October 29, 1853. CROSSBONES’ FATHER. 351
CROSSBONES’ FATHER.
Whenever a new fellow came to MacLaren’s,
he was sure to be pumped pretty dry without loss
of time, m regarded his name, his father’s occu-
pation, and the number and appearance of his
sisters. Other points were discussed more at
leisure.
MacLaren’s, you must know, was situated in a village a few miles out of Liverpool; there were nearly sixty fellows there, so you may be sure several of them had made up their minds to go to sea as soon as ever they left school: and as two or three of these slept in my bedroom — the * 4 juniors’ ” room — that will account for what took place there after old Wiggy took away the candle every night. Old Wiggy was the French master, and if you could have seen his head — well, never mind.
Among the other impositions on parents which were set forth in MacLaren’s prospectus, none of which were ever kept to, except perhaps the “experienced dentist,” who used to come every half, and take out all the best double teeth in the fellows’ heads; amongst these, I say, it was stated that “a library of well selected books is provided for the use of the young gentlemen.” Now I appeal to any one who went there, if there ever was a greater crammer than this. What does well selected mean, I should like to know? Are “Principles of Geology,” or “Life of Rev. Ben- jamin Bubb,” or “General Gazetteer,” or “Trea- tise on Conic Sections,” well selected? I suppose
next they’ll call the Latin Grammar and Arith-
metic a well-selected library of books. To be
sure, there were two or three odd volumes of the
“Waverley Novels,” but as they were all the
middles of the tales, of course that took a good
deal from the interest of reading them. The only
two really good books in the lot were “Curiosities
of Nature and Art,” and “Lives of Buccaneers and
Pirates.” These two were always in the hands of
some of the “juniors,” and were read out in the
bedroom so often, that at last we could have done
almost as well without the books as with them.
(Whoever read them had to sit on the floor in one
comer with the candle partly under a bed for fear
of surprises.) The “Pirates” was, of course, the
greater favourite of the two, and Calomel I do
really think knew it all off &om one end to the
other; and was always persuading fellows to walk
the plank by means of a bolster off the beds on to
the floor; and building caves with the bedclothes.
He got tired of that after he was pulled out of
his cave one night by MacLaren, and walked into
with a slipper. The fellows were sorry for old
Calomel, of course, but it was great fun for them,
and they couldn’t help larking him a good deal
about the idea of a pirate being had out of his
cave and slippered. Well, this brings me to what
I was going to say. One night, in the middle of
a half, after we had gone to bed, MacLaren came
into our room with a candle and a new fellow.
He told us the new fellow’s name was Hartley;
waited till he undressed, watched him into bed
with little Binns, next bed to Calomel, wished
us good-night, told us to go to sleep, and left us.
Go to sleep, 0 yes, I dare say! The minute the
sitting-room door was heard to slam upon Mac-
Laren, you may fancy, if you can, the volley of
questions directed at Binns ’s bed.
The new chap was very talkative: said he had been living with his aunt in Yorkshire for years, but that she having suddenly got married, he had been sent home to Liverpool, and thence to Mac’s. Had both brothers and sisters, but having been so little at home didn’t know much about them. He asked if Mac was very strict; and when we said “we believed him; wasn’t he, just? ” he said he was afraid it wouldn’t suit him, for that he had been used to his own fling in Yorkshire: and then went on to that extent about guns, horses, and dogs, that Calomel at last asked him, rather drily, if he had nothing left to show for all this? He replied that he had a watch which his aunt had given him.
“Oh,” says Calomel, “a watch is nothing: my father has two, a chronometer and a repeater.”
“And mine,” retorted the new chap, “has three.”
In short, it became a regular bragging match between the two; and if the new fellow told as many lies as to our certain knowledge Calomel did, why he was a pretty good hand at it, that’s alL In spite of all Dobbs could say though, the new chap always trumped his best cards: when Dobbs mentioned a pony at home (which we knew he hadn’t got), Hartley was down on him with
No. 18.
