COLONIAL PLUCK.

Kumara Times, Issue 838, 7 June 1879, Page 4

COLONIAL PLUCK.

The following romantic and inconceivable story is Touched for by the Manawatu Times, a paper published in the Wellington district:—lt is pretty well known and conceded that colonial boys are far ahead of their English brothers in determination, endurance, and pluck: Of course, we are not going to offend John Bull's amour propre by asserting that English men are wanting in the last commodity, but we do defiantly state that colonial youths reach maturityyears before those at Home, and that even at early age they exhibit a wonderful foresight and shrewdness in avoiding danger, with a corresponding facility in escaping therefrom when once in it. This, of course, is easily accounted for by the early age at which boys in the Colonies are called upon to fill the places of men ; but that the will and self-reliance are innate, without any such experience, is exemplified by the following facts, of the truth of which we are prepared to vouch. A wellknown resident of Marton some short time since sent one of his boys to England to. school, but it would appear that the child's experiences were of such a nature as to make him long for freedom and his beloved home at the Antipodes. Although but just entering upon his teens, the plucky little fellow determined to escape from his bondage, and work his way back the sixteen thousand miles, and with that intention started off to tramp to London without a penny in his pockets. Arrived at that Modern Babylon, he succeeded in ingratiating himself with the captain of a vessel trading to Melbourne, who in return for the child's services as " Jimjiy Ducks," gave him a passage to Wellington in one of the steamers. But even then, so near home and happiness, he found himself still a stranger, penniless and without help until a captain of one of the Wanganui steamers gave him a lift to that town. Unfortunately for the child, there were no more vessels to accept services in lieu of passage—as there were only the rail and the road to choose wherebv to reach home—and the little fellow was about girding up his loins for another tramp of 30 miles, when he stopped in front of a shop, the name of whose proprietor was familiar to him. Acting upon the spur of the moment, he entered and told his tale to the man—an old friend of his father—who escorted him to the station, placed him in a first-class carriage, with a ticket for Marton, and two hours later, in the darkness of night, the brave little wanderer was knocking at his father's door. We need not picture the wonder and surprise of the astonished parents when the child of not 13, whom they all fondly imagined was being carefully trained up at Home, presented himself with'hands hardened with manual toil, and clothes begrimed and greased, and smoked by Wb not over choice labor ; or the painful eagerness with which they listened to the story ot the little man, proud of his energy and his exploits. Such is the stuff of which colonial pioneers are made, and the material which hew empirea out of the desert and the waste.