SCAMPS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4430, 1 June 1875, Page 3

SCAMPS.

(From the Glohe.) Once a scamp always oxxe, and the only thing to do is to make him tli£ best one you can. Tom gets plucked at college, he is forthwith called a scamp, provided with a steerage ticket and a £lO note, and packed off to Australia, leaving an impression behind him that he will probably get hanged for hoi'Se-stealing. He does well enough in Australia or California, but then he has wasted many precious yeax-s and hundreds of pounds. At college he was a round man in a square hole, and ought never to have been sent there, but out on the plains of the West or a cattle station he is thoroughly in his element ; and there is alxvays this about a true scamp, tlxat when his heart is in his work he can buckle to like a Trojan. It is perfectly astonishing the amount of work one of this class can do when he is in the right groove. Who discovered, ami still discover, the gold mines of the world ? Who ferret out new lands ? Who are ever ready for any enterprise of daring and adventure ? Who ai'e the men both able and willing to undergo the most unheard-of hardships, that would frighten your “ goody” men even to think about ? Why, scamps. Only two English novelists knew how to delineate the life of a scamp — Bulwer and Charles Kingsley. Pisistx'atus Caxton and Undo John were two thoroughbred scamps, bxxt Bulwer knew the world too well to make them end up in a workhouse or a gaol. Probably Thackeray would have done so, and certainly Dickens. Captain John Hawkixxs and Drake wore too precious scamps. These worthies thought it good fun to go sailing about in peace time “singeing the King of Spain’s beard,” plundering and burning whenever they had a chance. They would certainly be hanged nowadays ; but does any one doubt that a “ phantom board ” woxxld not have been improved by the presence of a few scamps of their kidney ? Then look at Arayas Leigh, the best portrait perhaps ever painted by the deceased master ; what a delicious devil-may-cax-e, bold, cut-and-thrust, honest scamp he was ! AVe all love him, with his golden locks, fearless heart, and insatiable thirst for Spanish blood. Who does not laugh when he cracks Vindex Brimblecombe’s head with the slate at Bideford school ? Whose hearts beat not quicker from reading “How they took the gold train?” and when the lightning strikes the giant blind, we know that though his heart burned like a devil’s for his foemau’s life-blood, yet he had the root of the matter in him. AVe admire Frank ; but we love and worship Amyas. There is not such a great career open to a scamp noxv as formerly ; in fact, many of our “ forgottexx heroes ” would probably nowadays be accommodated with free lodgings for an indefinite period, but still even he has a good many chances. Take the two greatest generals, perhaps, of ancient and modem times—Alexander and Napoleon. Alexander was one of the greatest men that ever lived, perhaps the greatest genius, except Csesar (another scamp by the bye), in ancient history. Alexander', of coui'se, in “goody” books is always represented as a dx'unken, vicious sot, and serves to point the inevitable moral; but there is no trustxvorthy evidence to shoxv that he was. He xvas a heroic, genex'oxxs, magnanimous, qxxick-tempered, forgiving, restless, splendid scamp How natural of him to sit down and cry because he had no more worlds to conquer ! As for Napoleon—take away the glax'e of his victories, and his whole life is that of a thorough-paced and not over honest scamp ; indeed, such an incorrigible one was he that he had to be kept in gaol at the world’s expense.