第23章

TUNBRIDGE TOYS.

I wonder whether those little silver pencil-cases with a movable almanac at the butt-end are still favorite implements with boys, and whether pedlers still hawk them about the country? Are there pedlers and hawkers still, or are rustics and children grown too sharp to deal with them? Those pencil-cases, as far as my memory serves me, were not of much use.The screw, upon which the movable almanac turned, was constantly getting loose.The 1 of the table would work from its moorings, under Tuesday or Wednesday, as the case might be, and you would find, on examination, that Th.or W.

was the 23 1/2 of the month (which was absurd on the face of the thing), and in a word your cherished pencil-case an utterly unreliable time-keeper.Nor was this a matter of wonder.Consider the position of a pencil-case in a boy's pocket.You had hard-bake in it; marbles, kept in your purse when the money was all gone; your mother's purse, knitted so fondly and supplied with a little bit of gold, long since--prodigal little son!--scattered amongst the swine--I mean amongst brandy-balls, open tarts, three-cornered puffs, and similar abominations.You had a top and string; a knife; a piece of cobbler's wax; two or three bullets; a Little Warbler; and I, for my part, remember, for a considerable period, a brass-barrelled pocket-pistol (which would fire beautifully, for with it I shot off a button from Butt Major's jacket);--with all these things, and ever so many more, clinking and rattling in your pockets, and your hands, of course, keeping them in perpetual movement, how could you expect your movable almanac not to be twisted out of its place now and again--your pencil-case to be bent--your liquorice water not to leak out of your bottle over the cobbler's wax, your bull's-eyes not to ram up the lock and barrel of your pistol, and so forth.

In the month of June, thirty-seven years ago, I bought one of those pencil-cases from a boy whom I shall call Hawker, and who was in my form.Is he dead? Is he a millionnaire? Is he a bankrupt now? He was an immense screw at school, and I believe to this day that the value of the thing for which I owed and eventually paid three-and-sixpence, was in reality not one-and-nine.

I certainly enjoyed the case at first a good deal, and amused myself with twiddling round the movable calendar.But this pleasure wore off.The jewel, as I said, was not paid for, and Hawker, a large and violent boy, was exceedingly unpleasant as a creditor.His constant remark was, "When are you going to pay me that three-and-sixpence? What sneaks your relations must be? They come to see you.You go out to them on Saturdays and Sundays, and they never give you anything! Don't tell ME, you little humbug!" and so forth.

The truth is that my relations were respectable; but my parents were making a tour in Scotland; and my friends in London, whom I used to go and see, were most kind to me, certainly, but somehow never tipped me.That term, of May to August, 1823, passed in agonies then, in consequence of my debt to Hawker.What was the pleasure of a calendar pencil-case in comparison with the doubt and torture of mind occasioned by the sense of the debt, and the constant reproach of that fellow's scowling eyes and gloomy, coarse reminders? How was I to pay off such a debt out of sixpence a week? ludicrous! Why did not some one come to see me, and tip me? Ah! my dear sir, if you have any little friends at school, go and see them, and do the natural thing by them.You won't miss the sovereign.You don't know what a blessing it will be to them.Don't fancy they are too old--try 'em.And they will remember you, and bless you in future days; and their gratitude shall accompany your dreary after life;and they shall meet you kindly when thanks for kindness are scant.

O mercy! shall I ever forget that sovereign you gave me, Captain Bob? or the agonies of being in debt to Hawker? In that very term, a relation of mine was going to India.I actually was fetched from school in order to take leave of him.I am afraid I told Hawker of this circumstance.I own I speculated upon my friend's giving me a pound.A pound? Pooh! A relation going to India, and deeply affected at parting from his darling kinsman, might give five pounds to the dear fellow!...There was Hawker when I came back--of course there he was.As he looked in my scared face, his turned livid with rage.He muttered curses, terrible from the lips of so young a boy.My relation, about to cross the ocean to fill a lucrative appointment, asked me with much interest about my progress at school, heard me construe a passage of Eutropius, the pleasing Latin work on which I was then engaged; gave me a God bless you, and sent me back to school; upon my word of honor, without so much as a half-crown! It is all very well, my dear sir, to say that boys contract habits of expecting tips from their parents' friends, that they become avaricious, and so forth.Avaricious! fudge! Boys contract habits of tart and toffee eating, which they do not carry into after life.On the contrary, I wish I DID like 'em.What raptures of pleasure one could have now for five shillings, if one could but pick it off the pastry-cook's tray! No.If you have any little friends at school, out with your half-crowns, my friend, and impart to those little ones the little fleeting joys of their age.

Well, then.At the beginning of August, 1823, Bartlemy-tide holidays came, and I was to go to my parents, who were at Tunbridge Wells.My place in the coach was taken by my tutor's servants--"Bolt-in-Tun," Fleet Street, seven o'clock in the morning, was the word.My Tutor, the Rev.Edward P----, to whom I hereby present my best compliments, had a parting interview with me: gave me my little account for my governor: the remaining part of the coach-hire; five shillings for my own expenses; and some five-and-twenty shillings on an old account which had been overpaid, and was to be restored to my family.