CHAPTER X
ODDS AND ENDS
This is to be a chapter about all sorts of odd things that cannot be fitted in anywhere else. For instance, have any of you heard about the Messenger Boys? If not, I think that will interest you. Someone once formed a scheme of having a number of boys trained to go messages, or take parcels, or do anything that was required in London. And he set up offices all over London, where anyone could get one of these boys and send him on a message by paying his expenses and a small sum also, according to the distance he had to go. At every one of the offices there are a certain number of boys always going and coming. They take the messages in order as they come, and they may get a nice one or a nasty one. If you went into one of these offices and saw the boys sitting on a bench waiting, you would soon see how it works. Some of the boys are playing draughts, some are reading, but all are ready at any minute to go where they are told. There is a young man in charge of the office, and someone comes in with a message. So he turns to No. 1, a bright, chubby-faced little lad, and says, 'Go to this address and call for a parcel for this lady, whose name is written down, and take the parcel to her house. Be as quick as you can, and you can take a taxi-cab.' Off goes the boy, delighted to get such a nice job, and he feels very important to call up a cab for himself. He knows exactly where to go and how much to pay the cabman, for he has learnt all that before. The next boy is a big, awkward-looking lad, very tall for his age, and the young man laughs a little as he gives him a message: 'You are to call at No. 50 in this street,' he says, 'and the lady will hand over to you two children aged three and four. You are to take them to the Zoo and let them have a good time, and bring them back before six o'clock.'
The big boy makes a face. He does not fancy this idea at all; it is like being a nursemaid, and he thinks how silly he will look with two wee children. And all the other boys are grinning; but he cannot refuse. He is like a soldier, and must do just what he is told. So off he goes and asks for the children. But when he finds he can take them up in a cab, and that they are dear, bright, happy little things, full of mischief, he begins to enjoy himself, and they spend a lovely afternoon together; and when he brings them back safely, and the mother gives him half a crown for himself in addition to his fee, he feels he has had a good day.
Some time elapses when he has left the office before smart little No. 3 gets anything to do, and then he is told to go to King's Cross Station to meet two schoolboys and see their luggage is safe, and take them across to Charing Cross. When he gets there he finds both the boys are bigger than himself, but they are country boys going to school for the first time, and are very frightened and bewildered, and little No. 3 cheers them up, so that they part quite good friends.
But these are a few of the odd things the boys have to do, and most of their time is spent in taking notes about. You can see them anywhere in London in their neat dark-blue uniforms with silver decorations. Once a gentleman walked into one of the Messenger Boy offices, and said quietly, as if he were saying nothing extraordinary, 'I want a boy to take a note for me to America.'
The man in charge showed no surprise, but only asked when the boy was to start. The gentleman said he might go the next day, which would give him time to get his clothes together.
The boy who was next on the list was called Jaggers, and he was a bright, intelligent little lad. He ran home eagerly to ask if his parents would let him go, and having got permission, he went off cheerfully the next day across the Atlantic Ocean to New York. He arrived safely and delivered his message, and then went on to Chicago and Philadelphia, as he had been instructed. He returned in eighteen days, having travelled 8,000 miles, and he found he was quite a hero, and the man who had sent him gave him a medal with a clasp or bar of silver for each place he had gone to. I think many a boy might have been frightened when told to go off to the other side of the world so suddenly.
After Jaggers another boy did an even pluckier thing. His name was Halsey, and he was sent to California, which is on the other side of America, much further than New York, and he had to go right across the continent and find the way all by himself, and he was given no time to get ready as Jaggers was, but started almost immediately. That boy afterwards fought for England in South Africa in the Imperial Yeomanry, and is now in a responsible position in the Messenger Service. Another boy was sent to the Sultan of Turkey to take a dog as a present. I think that must have been the most difficult to do of the three things, for the dog might have died on the way, and when the boy got to Turkey he would have the disadvantage of being in a country where a foreign language was spoken. These are exceptional cases, of course, but the boys are still sometimes sent to the Continent with messages. But enough about the Messenger Boys.