Grandfather's Yarns.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 33, 10 November 1894, Page 12

Grandfather's Yarns.

«. (All Rights Reserved). No. 2a|. f “ MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS.’ 5 JOCK PIPER’S EXPEDIENT. PROM SCHOOL TO SEA.’ ONBOARD AM HALER. “ Grandfather, please do go on telling ns about when you were at school. I like hearing about that,” said Jack, “Yes, Jack, my boy, it would do you good if you went to a school like that "for a little while ; you wouldn’t consider yourself so ill-used now, I can tell you. I "wonder how any of you boys would like to be ‘ horsed ’ like we were.” “ What is being ‘ horsed ’ F” we all asked. “ Why, being put on another boy’s back, and being quilted till we roared with pain. If the boys w r ere big Mr Eitzgerald called in a man to hold them. One day a big boy about 18 years old, named Jock Piper, was ‘ horsed.’ “ ‘ Next time old Eitzgerald ‘horses’ me, I’ll bite that man’s ear off,’ said Jock. “ And sure enough about three weeks afterwards Jock Piper was to be ‘ horsed ’ again. In came the man Mr Eitzgerald always employed, and Jock mounted his willing steed. At the first stroke of the master’s cane Jock made a snap at the man’s ear and caught it between his teeth ; then he wrapped his arms around the man’s neck and clung to him like a leech. The man howled and ran all over the room, but Jock never loosed his hold till blood was streaming from the man’s ear, and Jock let go then because he said he didn’t want to be choked.

“ Soon after' that two boj s in a front desk were playing a senseless game which was always thought very exciting when we played it in school hours, and Mr Fitzgerald, glancing up from the sums he was setting, caught them in the act. “ He intended to give them a good fright, so ‘ picking up a long black ruler he threw it on the floor at the boys’ feet, but it rebounded and hit one boy on the head, making him stone deaf. The boy never recovered his hearing, and Mr Fitzgerald lost his billet. “ The next man, Mr Stone, was even worse than his predecessor, and I, for one, stayed away from school whenever I could possibly make an excuse and often without making one. “My mother had died some time before this, and my two sisters were away at school, so I ran wild, and did much as I liked. I rode a great deal and knocked about stables with my father and other horsey men. It would not have been so bad if 1 had always kept with them ; but I took to going about with the sailors and whalers who came to Hobartown from time to time. Their conversation and customs were anything but what would tend to improve a boy. My father’s friends, though they thoaght of little but horses, were never coarse and blasphemous, like the whalers often were, and I was at first often terrified at their language, but I soon got hardened to it.

“ Often I spent the time my father thought I spent in school with the whalers on the wharves and in the dockyards, till at last my one desire was to go whaling. I didn’t say anything to my father about it. I could see he was disappointed that I thought less than he did of the horses.

“ Things went on in this fashion for some time, till one day I had really been to school and was playing marbles outside in the afternoon, when Captain Kelly called me from the other side of the street, and asked me if I would like to go whaling. Like

to go ! Why, I nearly stood on my head with pride and excitement, and the captain, seeing my delight, patted me on the head, and told me to go and ask my father, and if he consented he would give me a berth. “ I never went near my father, and was down on the wharf at the office almost as soon as Captain Kelly was. He, of course, thought I had permission to go. I went into the office and signed articles, and the Captain gave me four dollars advance and the 70th lay. “ I don’t know exactly how I spent that night, for we didn’t start till morning. . I often thought in those long hours when I was waiting for the day to dawn, what my father would say when he heard what I had done, and I thought with some uneasiness how good he had been to me. I always had money, and horses, and everything I wanted, and yet I was doing what I distinctly knew he would not have allowed.

“ When morning came we started ,in a small schooner, and towed a whale boat behind. There were only two of us going to our party —the rest were down at the station. When we arrived there I found that we knew a good many of the hands and was quite happy. I could both pull and swim well, and was a favourite 1 with the men, so I had rather a good time of it than otherwise. “My father didn’t miss me for a little. We led a free and easy Bohemian kind of life, and I often spent a night with one or other of father’s friends. But when he did miss me he thought I was drowned. I, with some more mischievous boys, used to get into a boat belonging to an old man who brought butter and milk to Hobartown. The minute he got safely off; with his butter and things, we’d jump in and pull about as long as we thought it safe. If the old man could catch us, as he sometimes did, he’d throw us all into the water. Most of us could swim like ducks, and it did us no harm. “ However, someone told my father that he’d seen me going away in the whaler. My father ascertained the truth from Captain Kelly, and then he worried terribly about me, and blamed himself for not looking after me more. “ I remember when I came home again in about four months, my father looked a great deal older, and what he said to me hurt me. more than volumes of reproaches —Thank God, your mother isn’t alive, my boy,’ he said; ‘if she had been you would have broken her heart.”