Considering that those were the halcyon days ere locomotion had carried the now ubiquitous British tourist to every nook and corner of the habitable globe, it was indeed a strange coincidence to encounter an old friend in the neighbourhood of the Mergui Archipelago, which not one out of a thousand at home had ever heard of; or if they had, the name had described that overland route across the brain, which is not uncommonly followed by the subjects taught at school.
Nowadays, of course, progress is setting its stamp upon all five quarters of the globe; the beautiful names of Jones, Brown, Smith or “Arry” may be seen carved on the Pyramids of Egypt; on the costly marble of the Taj at Agra; on the Pagoda at Rangoon; and will ere long doubtless ornament the giant trees in “Darkest Africa,” to the astonishment of the Pigmies!
“Cœlum non animum mutant, etc...,” and whether in his own beloved Epping Forest, or in a tropical jungle, he will ferret out nature’s gems and destroy them; and in both places the course of his peregrinations may be traced by empty beer bottles and greasy sandwich papers.
The proprietor of an estate on the Dorset coast, which was laid out for the convenience of the public, went so far as to supply printed quotations from various authors, and a special tablet for the names of visitors, but the latter remained black, while the rocks around were deeply scored in every conceivable direction. Such conduct can only be accounted for on the Darwinian theory, for the bump of mischief is unquestionably more developed in the apes than in any other animal.
I invariably pencil under such names “sentenced for felony to penal servitude for life!” or some equally agreeable sentence, which may, or may not, have the desired effect. I was likewise struck when visiting Stratford-on-Avon, and the house there many years ago, by the custodian requesting that we should not write our names, or even initials, anywhere about the room in which the poet for all time is said to have first seen the light.
The injunction was doubly superfluous; in the first place, my friends and self were not in the habit of publishing ourselves in this most objectionable manner; and secondly, even if so minded, we could not have found a clear space for any one of our names!
Any encounter with a face not seen for many years, is sure to touch the spring of recollection and set in motion the machinery of the past. Pacing the deck, we wandered once more over the well-trodden road of the past, recalling notable episodes, and conjecturing where sundry of our fellow-students might even then be fighting the battle of life.
Just as we had arrived at the conclusion, not uncommonly held by young men in respect of themselves, that nothing on earth was good enough for us, we were joined by the captain, who held in his hand an invitation for himself and me to dine and sleep ashore.
We accepted the invitation and entrusted the missive to my friend.
Rather nervous as to the limited state of my wardrobe, and hoping that our entertainers would be the reverse of hypercritical, I went ashore at the appointed time in the captain’s gig, and we found a considerable party of ladies and gentlemen already assembled to meet us. The dinner had evidently been got up in the captain’s honour, and it was on a par with his usual thoughtfulness to get his guest included in his own invitation.