A Jolly Fellowship

New Uniform Edition

AUTHOR OF RUDDER GRANGE, ETC. ILLUSTRATED NEW-YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1901
Copyright, 1880, by Charles Scribner's Sons. TROW'S PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, NEW YORK.
This story is told by Will Gordon, a young fellow about sixteen years old, who saw for himself everything worth seeing in the course of the events he relates, and so knows much more about them than any one who would have to depend upon hearsay. Will is a good-looking boy, with brown hair and gray eyes, rather large for his age, and very fond of being a leader among his young companions. Whether or not he is good at that sort of thing, you can judge from the story he tells.



I was sitting on the deck of a Savannah steam-ship, which was lying at a dock in the East River, New York. I was waiting for young Rectus, and had already waited some time; which surprised me, because Rectus was, as a general thing, a very prompt fellow, who seldom kept people waiting. But it was probably impossible for him to regulate his own movements this time, for his father and mother were coming with him, to see him off.
I had no one there to see me off, but I did not care for that. I was sixteen years old, and felt quite like a man; whereas Rectus was only fourteen, and couldn't possibly feel like a man—unless his looks very much belied his feelings. My father and mother and sister lived in a small town some thirty miles from New York, and that was a very good reason for their not coming to the city just to see me sail away in a steam-ship. They took a good leave of me, though, before I left home.
I shall never forget how I first became acquainted with Rectus. About a couple of years before, he was a new boy in the academy at Willisville. One Saturday, a lot of us went down to the river to swim. Our favorite place was near an old wharf, which ran out into deep water, and a fellow could take a good dive there, when the tide was high. There were some of the smaller boys along that day, but they didn't dive any, and if they even swam, it was in shallow water near the shore, by the side of the wharf. But I think most of them spent their time wading about.