“You’ll not object, p’r’aps,” said the former on the occasion of their first talk over future plans, “to give me a lift wi’ the school?”
“Nothing would please me better,” answered Buffett. “I’m rather fond o’ teachin’, to say truth, and am ready to begin work at once.”
Not only did Buffett thereafter become to Adams as a right arm in the school, but he assisted in the church services on Sundays, and eventually came to read sermons, which, for the fixing of them more effectually on the minds of the people, he was wont to deliver three times over.
But Buffett could tell stories as well as read sermons. One afternoon some of the youngsters caught him meditating under a cocoa-nut tree, and insisted on his telling the story of his life.
“It ain’t a long story, boys an’ girls,” said he, “for I’ve only lived some six-and-twenty years yet. I was born in 1797, near Bristol, and was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker. Not takin’ kindly to that sort o’ work, I gave it up an’ went to sea. However, I’m bound to say, that the experience I had with the saw and plane has been of the greatest service to me ever since; and it’s my opinion, that what ever a man is, or whoever he may be, he should learn a trade; ay, even though he should be a king.”
The Pitcairn juveniles did not see the full force of this remark, but nevertheless they believed it heartily.
“It was the American merchant service I entered,” continued Buffett, “an’ my first voyage was to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. I was wrecked there, and most o’ the crew perished; but I swam ashore and was saved, through God’s mercy. Mark that, child’n. It wasn’t by good luck, or good swimmin’, or chance, or fate, or anything else in the shape of a second cause, but it was the good God himself that saved, or rather spared me. Now, I say that because there’s plenty of people who don’t like to give their Maker credit for anything, ’cept when they do it in a humdrum, matter-of-course way at church.”
These last remarks were quite thrown away upon the children, whose training from birth had been to acknowledge the goodness of God in everything, and who could not, of course, comprehend the allusions to formalism.
“Well,” he continued, “after suffering a good deal, I was picked up by some Canadian fishermen, and again went to sea, to be once again wrecked and saved. That was in the year 1821. Then I went to England, and entered on board a ship bound for China, from which we proceeded to Manilla, and afterwards to California, where I stayed some time. Then I entered an English whaler homeward bound, intendin’ to go home, and the Lord did bring me home, for he brought me here, and here I mean to stay.”
“And we’re all so glad!” exclaimed Dolly Young, who had now become an enthusiastic, warm-hearted, pretty young woman of twenty-three summers.