharp click, and lowered the lid. I began to feel excited,
and I could see that the others were and did not conceal it.
"Ah, no one has been here, that's evident!" exclaimed the doctor.
Plain to view in a neat pile were some French coins, a shining little
tower of gold. The lawyer opened one of the drawers on the left. It was
empty. Then another, with the same result. In the bottom one, on the
right hand, however, was a paper and a miniature on ivory. I remembered
the last--the side face of a large, heavy man in a white wig. His nose
was very prominent, and despite the massive jowl he had an air that
suggested the effect of a noble presence. His costume was magnificent.
From beneath a broad sash that crossed his breast peeped a great diamond
star, and lace and jewels decked him.
"An excellent likeness, I judge," said the doctor, looking at the
portrait with one eye shut.
"I should know it across the room," replied the lawyer.
"Who is it?" I asked, for I had seen it once in my mother's hands.
"It is the French King who lost his head by the guillotine," answered
the doctor--"Louis the Sixteenth."
"Did your mother never speak to you about this portrait?" asked the
lawyer, who was untying the ribbon with which the paper had been
fastened.
"Once I saw her looking at it," I replied, "and I asked her. But I never
did so again, because she began to talk so fast and in such strange
words that I could not follow. Then she began to weep, and her hair fell
down all about her. Aunt Sheba came running in and held her in her
arms. It was a long time before she grew calm again. She never told me
who it was."
By this the lawyer had spread the document on his knee. He gave a grunt
of vexation.
"This is Greek to me," he muttered. "See what you can make out of it."
He handed the paper to the doctor. The latter wrinkled his brows and
shrugged his shoulders.
"I give it up," he replied, half smiling.
I peeped beneath his elbow.
"Why, it's French," I said, "and my mother's writing, sir!"
"Can you read it?" asked the doctor, spreading it out on the desk lid.
In reply I began without hesitation:
"'_To Monsieur Henri Amedee Laralle de Brienne._
"'DEAR BROTHER,--Although I have not written you and have received
no word from you, I am writing these lines, trusting and intending
that they will meet your eye should you survive me. My husband,
whose memory I cherish, is dead--lost at sea. Despite the
injustice with which you have treated him, and me also since my
second marriage, I recommend to you my son, who bears the name of
his step-father.'"
I started and read the last words over twice.
"Go on!" interjected the lawyer, rapping the mantelpiece sharply with
his knuckles.
I continued, with my face burning and my lips atremble:
"'For the sake of the name _that he might claim_, and all that it
may mean, you may receive him. I have told him little of the past.
In my judgment it was not needed, nor could it now produce anything
to his favor. If circumstances should alter, you may divulge the
secret; but I pray you not to do so unless this happens. This I
beseech you for the sake of her whom you have loved. My son will
bear with him the chest that contains the papers that I brought
from the château at A. They will be unopened and addressed to you.
There is enough money in the two bags to pay for my Jean's
education. I have never been able to bring myself to talk about the
dreadful happenings. I cannot even think of them, or I should go
mad. Somehow it has appeared that silence has been the better part;
but to your discretion I leave this, and to you I intrust my son's
future. May God watch over him and direct you! It is evident to me
from your letter that you were uncertain which one of your sisters
was writing to you. I am _H. de B._, who inscribes here what will
be carved upon her tombstone, "_Madam John Hurdiss_, widow of
Captain John Hurdiss, merchant and trader, of Cornwall, England."'"
This was all the letter contained. It did not seem to lessen any mystery
that existed, and for some minutes neither the doctor nor Mr. Edgerton
spoke a word. Suddenly the latter kicked back one of the logs in the
fireplace with his foot.
"Confound the fire, it smokes like a smudge!" he grumbled. "So we are
not to open the papers, after all! But there may be something lying
loose. Let us up."
[Illustration: "HARK! WHAT NOISE IS THAT?"]
All at once the doctor raised his hand. "Hark! What noise is that?" he
exclaimed.
A roaring crackling sound came from overhead. Something fell heavily on
the floor of the hallway outside. The two men sprang to the door and
pulled it open. The hall and the other rooms were filled with stifling
smoke. The old portrait (the one with the long brown curls) had fallen,
and a blazing bit of wainscoting burned through the canvas that had
smouldered to the frame.
"The strong-box!" shrieked the lawyer, and he plunged up the stairs.
"It's in the room on the right!" I cried, as the doctor and I followed
him, feeling our way with the aid of the banisters.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
TYPICAL ENGLISH SCHOOLS.
BY JOHN CORBIN.
WINCHESTER.
The English public schools are not what we should call public schools at
all--that is, they are not kept up at the public expense, and you can't
go to them without paying. What we call public schools the English call
free schools, and only poor children go to them. The kind of schools I
am going to write about are attended by the sons of the richer people
and of the nobility. They are not unlike the big American schools which
prepare fellows for college--Exeter, Andover, St. Paul's, St. Mark's,
Groton, and others--though they are all much older, and have many quaint
and interesting customs inherited from the Middle Ages. I shall give an
article to each of three of these schools--Winchester, Eton, and
Rugby--and then shall add an article on athletics at public schools in
general.
The oldest of all the schools is Winchester. Fellows at Andover
sometimes tell you that their fathers and grandfathers went there before
them. At Winchester this is a common case; and since the quadrangles of
the college were built, there has been time not for one grandfather but
for fifteen in a line. The prim and charming buildings look every day as
old as they are; but if you were to go into the dormitories and see the
rows of little iron bedsteads, each with a boy sleeping in it, you would
find it hard to realize that grandfathers of these boys have slept at
Winchester for five hundred years back, and that all our grandfathers
began by being young and small enough to sleep in these cots.
The founder of the school was William of Wykeham, Bishop of the See of
Winchester, who was not only a great bishop and a great statesman, but
one of the greatest builders of the Middle Ages. His purpose in founding
a school was to prepare boys to enter a college he had just founded at
Oxford--New College, as it was called, and is still called after more
than five hundred years. At both Winchester and New College the scholars
are proud to call themselves Wykehamists; and when a fellow has been
through both he is apt to tell you that he is a Wykehamist of the
Wykehamists--which means more than you can ever understand until you
hear and see a man say it. The first result of preparing boys to enter
the university was to make them too far advanced for the teaching they
found when they got there. To carry on their education Wykeham had to
have a special body of tutors at New College. This was the beginning of
the English custom of having a complete set of teachers at each of the
score of colleges that make up a university. Thus Winchester is not only
the father of all preparatory schools, but of the English university
system of instruction by colleges.
Wykeham intended that all his scholars should be too poor to pay for
their own education, and left funds to support them. Within the last
generation, however, the masters have changed this. In order to get the
cleverest possible pupils, they examine all boys between twelve and
fourteen, and admit the best ones each year. About eight usually fail
for one who gets in. The boys who succeed are, of course, those who have
had the best training; and thus the fellows who get the benefit of
Wykeham's money are usually sons of university graduates, and are often
rich. Many people object strongly to this, and with good reason; yet the
method has one great virtue. Fellows get almost as much credit in school
for being studious and able, as for playing football; so that many of
the richest fellows study hardest. In our schools, and even in our
universities, there is still a stupid prejudice against being a
first-rate scholar.
Within the school also there is keen competition. The five or six best
students each year get scholarships at New College, which enable them to
go through the university without expense to themselves. This is called
"getting New," and is perhaps the greatest achievement of a Wykehamist.
That such has been the case for at least two hundred years may be seen
in the epitaph of a boy who died in 1676 from being hit by a stone, "In
this school he stood first, and we hope he is not the last in heaven,
where he went, instead of Oxford." When such is the case, there would
seem to be little need of the motto on the wall of the old school, which
Wykehamists translate, "Work, walk, or be wopped."
Beside the members of the "college" Wykeham founded, another kind of
pupils has grown up, called commoners, who pay for lodging, board, and
tuition--about $700 a year. These, at first few and unimportant, have
increased so greatly of late that they are usually regarded as the
characteristic kind of school-boy. They live in nine communities, or
houses, of about thirty-five each, under separate masters. The life of
the commoners is almost exactly the same as that of the collegians; but
the division into those who are and those who are not supported by the
college is worth remembering, for a similar distinction exists not only
in all public schools, but in the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. It
does not happen everywhere, however, that the best scholars all live
together; and many Wykehamists maintain that both scholars and commoners
would gain by being mingled. Before many years the old college will
doubtless be broken up, and the "scholars" proportioned among the
various "houses."
The discipline is not so strict as at many public schools, yet quite
strict enough, according to American standards. The boys--or _men_, as
they are always called--are not allowed to enter the town, and have to
get special "leave out" to go far into the country. The school day
begins at seven o'clock, and bed-time comes at nine or ten. Constant
attendance at prayers is required, morning and night; and there are four
services on Sunday. For breaches of discipline the boys are still
flogged. One is tempted to say that such a system is not modern; but as
a matter of fact, it did not exist, among the commoners, at least, until
the present century; and no true Wykehamist would think of changing it.
Even the boys like it sincerely, in spite of some few breaches of
discipline. Certainly the strictness has no more faults than the great
freedom granted by certain of our large preparatory schools; and though
we should hardly want to live just as English boys do, we can learn a
great deal from them.
The main idea of the discipline of an English school is that as much of
it as possible shall be carried on by the boys themselves. At Winchester
it was ordained from the beginning that eighteen of the older boys
should, in Wykeham's own words, "oversee their fellows, and from time to
time certify the masters of their behavior and progress in study." These
eighteen are called Prefects, and are chosen from the men who stand
highest in studies. To an American boy, I am afraid, it wouldn't seem
much fun to have to take care of his schoolmates' behavior. He would
probably look upon himself more or less as a spy. Yet everything I saw
at Winchester went to prove that to be a Prefect was almost as great an
honor as to be an athlete. Five of the Prefects have special titles,
such as Prefect of Chapel, Prefect of Hall, etc. These are generally
chosen from the five best scholars. The Prefect of Hall has charge not
only of his special duties, but of the other Prefects. If any
disturbance takes place, he quells it. If the boys have any favors to
ask, he is their spokesman. He is thus the head of the whole school, and
a far more important person, I should say, than the Captain of the
cricket team.
An incident occurred in 1838 which well illustrates the power of a
Prefect. A peddler insisted on bringing various contraband articles,
among them liquor, to sell to the boys on their recreation-grounds. The
Prefects remonstrated time and again, with no effect. At last five of
them seized him and threw him, basket and all, into the river. The
peddler had the Prefects arrested and tried for assault with intent to
kill, and the magistrate fined them fifty dollars each. This fine the
college paid willingly, complimenting the Prefects for their zeal and
common-sense. The spirit which prompted both masters and pupils exists
to-day, not only at Winchester, but at all public schools. The result is
that not only is order maintained without ill feeling between masters
and pupils, but the eighteen Prefects of each year learn to fill posts
requiring unusual tact, common-sense, and courage.
The duty of a Prefect which an American would least envy is that of
inflicting bodily punishment--"tunding," as it is called in Winchester
slang. This consists in beating the culprit across the back of his
waistcoat with a ground-ash the size of one's finger. The art of
"tunding," an old Prefect of Hall informed me, was to catch the edge of
the shoulder-blade with the rod, and strike in the same spot everytime.
In this way, he said, it was possible to cut the back of a waistcoat
into strips. In the early part of the century flogging was of more than
daily occurrence. An old Wykehamist states that on the day of his
arrival at school there were 198 boys in residence and 279 names
reported for punishment. Nowadays, however, only a score or so of cases
occur each year; and many boys go through the school without being
tunded.