SAM SIMKINS, THE RUN-AWAY;
OR,
VILLAINY AS A REFUGE FROM THE TORTURES OF
SOUR-GODLINESS.
Sam Simkins was a wild lad,—but whose fault was it that he became so? That was the significant question which uniformly followed the commemoration of his history among the old women of the village where he was born, and where, after the early death of his father and mother, he was apprenticed, by the parish, to Mr. Jonas Straitlace, the saddler and collar-maker. The village was not more than half-a-dozen miles from Birmingham; and to that town Sam usually trudged once or twice in the working part of the week on his master's business errands, and, invariably, accompanied his master thither twice on the Sunday, to attend the ministry of a Calvinistic teacher.
With the exception of a very restricted number of hours for sleep, these were the only portions of Sam's existence that could come within the name of relaxation. Some people gave Sam's master the title of a "money-grub;" but Mr. Jonas Straitlace himself modestly laid claim to the character of one who was "diligent in business, fervent in spirit, and——" the reader knows the rest. In brief, he was one of the too numerous description of folk who cast their sour into the sweets of innocent enjoyment on every occasion within their compass, and strive to throw a universal pall over the world by keeping their fellow-creatures in mind that the next life alone is worth a moment's thought,—and yet, daily and hourly illustrate their own gloomy lesson by grasping at the dirt called money as eagerly as if they believed they could carry it with them over the ford of the grave, and that it would be still more current coin in the next life than in this. Strict rates of charge to his customers in an age of competition prevented Straitlace from extending his business; but the consequence was, that he grew more pinching towards himself, and still more towards his apprentice, in allowing the body its proper amount of sustenance, or the general constitution its necessary share of healthful unbending. Sam was pinched in his measure of food, and watched while he ate it, lest the spoon should travel so slowly to his mouth as to prevent his return to labour after the lapse of an appointed number of minutes; he was "alarumed" up at five in winter, and at four in summer, and kept at the bench till eight; and what went down more hardly with Sam than either scant food and sleep, or unceasingly painful toil, was the fact, that his master's vinegared piety overflowed with such zeal for Sam's spiritual welfare as to compel him to spend the remaining time till ten, every working-day evening, in reading one book. Nay, the lad, in spite of the remembrance that every other apprentice in the village was allowed, at least, an hour's holyday-time, each day, would have felt it to be some amelioration of his captive lot, had he been allowed to derive such amusement from the book as it might afford; but Straitlace's zeal for Sam's happiness in the next life, taught him that he must use even this extreme resort to mortify the lad in the present state of existence, and, therefore, Sam must read nothing but the Prophets, in one division of the book, and the Epistles, in the other!
Such was the discipline to which Mr. Jonas Straitlace subjected Sam Simkins from the age of nine, when the parish placed the lad under his care, to fifteen. Straitlace had one invariable answer to all who remonstrated with him on the undue severity, the imprisoning strictness, he exercised towards his apprentice:—"Train up a child in the way he should go," he would say, quoting the whole text, "that's a Bible reason for what I do: it doesn't allow me to parley with flesh and blood: I must obey it."
Mr. Jonas Straitlace had found that fine moral pearl in the great Oriental treasure-house of the wisdom-jewels of ages, and he was too sordidly ignorant to know that the originator of the maxim never intended the "should go" to be left to the judicature either of brain-sick zealots and morbid pietists, or of rash experimenters and fanciful speculatists. But what cared Straitlace about the legitimate and fair interpretation of the text? His ready quotation of it served his purpose: it kept "meddlers," as he called them, at arm's length, and secured the links of that grinding slavery which held Sam to his task, and brought money into the till.
It would be a heart-sickening detail, that of the incidental miseries Sam experienced in these six years: suffice it to say, his chain was tightened till it snapped. He contrived to form an acquaintance in Birmingham who advised him to "cut" his tyrant-master, and "cut" him he did. Yet, Mr. Jonas Straitlace knew the value of Sam's earnings too well to be inclined to give up his bird without trying to catch it again. He set out for Birmingham, made inquiry, and learned that Sam, in spite of being minuted by his master's watch, had contrived, almost uniformly, on his errands, to spend a quarter of an hour in a certain low public-house, and that he had done this, habitually, for more than a twelvemonth past. Straitlace bent his steps to this resort, and, by his crafty mode of questioning, ascertained from the landlord that Sam had that very morning been in his house with one "Jinks,"—yet that was not the man's right name, the landlord added, but only a name he went by.
"And pray who is this Jinks?" asked Straitlace.
"He was once a man in great trust, sir," answered the landlord, with some solemnity: "he was head clerk in a first-rate lawyers's office in this town. But it was found out at last, that Jinks had 'bezzled a good deal o' money belonging to the firm; and so he was sent to gaol for a couple o' year; nay, he was very near being hanged. And so when he came out o' limbo, you understand, why nobody would trust, or hardly look on him; and he's now got from bad to worse."