A BOY'S ADVENTURE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 2, 17 April 1880, Page 2 (Supplement)

A BOY'S ADVENTURE.

THB WAT IN WHICH MABK TWAIN WOTTM) HAVE WRITTEN THBBS CENTTTBIBS AGO;

[As I haven't a miscellaneous article at hand, nor a 'subject to make'ene, of, nor time to write the article if I had the subject, I beg to offer the following as a substitute. I take it from the twenty-second chapter of a tale for boys which I have been engaged upon at intervals during the past three years, end which I hope to finish yet before all the boys grow up. I will explain, for the reader's benefit, as follows : The lad who is talking is a slim, gentle, smileless creature, void of all sense of humour and given over to melancholy from his birth. He i* speaking to little Edward VI., King of England, in a room in the palace ; the two are by themselves ; the speaker was " whipping-boy" to the king when , the latter was Prince of Wales. James I. and Charles 11. had whipping-boys when they were little fellows, to take their/ punishment for them when they fell short in their lessons, so I have ventured to furnish my Email prince with one, for my own purposes. The time of this scene is early in the year 1548, consequently Edward VI. is about ten years of age ; the other lad is fourteen or fifteen.] I will tell it, my liege, seeing thou hast so commanded (said the whipping-boy, with a sigh which was manifestly well freighted with painful recollections), though it will open the Eore afresh, and I shall suffer again the miseries of that misbegotten day. It was last, midsummer — Sunday, in the afternoon — and drowsy, hot and breathless ; all the green countryside gasped and panted with the heat. I was at home, alone; alone, and burdened with the solitude. But first it is best that I say somewhat of the old knight, my father — Sir Humphrey. He was jußt turned of forty, in the time of the Field of the Cloth oi Go.d, and, was a brave and gallant subject. He ;was rich, too, albeit he grew poor enough before he died. At the field he- was in the great cardinal's suite, and shone with the best. -In a famous mtftque, there, he clothed himself in a marvellous dress ©f most outlandish sort, imaginary raiment of some failed prince of goblins or spirits, or I know not whab ; but tbis I know, that it was a nine days' wonder even there, where the art of the broad world had been taxed in the 'invention of things gorgeous, strange and memorable. Even the King, thy father, eaid it was a triumph, and swore it with his great oath, "By tbe splendour ot God !" What a king hath praised is precious, though it were dirt before; so my father brought home ,thia dres3to England, and kept it always laid up in herbs to guard it from injurious insect 3 and decay. When his wealth vanished he clung to it still. Age crept upon him, trouble wrought strangenesses in him, delusions ate into his mind. He was of co uncomfortable a piety, and so hot-spirited withal, that when he prayed, one wished he might give over, he so filled the heart with glooms of hell and the nose with the stink of brimstone ; yet when he waa done, his weather straightway changed, and he so raged and swore and laid about him, right and left, thab'one's thought .was, " Would God he would pray again." In time was he affected with a fancy that he could cast out devils — wo worth the day 1 Tuis very Sunday whereof I have spoken to your Grace he was gone, with the household, on this sort of godly mission, to Hengist's Wood, a mile and more away, where all the gaping fools in Bilton Pariah were gathered to hear him pray a most notorious and pestilent devil out of the carcase of Gdtumw Hooker, an evil-minded beldame that had been long and grievously oppressed with t&atrdovil's presence, and in truth a legion more — God pardon me if I wrong the poor old ash- cat in so charging her. As I did advertise your Grace in the beginning, the afternoon was come, and I was sore wearied with tha loneliness. Being scarce out of my thirteenth year, I was ill stocked with love for solitude or patience to endure it. I cast about me for k a pastime, and in an evil hour my thought fell upon thab old gala suit my father had brought from the Field of the Cloth of Gold near thirty years bygone. It was sacred ; one might not touch it and live, and my father found him in the act. Bat I said within myaelf, 'tis a stubborn devil that bides in Gammer Hooker; my father cannot harry him forth with one prayer, nor yet a hundred — there is time euow — I will have a look, though I perish for the trespass. I dragged the marvel out from its hiding, | and fed my soul with the sight. Oh, thou shouldst have seen it flame and flash in the sun/my liege ! It had all colours, and none were dull. The blose of shining green— lovely, silken things; the high buskins, red-heeled and great golden spurs, jewelled and armed with rowels a whole span long, and the strangest trunks, the strangest odd-fashioned doublet man ever saw, and so many-coloured, so rich of fabric, and so bespangled ; and then the robe 2 it was Jcrimson satin, banded and barred from top to hem with a wedded glory of precious gems, if haply they were not false — and mark ye, my lord, this robe was all of a piece, and covered the head, with holes to breathe and spy through[; and it had long, wide sleeves of a most curious pattern; then there was a belt and a great sword, and a shining golden helmet, fully three spans high, out of whose top sprang a mighty spray of plumes, dyed red as fire. A most gallant and barbaric' dress — evil befall the day I saw it !

When I was sated with gazing afrit, and would have hid it in its place again, the devil of misfortune prompted me to put it on. It was there that my sorrow and my shame began. I clothed myself in it, and girt on the sword, and fixed on the great spurs. Naught fitted— all was a world too large — yet was I content, and filled with worldly vanity. The helmet sank down and promised to smother me, like to a cat with ita head fast in a flagon, but I stuffed it out with rags and. so mended the defect. 'The robe dragged the ground, wherefore was I forced to hold it up when I desired to walk with freedom. Marching hither and yonder before the mirror, the grand plumes gladdened my heart, and the crimson splendours of the robe made my foolish soul sing for joy, albeit, to epeak plain truth, my first glimpse of mine array did well nigh fright the breath out of my lank body, so like a moving conflagration did I seem. Now, forsooth, could I not be content with private and secluded happiness, but must go forth from the house and see the full sun flash upon my majesty. I looked warily abroad on every side;, no human creature was in sight ; I passed down the stairs and stepped upon the greensward.

I beheld a something;, then, that in one little fleeting instant whisked all thought of the finery out of my head and brimmed it with a hot, new interest. It was our bull — a brisk, young creature that I had triad to mount a hundred tidies and failed ; now was he grazing, all peacefully and quiet, with his back to me. I crept toward him, stealthily and slow, and, oh ! so eager and so anxiously, scarcely breathing lest I should betray myielf then, with one master bound I lit astride his back 1 Ah! dear, my liege, it wm but woful triumph. He ran, he bellowed, he plunged here and there and yonder, and flung his heels aloft hi so mad a fashion that I was sore put to it to stick to where I was, and fain to forget it wm a jaunt of pleasure, aad busy my mind with expedients to the saving of my neck. Wherefore, to this end, I did takt » »Q deadly pip upon Jbjg lidfi

with tboae galling spur* that the pain of It banished the slim remnant of his reason that was left, and so forsook he all semblance S. reserve, and set himself the task o£ tearing the general world to *ags, if no be, m the good providence of God, his heels might last out the evil purpose of his heart. Being thu> resolved, he fell to raging in wide circles round and round the place, bowing his head and tossing it, with bellowing! that froze my blood,, lashing the air with bis tail, and plunging aa'd prancing, and launching Wa accurstd htelß, full freighted with destruction, at each perishable thing his fortune gave him for a prey, till in th» end he erred, to his own hurt no less than mine, delivering a random kick that did stave a beehive to shreds and tatters, and empty its embittered host upon us. In good sooth, my liege, all that went before was but holiday pasitime to that that followed after. In briefer time thana burdened man might take to breathe a sigh, the fierce insects did clothe us like a garment, whil* , theit mates, a singing swatm, encompassed us as with a clond, and waited for any vacancy that mighb appear upon onr bodies. And I had been oast aaked into a hedge of nettles, it had been a blessed compromise, forasmuch aa nettle-stings grownotso near together as did these bee-stings compact themselves. Now, being moved by the anguish of this new impulse, the bull did surpass himself. He raged thrice around tha circuit in the time h« had consumed to do It once before, and wrought. final wreck and desolation upon such scattering matters as he had aforetime overlooked and spared; then, perceiving that the swarm still clouded the air about us, he was minded to fly the place and leave the creatures behind —wherefore, uplifting hia tail and bowing his head, he went storming down the road, - praising God with a lond voice, and in a shorter space than a wholesome pulse might take to beat a hundred, was a mile upon his, way— but alack! so also were the bees. I noted not whither he tended, I was dead to all things but the bees and the miserable torment; the first admonishment I had that my true trouble was but now at hand, was a wild, affrighted murmur that broke upon my ear; then through those satin eye-holes I Bhot a glanoe, and beheld my father's devout multitude of fools scrambling and skurrying to right and left with the terrors of perdition in their souls ; and one little instant after I, helmeted, sworded and blazing in that strange unearthly panoply of red hot satin, tore into the midst, on my, roaring bull— and my father and his anoient witch being in the way, we Btruok them, full and fair, and all the four went down together, Sir Humphrey crying out, in the joy of bis heart, " See, 'tis the master devil himself, and 'twas I that hailed him forth I"

I marvel your majesty should laugh ; I see naught in it of a merry port, but only bitterness. Lord, it was pitiful' to see how? the wrathful bees did aesault them, turning their meek and godly prayers into profane cursings and blasphemous execrations, while the whole multitude, even down to the aged mothers in Israel and frosty-headed patriarchs did wildly skip and prance in the buzzing air, and thrash their arms about, and tumble and sprawl over one another in mid endeavour to flee the horrid place. And there, in the grass, my good father rolled and tossed, hither, and thitherj and everywhere— being sore beset with' the bees— delivering a howl of rage with every prod he got— ah, good my liege, tbou ahouldst have heard him curse and pray ! and yet, amidst all his woes, still found his immortal vanity room and opportunity to vent itself, and so, from time to time shouted he' with a glad voice, saying : " I wrought to bring forth one devil, and 10, have I emptied the couits of hell !" I was found out, my prince— ah, prithee spare me the telling what happened to me then ; I smart with the bare hint of it. My tale is done, my lord. When thou didst ask me yesterday what I could mean by the strange reply I made to the Lady Elizabetb, I humbly begged thee to await another timet and privacy. The thing I said to her Grace was this— a maxim whioh I did build oat of , mine, own head:- " AH* superfluity is not wealth ; if bee stings were farthings, there was a day when Bilton parish had been rich."

— Mark Twain, in the Bazaar Budget.

A Talkcjo Piotobb-Book. — A somewhat olever toy, one that is sore to please children, .. and that is (bo far aa we know) quite new, has been patented. The book consists of a series of pictures of animals, with apparatus for producing sounds in imitation of each oreatnre represented. Opening the book, the illustration is on one side of the page, and letterpress descriptive of it on the page f aoing. The text covers eonoealed mechanism, comprising bellows and whistles of peculiar construction lor mimicking various voices, The bellows are " blown" by pulling a button at the edge of the page, the button belonging to the picture on view being pulled to prodaoe th» sound in imitation of the cry of the animal exhibited. Mr. Brand, of Sonneberg, Germany, has patented this invention. — Cassel's Magazine. Glass tbou Bonks.— On extracting the phosphorus from bones, the residue oonsiats of lime and phosphoric acid, which can be readily transformed into glass. Bone-gIBBS, r whioh is now manufactured in Franoe, can be worked with the same facility as any other , glass, and it possesses the valuable property of not being attaoked by fluoric acid. " Ooh," said a love-siok Hibernian, " what a',reoreation it is to be dying of love ! It sets the heart aching so dilioately there's no taking a wink of slape for the pleasure of the pain." A xxumsHx lover sings ; ! " The thrush in the thioket ia singing, The lark is abroad on the lea, And over the garden gate swinging, A maiden is waiting for me. " She will wait till she's weary, I'm thinking, Though eager I am for the tryst ; She will wait till the bright Btars are blinking, And sigh for the kisses she missed : " For her father is watchful and wary— A very ill-tempered old churl — And I'm not the sort of canary To be kicked for the love of a girl." A fond, mother wants to learn how her son will turn out. That's easily done. If he's wanted to go' out and weed the garden, he will turn out slowly, and reluctantly and be two hoars dressing. If he's called to see a oirous procession go by he'll probably turn ■ out quick and hurl himself trying to come down stairs and put a boot on at the same time.

It is a pleasant incident that is related of King George of Gteeoe. Daring Mb first visit to Paris a grand ball was given in his •honor at the court of Napoleon 111. While the festivities were going forward, the Empresß Eugenic asked him, " Whom do yon think is the handsomest woman at the ball ?" "Pardon me, your Majesty," replied the king; "I am a barbarian, a Gossack; I know bat one handsome woman— my wife."

How to Sbeeoi a Wrra.— Dr. Franklin recommends a young man, in the ohoice of a wife, to aeleot her from a bunch, giving as a reason that, when there are many daughters, they improve each other; and from emulation acquire more accomplishments and know more and do more than a single child spoiled by paternal fondness.

A Gehat Mast Do It.— One day they happened to be talking before Emile Augier about a family whose means had been materially diminished, bat who had not therefore ceased to life in a moat expensive manner. " I never heard of anything of the sort," said one of the company, " They are rained, and yet they live in as Btylish a manner as ever.'f '* Oh, that is simple enough," said Augier; "formerly from time to time they paid some of their debts ; now they pay none. They have retrenched their creditors."