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These quiet places were, of course, on the side nearest the town, the opposite bank being too abrupt and the water too deep, for there was the channel, and there the water tore along with the greatest violence. In one of these placid bays a party of school-boys were amusing themselves with getting upon the loose blocks and pushing them about like boats.
I began to think it must be a sort of second Saturday; a foggy Saturday, when school-boys stay at home reading Robinson Crusoe. The only man who seemed to be taking his ease that day, was our black cook; who according to the invariable custom at sea, always went by the name of the doctor.
Thus a period of enforced calm a kind of vacation, as if these great soldiers and grey-beards had been a troop of idle school-boys was now established, without the slightest reason. President Jeannin took occasion to make a journey to Paris, leaving the Hague on the 20th June.
Let us multiply anniversaries, family parties, and excursions. Let us raise good humor in our homes to the height of an institution. Let the schools, too, do their part. Let masters and students school-boys and college-boys meet together oftener for amusement. It will be so much the better for serious work.
The women and budding girls chat together at their doors, and exchange merry greetings with young men; children chase one another in the summer twilight; school-boys sail little boats on the river, or play at marbles across the flat tombstones in the churchyard; and ancient men, in breeches and long waistcoats, wander slowly about the streets, with a certain familiarity of deportment, as if each one were everybody's grandfather.
The seamen did to me what school-boys do to the new boy. I did not know then that there is no mercy for one sensitive enough to take such "jests" to heart. At sea, the rough, ready tom-fool boy is the boy to thrive. Such an one might have spilt all the slush in the ship, without getting so much as a cuff. I was a merry boy enough, but I was sad when I made my first appearance.
In those days school-boys were not supplied very liberally with pocket money, and when on one occasion I rendered him some slight service, for which he bestowed upon me a piece of money, I felt myself rich indeed, and the possession of as many hundreds now would fail to afford me the same pleasure as did the few cents which made up the value of the coin.
Hayne's speeches for there were two of them. I shall not try to describe the circumstances which led Mr. Webster to make his famous reply to them. But I will quote Mr. Webster's closing sentences. Forty years ago the school-boys all over the country were accustomed to memorize and declaim these patriotic utterances.
"I have brought you here to tell you of the battle of the Blue Licks not because it was the last time, as you know, that an Indian army ever invaded Kentucky; not because a hundred years from now or a thousand years from now other school-boys and other teachers will be talking of it still; not because the Kentuckians will some day assemble on the field and set up a monument to their forefathers, your fathers and brothers; but because there is a lesson in it for you to learn now while you are children.
I am in general a sparer of the rod, notwithstanding the maxim of Solomon, for which school-boys have little reason to thank his memory; but on this occasion I deemed it proper to show that I did not hate the child. But I must return to the circumstances attending my first interview with this interesting enthusiast.
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