BOYS WHO LEARNT NEEDLEWORK.

Western Star, Issue 346, 24 April 1880, Page 7

BOYS WHO LEARNT NEEDLEWORK.

■When the late Admiral was a young midshipman, be was on a voyage round the world in one or King George Ill’s ships. He was three years away, and as he grew very fast, he found himself sailing in the Pacific Ocean with hardly a stitch of clodies to his back His mother, sister of Admiral Lord , had taught her little boy to sew, so he got some canvas out of the ship’s stores, and cut out and made himself a new suit Qt‘ clothes ; his mother was very proud of these, and, when her son was an admiral, glje used to show them to her grandchildren, and tell them the story. Eather more than thirty years ago, a lady went to.call on another one rainy afternoon; the house was bui t on an island in a lake in Ireland. In the drawing-room were two little boys sitting on footstools, one on each side of the fireplace. Probably the visitor looked astonished, for the mother of the little boys said in a low tone, “ Please don’t laugh at them ; what should I do with them on this island, on a lainy day if they were too proud to sew ?” One of th’se tmys was a lieutenant in the Crimean war; he fought none the worse because he knew how to use the needle as well as the sword, when he with his men was for eighteen hours in the Eedah on the memorable 18th June. The chaplain of an Irish institution had seen when he was young the straits to which the Trench aristocratic refugees were reduced, from having to learn how to do things for themselves ; and he got a tailor to come into his house and teach his boys how to cut out and make and mend their own clothes. One of the boys is now an old general, but he sews on his own buttons to this very day ; and when he was on service in one of the small British stations in Asi r, he not only mended and patched his own clothes, but those of his brother officers; all the men of his regiment knitted their own socks. —“ C^ueeu,”