Works of Ellen Wood, page 155
This state of affairs gave Jane great concern. “Unless I can organize some plan, my boys will grow up dunces,” she said to herself. And a plan she did organize. None could remedy this so well as herself; she, so thoroughly educated in all essential branches. It would take two hours from her work, but for the sake of her boys she would sacrifice that. Every night, therefore, except Saturday, as soon as they had prepared their lessons for school — and in doing that they were helped by William — she left her work and became their instructor. History, geography, astronomy, composition, and so on. You can fill up the list.
And she had her reward. The boys advanced rapidly. As the months and quarters went on, it was only so much the more instruction gained by them.
I think you must be indulged with a glance at one of these college school notes. But, first of all, suppose we read one written by Frank.
“Dear Glenn, — Thanks for wishing me to join your fishing expedition the day after to-morrow, but I can’t come. My mother says, as I had a holiday from college one day last week, it will not do to ask for it again. You told me to send word this evening whether or not, so I drop you this note. I should like to go, and shall be thinking of you all day. Mind you let me have a look at the fish you bring home. Yours,
“Frank Halliburton.”
The note was addressed “Glenn senior,” and Gar was ordered to deliver it at Glenn senior’s house. Glenn senior, who was a king’s scholar, not a chorister, made a wry face over it when delivered, and sat down on the spur of the moment to answer it:
“Deer Haliburton, — Its all stuf about not asking for leve again what do the musty old prebens care who gets leve therell be enuff to sing without you tell your mother I cant excuse you from our party theirs 8 of us going and a stunning baxket of progg as good go out for a day’s fishing has stop at home on a holiday for the benefit of that preshous colledge bring me word you’ll come to-morrow at skool for we want to arrange our plans yours old fellow
“P Glenn.”
Master P. Glenn was concluding his note when his father passed through the room and glanced over the boy’s shoulder. He (Mr. Glenn) was a surgeon; one of the chief surgeons attached to the Helstonleigh infirmary, and in excellent practice. “At your exercise, Philip?”
“No, papa. I am writing a note to one of our fellows. I want him to be of our fishing party on Wednesday.”
“Wednesday! Have you a holiday on Wednesday?”
“Yes. Don’t you know it will be a saint’s day?”
“Not I,” said Mr. Glenn. “Saints’ days don’t concern me as they do you college boys. That’s a pretty specimen of English!” he added, running his amused eyes over Philip’s note.
“Are there any mistakes in it?” returned Philip. “But it’s no matter, papa. We don’t profess to write English in the college school.”
“It is well you don’t profess it,” remarked Mr. Glenn. “But how is it your friend Halliburton can turn out good English?” He had taken up Frank’s letter.
“Oh! they are such chaps for learning, the two Halliburtons. They stick at it like a horse-leech — never getting the cane for turned lessons. They have school at home in the evenings for English, and history, and such stuff that they don’t get at college.”
“Have they a tutor?”
“They are not rich enough for a tutor. Mrs. Halliburton’s the tutor. What do you think Gar Halliburton did the other day? Keating was having a row with the fourth desk, and he gave them some extra verses to do. Up goes Gar Halliburton, before he had been a minute at his seat. ‘If you please, sir,’ says he to Keating, ‘I had better have another piece.’ ‘Why so?’ asks Keating. ‘Because,’ says Gar, ‘I did these same verses with my brother at home a week ago.’ He meant his eldest brother; not Frank. But, now, was not that honourable, papa?”
“Yes, it was,” answered Mr. Glenn.
“That’s just the Halliburtons all over. They are ultra-honourable.”
“I should like to see your friend Frank, and inquire how he manages to pick up his English.”
“Let me bring him to tea to-morrow night!” cried Philip eagerly.
“You may, if you like.”
“Hurrah!” shouted Philip. “And you’ll persuade him not to mind his mother, but to come to our fishing party?”
“Philip!”
“Well, papa, I don’t mean that, exactly. But I do not see the use of boys listening to their mothers just in everything.”
Philip Glenn seized his note, and added a postscript:— “My father sais you are to come to tea to-morrow we shall be so joly.” And it was despatched to Frank by a servant in livery.
CHAPTER XII.
A LESSON FOR PHILIP GLENN.
Frank was as eager to accept the invitation as Philip had been to offer it. When the afternoon arrived, and school was over, Frank tore home, donned his best clothes, and then tore back again to Mr. Glenn’s house. Philip received him in the small room, where he and his brother prepared their lessons.
“How is it that you and my boys write English so differently?” inquired Mr. Glenn, when he had made Frank’s acquaintance.
Frank broke into a broad smile, suggested by the remembrance of Philip’s English. “We study it at home, sir.”
“But some one teaches you?”
“Mamma. She was afraid that we should grow up ignorant of everything except Latin and Greek; so she thought she would remedy the evil.”
“And she takes you in an evening?”
“Yes, sir; every evening except Saturday, when she is sure to be busy. She comes to the table as soon as our lessons for school are prepared, and we commence English. The easier portions of our Latin and Greek we do in the day, I and Gar: we crib the time from play-hours; and my brother William helps us at night with the more difficult parts.”
“Where is your brother at school?” asked Mr. Glenn.
“He is not at school, sir. He is at Mr. Ashley’s, with Cyril Dare. William has not been to school since papa died. But he was well up in everything, for papa had taken great pains with him, and he has gone on by himself since.”
“Can he do much good by himself?”
“Good!” echoed Frank, speaking bluntly in his eagerness; “I don’t think you could find so good a scholar for his age. There’s not one could come near him in the college school. At first he found it hard work. He had no one to explain difficult points for him, and was obliged to puzzle them out with his own brains. And it’s that that has got him on.”
Mr. Glenn nodded. “Where a good foundation has been laid, a hard-working boy may get on better without a master than with one, provided — —”
“That is just what William says,” interrupted Frank, his dark eyes sparkling with animation. “He would have given anything at one time to be at the college school with us; but he does not care about it now.”
“Provided his heart is in his work, I was about to add,” said Mr. Glenn, smiling at Frank’s eagerness.
“Oh, of course, sir. And that’s what William’s is. He has such capital books, too — all the best that are published. They were papa’s. I hardly know how I and Gar should get on, without William’s help.”
“Does he help you?”
“He has helped us ever since papa died; before we went to college, and since. We do algebra and Euclid with him.”
“In — deed!” exclaimed Mr. Glenn, looking hard at Frank. “When do you contrive to do all this?”
“In the evening. Tea is over by half-past five, and we three — William, I, and Gar — turn at once to our lessons. In about two hours mamma joins us, and we work with her about two hours more. Of course we have different nights for different studies, Latin every night, Greek nearly every night, Euclid twice a week, algebra twice a week, and so on. And the lessons we do with mamma are portioned out; some one night, some another.”
“You must be very persevering boys,” cried Mr. Glenn. “Do you never catch yourselves looking off to play; to talk and laugh?”
“No, sir, never. We have got into the habit of sticking to our lessons; mamma brought us into it. And then, we are anxious to get on: half the battle lies in that.”
“I think it does. Philip, my boy, here’s a lesson for you, and for all other lazy scapegraces.”
Philip shrugged his shoulders, with a laugh. “Papa, I don’t see any good in working so hard.”
“Your friend Frank does.”
“We are obliged to work, sir,” said Frank, candidly. “We have no money, and it is only by education that we can hope to get on. Mamma thinks it may turn out all for the best. She says that boys who expect money very often rely upon it and not upon themselves. She would rather turn us out into the world with our talents cultivated and a will to use them, than with a fortune apiece. There’s not a parable in the Bible mamma is fonder of reading to us than that of the ten talents.”
“No fortune!” repeated Mr. Glenn in a dreamy tone.
“Not a penny; mamma has to work to keep us,” returned Frank, making the avowal as freely as though he had proclaimed that his mother was lady-in-waiting to the Queen, and he one of her pages. Jane had contrived to convince them that in poverty itself there lay no shame or stigma; but a great deal in paltry attempts to conceal it.
“Frank,” said Mr. Glenn, “I was thinking that you must possess a fortune in your mother.”
“And so we do!” said Frank. “When Philip’s note came to me last night, and we were — were — —”
“Laughing over it!” suggested Mr. Glenn, helping out Frank’s hesitation, and laughing himself.
“Yes, that’s it; only I did not like to say it,” acknowledged Frank. “But I dare say you know, sir, how most of the college boys write. Mamma said then, how glad we ought to be that she can make time to teach us better, and that we have the resolution to persevere.”
“I wish your mother would admit my sons to her class,” said Mr. Glenn, half-seriously, half-jokingly. “I would give her any recompense.”
“Shall I ask her?” cried Frank.
“Perhaps she would feel hurt?”
“Oh no, she wouldn’t,” answered Frank impulsively. “I will ask her.”
“I should not like such a strict mother,” avowed Philip Glenn.
“Strict!” echoed Frank. “Mamma’s not strict.”
“She must be. She says you shan’t come fishing with us to-morrow.”
“No, she did not. She said she wished me not to go, and thought I had better not, and then she left it to me.”
Philip Glenn stared. “You told me at school this morning that it was decided you were not to come. And now you say Mrs. Halliburton left it to you.”
“So she did,” answered Frank. “She generally leaves these things to us. She shows us what we ought to do, and why it is right that we should do it, and then she leaves it to what she calls our own good sense. It is like putting us upon our honour.”
“And you do as you know she wishes you would do?” interposed Mr. Glenn.
“Yes, sir, always.”
“Suppose you were to take your own will for once against hers?” cried Philip in a cross tone. “What then?”
“Then I dare say she would decide herself the next time, and tell us we were not to be trusted. But there’s no fear. We know her wishes are sure to be right; and we would not vex her for the world. The last time the dean was here there was a fuss about the choristers getting holiday so often; and he forbade its being done.”
“But the dean’s away,” impatiently interrupted Philip Glenn. “Old Ripton is in residence, and he would give it you for the asking. He knows nothing about the dean’s order.”
“That’s the very reason,” returned Frank. “Mamma put it to me whether it would be an honourable thing to do. She said, if Dr. Ripton had known of the dean’s order, then I might have asked him, and he could do as he pleased. She makes us wish to do what is right — not only what appears so.”
“And you’ll punish yourself by going without the holiday, for some rubbishing notion of ‘doing right’! It’s just nonsense, Frank.”
“Of course we have to punish ourselves sometimes,” acknowledged Frank. “I shall be wishing all day long to-morrow that I was with you. But when evening comes, and the day’s over, then I shall be glad to have done right. Mamma says if we do not learn to act rightly and self-reliantly as boys we shall not do so as men.”
Mr. Glenn laid his hand on Frank’s shoulder. “Inculcate your creed upon my sons, if you can,” said he, speaking seriously. “Has your mother taught it to you long?”
“She has always been teaching it to us; ever since we were little,” rejoined Frank. “If we had to begin now, I don’t know that we should make much of it.”
Mr. Glenn fell into a reverie. As Mr. Ashley had once judged by some words dropped by William, so Mr. Glenn was judging now — that Mrs. Halliburton must be a mother in a thousand. Frank turned to Philip.
“Have you done your lessons?”
“Done my lessons! No. Have you?”
Frank laughed. “Yes, or I should not have come. I have not played a minute to-day — but cribbed the time. Scanning, and exercise, and Greek; I have done them all.”
“It seems to me that you and your brothers make friends of your lessons, whilst most boys make enemies,” observed Mr. Glenn.
“Yes, that’s true,” said Frank.
“Philip,” said Mr. Glenn to his son that evening after Frank had departed, “I give you carte blanche to bring that boy here as much as you like. If you are wise, you will make a lasting friend of him.”
“I like the Halliburtons,” replied Philip. “The college school doesn’t, though.”
“And pray, why?”
“Well, I think Dare senior first set the school against them — that’s Cyril, you know, papa. He was always going on at them. They were snobs for sticking to their lessons, he said, which gentlemen never did; and they were snobs because they had no money to spend, which gentlemen always had; and they were snobs for this, and snobs for the other; and he got his desk, which ruled the school, to cut them. They had to put up with a good deal then, but they are bigger now, and can fight their way; and, since Dare senior left, the school has begun to like them. If they are poor, they can’t help it,” concluded Philip, as if he would apologize for the fact.
“Poor!” retorted Mr. Glenn. “I can tell you, Master Philip, and the college school too, that they are rich in things that you want. Unless I am deceived, the Halliburtons will grow up to be men of no common order.”
CHAPTER XIII.
MAKING PROGRESS.
Trifles, as we all know, lead to great events. When Frank Halliburton had gone home, in his usual flying, eager manner, plunging headlong into the subject of Mr. Glenn’s request, and Jane consented to grant it, she little thought that it would lead to a considerable increase to her income, enabling them to procure several comforts, and rendering better private instruction than her own easy for her sons.
Not that she yielded to the request at once. She took time for consideration. But Frank was urgent; and she was one of those ever ready to do a good turn for others. The Glenns, as Frank said, did write English wretchedly; and if she could help to improve them without losing time or money, neither of which she could afford, why not do so? And she consented.
It certainly did occur to Mrs. Halliburton to wonder that Mr. Glenn had not provided private instruction for his sons, to remedy the deficiencies existing in the college school system. Mr. Glenn suddenly awoke to the same wonder himself. The fact was, that he, like many other gentlemen in Helstonleigh who had sons in the college school, had been content to let things take their chance: possibly he assumed that spelling and composition would come to his sons by intuition, as they grew older. The contrast Frank Halliburton presented to Philip aroused him from his neglect.
Jane consented to allow the two young Glenns to share the time and instruction she gave to her own boys. Mr. Glenn received the favour gladly; but, at first, there was great battling with the young gentlemen themselves. They could not be made to complete their lessons for school, so as to be at Mrs. Halliburton’s by the hour appointed. At length it was accomplished, and they took to going regularly.
Before three months had elapsed, great improvement had become visible in their spelling. They were also acquiring an insight into English grammar; had learnt that America was not situated in the Mediterranean, or watered by the Nile; and that English history did not solely consist of two incidents — the beheading of King Charles, and the Gunpowder Plot. Improvement was also visible in their manners and in the bent of their minds. From being boisterous, self-willed, and careless, they became more considerate, more tractable; and Mr. Glenn actually once heard Philip decline to embark in some tempting scrape, because it would “not be right.”
For it was impossible for Jane to have lads near her, and not gently try to counteract their faults and failings, as she would have done by her own sons; whilst the remarkable consideration and deference paid by the young Halliburtons to their mother, their warm affection for her, and the pleasant peace, the refinement of tone and manner distinguishing their home, told upon Philip and Charles Glenn with good influence. At the end of three months, Mr. Glenn wrote a note of warm thanks to Mrs. Halliburton, expressing a hope that she would still allow his sons the privilege of joining her own, and, in a delicate manner, begging grace for his act, enclosed four guineas; which was payment at the rate of sixteen guineas a year for the two.
Jane had not expected it. Nothing had been hinted to her about payment, and she did not expect to receive any: she did not understand that the boys had joined on those terms. It was very welcome. In writing back to Mr. Glenn, she stated that she had not expected to receive remuneration; but she spoke of her straitened circumstances and thanked him for the help it would be.
“That comes from a gentlewoman,” was his remark to his wife, when he read the note. “I should like to know her.”
“I hinted as much to Frank one day, but he said his mother was too much occupied to receive visits or to pay them,” was Mrs. Glenn’s reply.
