Happy Days for Boys and Girls

by Various

With the keenest pangs of youthful sorrow, the two friends parted, promising to write often, looking forward to meet at no distant future, for the world did not seem too wide for them, accustomed as they were, by association, to maritime people and travellers.

It was three months after Walter had left, when Sidney took leave of his kind master, and the school which had been a home to him, and went, in cold spring weather, to the Venice of the north—Rotterdam. When he left he made one request, which his tutor thought it not wrong to grant. He desired to know the name of the benefactor who had so munificently helped him; and though he was not very much surprised when he heard the source from whence the aid had come, and was indeed glad that his gratitude was due where his friendship had so long been given, yet it naturally moved him very deeply when he found how Walter had been the means of effecting this. He also remembered vividly some acts of self-denial that added to the delicacy of his friend’s silence, and made the action truly noble.

“I can never repay you, dear Walter, nor your kind father; I shall ever be your grateful debtor,” he wrote; “but I will try to employ the talents you have cultivated, so as not, at all events, to disgrace your friendship.”

Though railways made the continent open to travellers, and the desire to see his friend Walter never languished, yet years went by and it was not realized. Some tidings there were of reverse of fortune through a lawsuit, and of journeyings to different places. The last that Sidney heard of his friend was in a letter from Madeira, where his father was lingering on in too weak a state to bear removal.

The desultory, unsettled life that the family had led seemed to have prevented Walter from making much progress as a sculptor,—a profession he had thought of while in Italy,—and his letters were somewhat vague and unsatisfactory as to his future plans.

Then came a long interval with no tidings, and afterwards a returned letter with the one word Dead, written under the name of Walter’s father on the superscription.

So, like a pleasant morning that ends in clouds and gloom, the friendship seemed to end which had so gladdened the youth of Sidney, and even blended with all the fondest memories of his boyhood. Many were the prayers he breathed, that one who had been as a brother might not be entirely lost to him.

As years went on great changes occurred in the firm that Sidney served. He had risen in the confidence of his employers. They had a business in Australia, under the care of a partner, who was also a relative. He died, and as there was a sudden increase of business facilities at Melbourne, Sidney was sent out, and a share in the concern was given him. His surname did not appear. He was announced, as many a junior partner is, by the little word “Co.” appended to the principal name of the firm.

Sidney had been in the colony some three years, and was now a stalwart young man of twenty-seven, when one day, riding on horseback towards a suburb of the rapidly growing city of Melbourne, called Brighton, he noticed a gang of young men working on the road. He knew that many respectable emigrants had come over during the first excitement of the gold discoveries. Clerks used only to the pen, students, unsuccessful professional men, all in the first delirium fever-fit of the gold fever, had come in the expectation that hands unused to hard toil could use the pickaxe of the gold-digger, or wash the rubble for the precious ore. Ah, it was a wild, a fatal delusion! Many a gentleman and scholar pined to death with hardships and disappointments, while some, after weeks of sickness, rose to earn their bread by the humblest manual labor. Working on the roads, for which government pay was given, was often the resource of those who had been worsted in every other effort. Unable to help among such numbers of claimants on sympathy, Sidney had contented himself with joining in the subscriptions raised for the relief of the sick and destitute: but now, as he passed along, he felt a desire to speak to the workers in this gang. As his eye scanned them he saw only a group of thin, toil-worn, weather-beaten men, with rough beards half hiding their wasted features. Nothing was more acceptable, as a recreation to the emigrants, than books, and Sidney had commenced a lending library of books and publications; so, after a cheerful salutation, he now reined up his horse, and began to tell them of his plan, and to add, “I have opened a room, friends, two nights a week,—it is but a rough shed, but I hope to make it better soon,—as a meeting-place, where a comfortable, pleasant, and profitable evening may be spent.”

“Then,” said a man with a strong Irish brogue, “your honor’s the great Dutch merchant.”