“Escaped from the thraldom of study,
We turn to the babble of brooks.”
UNCLE JOHN’S SCHOOL-DAYS.
THIS picture reminds me, children, of some funny stories that I have heard your uncle John tell, when he and I were boy and girl together, of his exploits as a schoolboy. According to his account, not only he, but most of his schoolfellows, used to lead merry lives enough at school. They had what they called the “Academy Band,” and grand music it made, with a hat-box for a drum, cricket-bat for violoncello, and paper flute and trumpets. You would not recognize Uncle John, whom you know only as a man six feet high, in that little lad on the left side of the picture with a battledore for a fiddle. They had a great deal of what he called excellent fun, though I am afraid it sometimes bordered upon mischief or naughtiness. I used to consider that he and his schoolfellows were regular heroes as I listened to his stories when he came home for the holidays; and even now I must confess I cannot help laughing when I think of some of his naughty pranks.
Uncle John first went to a large school when he was eleven years old, and I remember now the tremendous hamper of good things he took with him. The boys who slept in his bedroom were so pleased with the contents of his hamper that they determined to make a great feast. To add to their enjoyment, they imagined themselves to be settlers in the backwoods of America or Australia. They built a log hut with bolsters, and had a sort of picnic. One of them mounted on the top of the log hut to look out with his telescope for any approaching savages, while the others enjoyed their suppers in and about the hut. When their fun was at its height, the door softly opened, and in walked Dr. Birchall, spectacles on nose and cane in hand. What followed may be imagined.
You know that Uncle John is an engineer now, and even as a little boy he had a great turn for mechanical inventions. Well, he pondered over some means by which such a sudden interruption to the enjoyment of his schoolfellows might be prevented in future; and I will tell you what he did.
It happened that the large room in which he slept formed the upper floor of a wing of the house which had been added to it when it became a school; and there was no access to this room from the principal staircase of the house. You had to pass through the room below and go up a little separate staircase to reach to the floor above. The lower room was also a bedroom for the boys, and Uncle John’s little scheme was this: