MR. SALA AND SOME AMERICAN CHILDREN.

Oamaru Mail, Volume X, Issue 3435, 4 January 1886, Page 4

MR. SALA AND SOME AMERICAN CHILDREN.

.The Daily Telegraph contained .repenfly an interesting letter.fmm Mr S»la about hia passage from SaD Francisco to Honolulu and other matters. He supplies the /following account of what he calls " a slight drawback to oar - thorongh enjoyment of sociability on board ship." The Australia was infested by a small bnt determined' gang of what I may term Fiend Children—American children, I am sorry to say; and I am sorry to add that they.were all-the children of saloon passengers, t There were several well-enough conducted babies in the steerage, and a few tolerable toddlekins in the intermediate cabins ; bnt a more exasperating set of little desperadoes, male and female, than the first-class brats it would be difficalt to imagine; I am passionately fond of what Leigh Hoot used to call " the small infantry who go to bed by daylight," and I know that I love and fancy that I understand the pretty ways of ordinary children; bnt when the " small infantry" assume the' aspect of so many diminutive ziptiehs and Bashi-Bazouks in' minatnre,' when they decline to go to bed.by daylight, or by lamplight either, until they are driven like sheep, in their bunks, when from sunrise to suppertime they never desist from impish tricks, the " small infantry become to you objects, not ef tenderness and sympathy, but of terror and horror. The leader of the gang was an attenuated girl-demon of about nine or teD. She and the sallowfaced little goblins whom she led made our lives; miserable.- They ran races in the saloon, they' made raidb on the steward's pantry; they blocked up the companion; they worried the cooks in the galley; they raised commotions in the forecastle; they sprawled about the hurricane deck, stopping-up with yells of exultation the ventilators which should have given a little air to the hapless passengers sweltering in the cabins below. Tfaoy perched on the taffraU and were in continuous peril of tumbling overboard. They hung on the.rigging and made Gordian knots of carefully coiled ropes; they i burst into the smoking-room and disturbed the quietude of the five gentlemen who were constantly playing poker, in that divan; they ran between the legal and. all but destroyed the e^nJUMuB

of- the smoking-room steward, who periodically {brought "drinks" to the; five poker-players; they overturned the deck chairs andVmade holes in the awnings; they derided rebuking quartermasters, and spoke to the man at the wheel—and all this'-'they r did,, : not in the exuberance; of infantile animal spirits, but in a sheer spirit of waiiton turbulence and " euasedriess," wholly unchecked by .their mammas or other females relatives, who were either too sea-sick or too lazy to look after, and control them. ' Our captain was shocked, bat he -had the navigation of his ship to attend to. The purser had never seen such children, he averred—since the last ran from' San Francisco to Sydney, I should say; the doctor admitted that his small compatriots were'just a little worse than Australian "larrikin" children,; the American lady doctor'and her sister—both unmarried ladies—were scandalised at the ill-behavior of this troop of small pirates of the Pacific, and suggested ".spanking" ail round as a cure for the evil; but it was not until lata in the voyage,—we had • one. or • two ;- good " northers" and a "southerly buster"— that is to say, sjiff gales with a heavy sea running—that came to our aidjrand"-for -a-*while~partially paralysed the activity of these imps of the ocean. .