A good pugilist is looked up to with great admiration by the costers, and fighting is considered to be a necessary part of a boy's education. Among them cowardice in any shape is despised as being degrading and loathsome; indeed the man who would avoid a fight, is scouted by the whole of the court he lives in. Hence it is important for a lad and even a girl to know how to "work their fists well"—as expert boxing is called among them. If a coster man or woman is struck they are obliged to fight. When a quarrel takes place between two boys, a ring is formed, and the men urge them on to have it out, for they hold that it is a wrong thing to stop a battle, as it causes bad blood for life; whereas, if the lads fight it out they shake hands and forget all about it. Every body practices fighting, and the man who has the largest and hardest muscle is spoken of in terms of the highest commendation. It is often said in admiration of such a man that "he could muzzle half a dozen bobbies before breakfast."
To serve out a policeman is the bravest act by which a costermonger can distinguish himself. Some lads have been imprisoned upward of a dozen times for this offense; and are consequently looked upon by their companions as martyrs. When they leave prison for such an act, a subscription is often got up for their benefit. In their continual warfare with the force, they resemble many savage nations, from the cunning and treachery they use. The lads endeavor to take the unsuspecting "crusher" by surprise, and often crouch at the entrance of a court till a policeman passes, when a stone or a brick is hurled at him, and the youngster immediately disappears. Their love of revenge too is extreme—their hatred being in no way mitigated by time; they will wait for months, following a policeman who has offended or wronged them, anxiously looking out for an opportunity of paying back the injury. One boy, I was told, vowed vengeance against a member of the force, and for six months never allowed the man to escape his notice. At length, one night, he saw the policeman in a row outside a public-house, and running into the crowd kicked him savagely, shouting at the same time: "Now, you b—— I've got you at last." When the boy heard that his persecutor was injured for life, his joy was very great, and he declared the twelvemonth's imprisonment he was sentenced to for the offense to be "dirt cheap." The whole of the court where the lad resided sympathized with the boy, and vowed to a man, that had he escaped, they would have subscribed a pad or two of dry herrings, to send him into the country until the affair had blown over, for he had shown himself a "plucky one."
It is called "plucky" to bear pain without complaining. To flinch from expected suffering is scorned, and he who does so is sneered at and told to wear a gown, as being more fit to be a woman. To show a disregard for pain, a lad, when without money, will say to his pal, "Give us a penny, and you may have a punch at my nose." They also delight in tattooing their chests and arms with anchors, and figures of different kinds. During the whole of this painful operation, the boy will not flinch, but laugh and joke with his admiring companions, as if perfectly at ease.
FIVE MINUTES TOO LATE.
"Miss not the occasion; by the forelock take
That subtle power—the never-halting time—
Lest a mere moment's putting off should make
Mischance almost as heavy as a crime!"
We have just closed a volume of "Wordsworth's Poems," and the motto we have quoted, and the sonnet following it, recalled certain memories which have proved suggestive of our present subject. Five minutes too late! What an awful meaning is conveyed by the last two words of that brief sentence to the children of time, over whom circumstances and death have such fearful power! They conjure before our mental vision a spectral array of consequences from which we shrink: ghosts of vain hopes, of disappointed expectations, of love closed in death, move in ghastly procession, and but for certain recollections of a more enlivening nature—(for sometimes comedy blends even with the deepest tragedy in this kaleidoscope world of ours!)—we should erase our title, and choose another theme. Let it not alarm the reader, however, by the apparent threat it holds out of a homily upon the evils of procrastination. We mean to bestow no such tediousness upon his worship, deeming that the "golden-lipped" saint himself would prove powerless to exorcise that most pertinacious of demons when he has once taken possession of any human soul. No; we intend simply to give a few instances of the singular, fatal, or ludicrous effects which the loss or delay of five minutes has caused, leaving Wordsworth's motto to point the moral of our gossiping.
The first, and one of the most painful of these our "modern instances," was very recently related to us by the son of him whose fortunes were changed, and finally his fate sealed, by the unheeded flitting of those few sands of time, and whose family are still sufferers from this apparent trifle. The momentous five minutes to which we allude were a portion of one of the most glorious periods that ever dial or hourglass marked—that in which the Trafalgar victory was won, and Nelson lost. Among the gallant fleet which on that day roused the echoes of the hills of Spain, was a certain cutter commanded by a young lieutenant, who, possessing no naval interest, hoped for advancement only from his own gallantry and good conduct; and little doubt was there that either would prove lacking in his case. Memories of the fair wife and dear babe whose fortunes were, in the expressive language of the East, "bound up in the bundle of his life," awoke every energy of his nature, and gave (for him) a double and inspiring meaning to that celebrated signal, the simple majesty of which still thrills the heart of all who owe homage to the name of our country—"England expects every man to do his duty." When the fight began, our young lieutenant did his duty gallantly; the "angel opportunity" was lacking for any very memorable achievement, but in that scene of unrivaled valor and exertion, the eye of the great commander marked the conduct of the gallant little cutter, and he noticed it to "Hardy." Had he lived, the fortune of the young officer would have been assured; but the life which then "set in bloody glory" bore with it the hopes of many a brave mariner "into the dim oblivion!"
It is well known that the fleet which achieved this victory had, during the succeeding night and day, to contend with the fury of the elements; many ships dismasted in the battle, all shattered, and in numerous cases without an anchor to let go. It was while the storm was still raging that Lord Collingwood made a signal to the —— cutter to send a boat for the dispatches which were to be conveyed to England. The office intended for her commander was a favor, as the harbinger of such intelligence was certain of promotion; but, alas! our young lieutenant, engrossed by the present scene, and excited by the recent march of events, was not heeding the signal of the Euryalus, and it had been flying five minutes before it was reported to him. Then he hurried to obey the mandate—too late! Another had seen the summons, and preceded him, deeming that the state of the cutter must be the cause of her commander's delay. As her boat came alongside the Euryalus, that of his successful rival—if I may so style him—pushed off, and the officers exchanged greetings. Poor Y—— at that moment bade farewell to the flood-tide of his fortunes! The admiral accepted his excuses, and regretted that he had not arrived in time, giving him the only charge remaining in his power to bestow—duplicates of the dispatches—and with these he took his homeward course: but the lost five minutes had wrecked his hopes. His predecessor arrived safely, received promotion, and is now, or was very recently, an admiral, while the hero of our story obtained only a sword in commemoration of his bravery; and at the close of the war, was thrown aside, with many a gallant comrade, to waste the remainder of his life in oblivion and neglect. The disappointment of his hopes affected him deeply; the more so as his family increased, and his means of supporting and providing for them were small. What profound regret darkened the vision of Trafalgar when it recurred to the old officer's memory! He was sometimes heard to say, with a playful mockery of his own ill-fortune, "that he had grown prematurely bald from the number of young men who had walked over his head;" but there was a pathos in the very jest. By a marvelous coincidence, his life was closed, as its prospects had been blighted, by the fatal five minutes too late. He was engaged to dine with an old brother-officer—one who hated to be kept waiting for his dinner—and by some accident, it was five minutes after the appointed time when he left his house to proceed to his Amphitryon's. In his anxiety to redeem the lost time, he hurried up the hill he was compelled to ascend at a pace little befitting his age and infirmities—for he suffered from a complaint of the heart—reached the dining-room "again five minutes too late," as he remarked himself, in allusion to the unseen signal, was taken ill from the exertion, carried home, and died. "The tide" of life as well as of fortune had for him "passed the flood!"
The colors of this kaleidoscope vision are of the darkest and saddest; let us shake the instrument and vary the combinations, and lo an Indian bungalow rises before us seated on a mountain height; and many busy forms are moving near and about it, for the lady who dwells there is about to join a party of friends traveling to the island presidency below. Her husband's regiment has been recently hurried to the seat of war, and she can no longer dwell upon the wide and pleasant plains of the Deccan; moreover, the monsoon is ended, and the hot winds of the season are beginning to penetrate the screens. And now the ayah hastens her lady's preparations, by the information that the party of travelers are waiting in their palanquins without; but the "Ma'am Sahib" is a confirmed procrastinator, and so much has been left till this last moment unprepared and undone, that she can not obey the summons. The climate is not favorable to patience; besides, there is a "tide" to be caught at the next bunder, and it, proverbially, will wait for no one; therefore, with some few apologies, the party moved on, expressing their assurance that Mrs. T—— would soon overtake them. She was of the same opinion, and bore their desertion very philosophically, insisting even on not detaining a gentleman of the group, who would fain have waited her leisure. As she entered her palanquin, she observed to her ayah—the only servant who accompanied her—that she had been, "after all, only five minutes too late." The "God's image carved in ebony," as Fuller calls the dark sisterhood of our race, showed her ivory teeth good-humoredly in assent, and retired to take possession of her own conveyance, in which she was ordered to follow closely that of her mistress, deeming the loss of time of as little moment as the lady did. The hamals then began their labors, and the first portion of the descent was achieved pleasantly and safely. Seated in her coffin-like carriage, Mrs. T—— looked forth on a scene of almost unrivaled beauty, every turn of the mountain pathway varying its character and increasing its loveliness. Revived by the recent heavy rains, the trees and herbage wore a green as vivid as if they were never scorched by the burning kisses of an Eastern sun; gay wild-flowers peeped out from the long grass of the jungle; and tiny waterfalls danced and sported down the mountains' sides to their own liquid music: the tramp of the bearers, the monotonous chant into which they occasionally broke, even the shrill cry of the green parrot, had all a charm for the fair lady traveler; and she forgot the "five minutes too late" which had separated her from her companions, and the fact that there was still no appearance of rejoining them. The latter recollection had, however, occurred to her bearers, and gradually, though their burden marked it not, they slackened their pace, and held low conference among themselves. The ayah's palanquin was far behind, the travelers who preceded them far before; the road was solitary, the jungle deep and secret as the grave; the lady known to be rich in jewels, if not in gold and rupees.