My Adult Education

I

THERE were fourteen of us — father, mother, and twelve children. Our house was a little stone cabin in a back alley in the town of Antrim, in Ulster. Five passed away in infancy. The rest of us left one by one as we were able to shift for ourselves.

I can see that cabin now. I can feel the dampness of the mud floor and count the patches where the plaster had fallen from the whitewashed walls. My father was a cobbler, but, our little world being largely a community of barefooted people, work was scarce. As a result we were hungry most of the time. There were various ways of supplementing the family food supply, especially in the summer, when we roamed the glens and hillsides for wild fruits or set night lines in the river to catch eels. Our water supply being at a distance, I often earned bread and butter or cold potatoes by acting as water carrier for the neighbors.

Poor as we were, we had always a ‘sup’ or a ‘bite’ for the beggars, of whom there seemed to be an endless procession. When I was nine or ten years of age I peddled newspapers, and that added between sixpence and a shilling a week to the family exchequer. Two great events cheered our poor souls each year. We looked forward to them as children in more favored homes look forward to Santa Claus. One was the annual Christmas Soirée of the Methodists. I had an attenuated attachment to the parish church, but I deserted the fold each year long enough to qualify for the Methodist feast. We had buns and coffee. The other event was a Christmas gift from the baker, of a currant loaf. I have often wondered why the butcher and the pawnbroker did n’t chip in some moiety as well, but perhaps the volume of our business did n’t warrant such benevolence.

When hunger became acute, and it often did, my mother would tell us fairy stories, stories of miraculous supply by the leprechaun. The stories were convincing, but my own last resort was to stand with my bare feet on the baker’s cellar grating, or in the doomay of the bakery, and inhale the fumes of new-made bread. And that was before the advent of either Coué or Mrs. Eddy.

At ‘the bottom of the world,’ as my mother called our alley, we had as close neighbors the chimney sweeps, the local ragman, a process server, and a lot of widows and orphans and wastrels and derelicts who were uncataloguable. How they all managed to eke out existence has always been a mystery to me.

The word ‘poverty’ inadequately describes the condition of life in that alley. It was stark destitution. We were all chronically, hopelessly hungry and utterly unconscious that there was anything unusual about it. We never complained. We never connected our condition with economic systems or governments good or bad. As a child I had an idea — dim and hazy, it is true — that things in the world were just about as God ordered them. ‘The Man above only knows,’ my father would say to some of our questionings, ‘and He won’t let on.’

Despite the rags and dirt and hunger and cold, despite the limitations, economic, physical, and mental, we were, on the whole, a happy lot. We were acquainted with sorrow, but there was always more laughter than tears. The sun never took a peep into that drab stone cabin, but we had light and warmth in the personality of my mother, who radiated sweetness and cheer. We often went to bed supperless, but never without wonderful stories, of which my mother had an inexhaustible supply.

Between my seventh and fourteenth birthdays was the magic period of my youth. I used to speak of those years as wasted time. I think differently now. I was idly dreaming, getting acquainted with life — the life of birds and beasts, of men and women, of trees and flowers. I helped the fishermen on the Lough, gathered scallops, willow sticks for thatching, ran errands, sold papers, played shinny, shot marbles, spun tops, went birdnesting, whistled from pillar to post with my hands in my pockets, with a tously head of red hair and scarcely enough clothing on me to dust a violin, a thing of ‘shreds and patches,’ but dreaming — always dreaming.

In my age of puberty occurred four outstanding events. Each made a deep impression on me. Two of them influenced my whole after life. In a potato field I lay down to rest one day. I stretched myself out at full length on my back and fell asleep. When I awoke, a very beautiful girl stood there looking at me. She was a visitor at the land steward’s and I had conducted her over the trails in the woods and taught her the names of many wild flowers. I jumped to my feet and smilingly apologized. I was startled at first, and my embarrassment put out of gear the mechanism of speech. I was as startled as I had been a few days previously when at a sharp turn in the footpath in the ravine I had suddenly come upon a fawn. The beautiful thing fascinated me. I wanted a word, a word of conciliation, of kindness. Graceful as a nymph it stood there, nerve-strained like a bow bent for the discharge of an arrow, its head poised in the air, fire shooting from its eyes. It remained but an instant, then with a frightened plunge it cleared the clump of laurel bushes and disappeared.

When I stood before the beautiful city girl, I remembered the fawn and half expected the girl to vanish instantly out of sight. There was something of the fawn in her graceful form, some of the fire in her blue eyes, and in her merry laughter a suggestion of mountain and glen. Strange new emotions swept through me and I faintly realized that I had crossed the bridge that separates the boy from the man.

On another occasion, in the same field, I had an experience which seemed to raise me from the condition of an inert clod of clay to soul-consciousness. I was sitting on the fence at the close of day awaiting the ringing of the bell which called the laborers from the fields. I had been daydreaming, humming the lines of a hymn, feeling akin to all around me. A beautiful sunset made the heavens a symphony of brilliant colors. Something within responded. There was a sense of awe. I sat still and quiet, gazing in rapture at the rapidly changing scene. Suddenly an extraordinary emotion swept through my being. It seemed as if some lifegiving fluid had been poured into my blood. Tears came and flowed freely. Then I was seized with a desire to cry aloud, to shout, to scream.

I rushed into the wood, fell on my knees, and began to pray. What I prayed for or about I do not know. I had heard of people acting like this under some deep conviction of sin. I had no such conviction. It seemed rather a convincement of love. Some of my friends have made various and conflicting guesses at the riddle of this experience. It is easy to err in giving a name to such things. Judged by its aftermath, it seemed to me to be the birth of a soul.

As I went through the farmyard that night on my way home, some of the workers peered into my face, and, seeing there an unusual expression, inquired in tones of amazement as to its meaning. I evaded answering their questions and sped home like the wind. That night in my little attic place beneath the roof I think I found myself. Something very beautiful had been born in my mind or heart or soul — how could I know which ? I was under the spell of an afflatus. I was very happy, but afraid of sleep lest I should awaken and find it gone.

II

The first reaction to the new ideal was a chemical one. I wanted to be clean. Facilities were meagre. I made the most of them and began at once. Soap was cheap, water was plentiful, and the family hair comb stood the strain. I could n’t quite make out what had happened, but when I went to work next morning I was in love with life. My idea of God at this period was that He was a big man in the skies. I prayed to Him for the things I considered necessary. When a new job came I looked upon the advancement as an act of the Divine, and I was grateful. I went into the hunting stables of a rich man who was a member of Parliament for our county. Here I was fitted out with clothes becoming the position of stableboy.

A year at the ‘big house’ gave me my first insight into the life and manners of the aristocracy. It gave me also a love for horses and a knowledge of their management and care. ‘The master’ was a gentleman of the old school, passionately fond of fine horses. When he came into the courtyard to mount a horse he would take out of his pocket a silk handkerchief, crumple it in his hand, and then run it over the side of the horse. If the handkerchief showed the slightest sign of dust or dirt, the horse went back to the stable and the head groom was in trouble. This action made a strange impression upon me. How could I help comparing the luxurious life of a horse with the lives of the grooms, and especially with my own life? It meant much to be a horse; to have good food, a good bed, and an attendant. It meant much less to be a man.

With a new mind and a decent outfit of clothes I gravitated toward the parish church and Sunday School. I joined a Bible class, and at the end of a year, though I could neither read nor write, I had memorized more texts than anybody in the school. In an examination I took first prize for the largest number of memorized passages. When asked what I wanted for the prize I naïvely asked for a suit of clothes. The superintendent thought it a good joke. He had forgotten that I could n’t read, so he gave me a book. I attended, without invitation, the vicar’s Bible class which met on Monday evenings. When the members discovered that I could n’t read they asked the vicar to exclude me or to keep me from asking questions. He was not inclined to do either, but I saved him from embarrassment by staying away.

There was a Y. M. C. A. Some of the respectable young men of the town got a room in the Court House and met once a week. I made known my desire to join, but I did n’t measure up to the requirements socially. I was told plainly that it was for the better class of young men. The thing died shortly after I left. It must have died of respectability.

In our vicinity there was a drunken stonemason. I thought somebody should get close to him and help him to live a more human life. Failing to find anybody willing, I undertook the job myself. He signed the pledge and I organized him into the town’s first temperance society, when there were only enough of us to fill the offices. It looked for a day or so as if I might be elected to something. I was doomed again to disappointment. We elected the stonemason president. It sounded nice and he was very proud of it. His effort to smooth my slightly ruffled feelings left much to be desired in delicacy.

‘You’re a great hand at gettin’ an oul’ throllop t’ sign the pledge,’ he said, ‘but of coorse whin it comes to office ye’re too damned ig’rant.’

The vicar prepared me for confirmation. Illiteracy was more than a handicap. It was a matter of shame. I had looked forward to being the support of my father and mother. That was one of my dreams; but spiritual quickening gave me discontent with ignorance. I felt that I must do something. To do it in Antrim seemed impossible. I must go away and shed my ignorance among strangers. That seemed cruel to the old people. The others had gone and were contributing nothing. I had resented that. Now I was thinking of doing the same thing.

As I walked down the aisle of the old church to receive confirmation I experienced a return of the radiance. I was poor and ignorant, but possessed of something which wealth could not buy nor culture guarantee. The conflict between my dream of intelligence and my sense of duty continued and intensified. I prayed, but the heavens were silent. I stated my problem to my mother and Willie Withero, the stonebreaker.

‘Ye’ve got a good head, me bhoy,’ said the stone-breaker, ‘but there’s nothin’ in it. Get somethin’ in it or ye’ll be cleanin’ oul’ horses or breakin’ stones, like me, fur the rest of yer natural life.’

‘I gave ye to God before ye were born, dear,’ my mother said, ‘and it would be terrible bad manners to tell Him what to do with you.’

My father was not so easily satisfied. He seemed to see in me something different and naturally wanted to hold on. He was rough-hewn, illiterate, and inefficient, but he had a great heart, and the delicacy and tenderness of his devotion to my mother were beyond praise. ‘God’s a gintleman!’ he said. ‘He’ll look afther our bhoy.’

The fourth event was a lecture on ‘Lincoln, the Rail-splitter.’ I was still selling newspapers when this occurred. It was a very cold winter’s night. Something was going on at the only hall in the town. I went there in the hope of selling the tail end of my day’s supply. I was barefooted. My clothing was scant. I stood at the door with my papers under my arm and shivering with cold. The man at the door, touched, I suppose, with a sense of pity, invited me inside.

I had never heard of Lincoln, and I had n’t the faintest idea what a railsplitter was; but the story of Lincoln was plainly told, and as I sat on a bench at the back of the hall, with my feet dangling six inches from the floor, I became imbued with a great ideal. The lecturer, in a series of vivid word pictures, gave us the story of Lincoln, his humble origin, his struggles for enlightenment, and his ultimate success. That night when I left the hall I had a hero in my heart. I had also a firm conviction that I could escape from the bondage of ignorance.

III

At eighteen I was still a stableboy. My mind was a sort of mental haggis. As a whole it moved me forward. I had diagnosed the experience in the potato field as religion, but it had lost its radiance as I participated in the mutual hostility of the dominant creeds. I was mingling freely with men and absorbing naturally the narrow views of those around me. I had an inferiority complex and worshiped at the shrine of the conservative demigods. My mother saw the trend of my mind and warned me.

The last three months as groom or groom’s helper were months of comfort. The master had a country place on a hill by the edge of the sea. His horses and family went there every summer. His favorite horse was a distinguished racer called the Fisherman, and when I was ordered to ride him to the castle by the sea I was thrilled with the first great honor that had come my way. That ride of fifty miles was a triumphal experience. Every village I passed through turned out to see the famous horse. Every farmer felt honored when I rode into his yard for food or water. I was to use my own judgment as to time and care. This honor was not unalloyed. It created jealousy. The head groom advised that a more experienced man be sent. But the order stood. The master was satisfied that I was competent and he knew that I was the only man in his stables who had no use for public houses.

At the castle on the hill I was given a room. It was my first room and in it was the first bed I had ever used. A room and a bed and bathing facilities were all luxuries. They were things of a world I had not known. At the end of the summer, with only enough money to pay the train fare to the capital of the north, I started my pilgrimage and burned my bridges as I went along.

I did not linger long in Belfast. I became coachman for a business man who used me also to deliver goods. I did n’t mind what I did. The really important thing at this temporary stopover was listening to ‘Roarin’ Hugh Hanna’ thunder his preachments from the pulpit of St. Enoch’s. After a few months I moved on to the coal fields of Scotland, where I had three brothers. A fully experienced miner in those days was paid about four shillings for a twelve-hour day. I became a miner’s mucker at one shilling a day. The work was hard, exacting, and dangerous. The contrast between this blackened underworld and the freedom and sunshine of my last three months in Ireland was very sharp. We worked half naked. We wore little oil lamps on our brows. In a few days my face was blistered, my body racked with pain. We worked like beasts and behaved like animals. I did n’t mind that in the pit, but the sordidness of the shack we lived in and the brutality and vulgarity of the life around me made the place to me a hell on earth.

Keir Hardie and Bob Smillie were stirring the sluggish souls of men in that very region at that time. I had no social conscience. I could only see my own problem — the conquest of ignorance. There were times when the difficulties seemed to paralyze all effort. I became discouraged often, but never caved in. One night I was passing a drab, cheerless-looking building and curiosity carried me in. A tall, princely-looking young man clad in a gray suit was addressing about a hundred miners. The talk was over my head, but the personality of the man thrilled me. The man was Professor Henry Drummond — one of God’s signposts. I had five minutes’ conversation with him after the meeting, and the next morning, with about as much baggage as I could stuff in my hat, I went into the wilderness of Glasgow.

There was romance in roaming the streets by night and doggedly searching for work during the day; but when a day’s rain soaked me and hunger had reduced my energy to exhaustion, the romance vanished. I could neither beg nor steal. In such a condition I went to the docks one night in the hope of creeping under cover somewhere, somehow. An empty dry-goods case seemed a hopeful relief. I put my hand in. It rested on a human head. In Gothic language a Scotch voice ordered me off the earth. Courtesy and culture are wonderful things when one can afford them. That night I had none to spare. Like a bundle of wet rags I dumped myself in on top of this human. Then followed in Scotch and Irish a conversation accompanied by all the pothooks and hangers in the physical alphabet. When it was over we were both very warm and somewhat smeared. Together we occupied that dry-goods hotel for the night and together next morning went in search of the gayly bedecked men who were fishing in the muddy waters of the city for just such fish as we were.

The origin of the impulsive move occurred in the night. Sitting there stewing in the juice of unfortuitous circumstances, an idea came to me. I remembered that in our town a young man became a soldier. He could neither read nor write. Five years later he returned. He had been transformed. He could read and write, he walked straight, — nobody else in the town could, — and he shaved every day. It was an illumination. I became enthusiastic and longed for daylight.

When I spoke of my plans to my fellow guest he thought that he might accompany me at least to the rendezvous, but after that I was to go my own way and he would go his. He had a reputation to sustain — his father was a hearse-driver. At the rendezvous he changed his mind. He would take a chance on me. We would enlist together. So we did, but we had difficulty in selecting just what we wanted. All branches of the service were represented: Cavalry, Infantry, Artillery. I could n’t distinguish between a Horse-guardsman and a stovepipe. I had never seen such a glorious display of color, swords, bayonets, and sashes, dangling and clanking. We were as pleased as children in a toy shop. They walked up and they walked down. They twirled their little canes and pulled at the wisps on their upper lips.

‘Let’s join this!’ I ventured, as a ponderous being in red and gold strode down toward us.

‘What dae ye think it is?’ he asked.

‘God knows,’ I said, ‘but did ye iver see anything finer in yer life?’

He never did, so we took the Queen’s shilling and were shipped off to the depot. We imagined the swanky being we chose was a Guardsman, but he was n’t. He was a Red Marine, so we had joined neither the Army nor the Navy.

I had one object in entering the service. I never for a moment lost sight of it. I wanted a school, and here it was. From the military point of view it was an unnecessary frill, but the Royal Marines had made it an efficient branch of the training. By a blunder I had stumbled into the best school in the whole of the British service.

I was one of twenty men in a large room, each with a cot bed and space for his kit. We ate together, drilled together, and fitted as best we could into each other’s lives. Most of them were rough specimens. I was dubbed ‘sky pilot’ before I had been there a week. I was rather slow in assimilating military knowledge, but in school I absorbed what they gave me as a sponge absorbs water. I made a record. But I was n’t there to be a scholar. I was a soldier in the making, and they had their own peculiar methods of reminding me of it. I was at the training depot for a year. My body responded to discipline and training. The constant drill, with gymnasium exercises, whipped me into shape in a short time. My mind responded with less alacrity to words of command on the drill field. There used to be an idea that before a man could be made a good soldier it was necessary to break his spirit. A later idea was that if a man had any spirit he could be aroused out of incompetence and lethargy by a thrashing. I was an easy victim of the new idea.

A boxing instructor was told off to attend to this. Under pretext of teaching me how to box, he pasted me all over the floor, to the amusement of three hundred men. In my case the experiment was successful. I was more than awakened. I was a nonresistant from principle and a soldier from necessity, but the humiliation awakened the animal in me and I set aside the principle for the time being. There was a young Scotsman in our room who knew the boxing game so well that he found it difficult to persuade any of his roommates to practise with him. I offered myself as a punching bag. He saw my eagerness and knew my nature, so he charged me sixpence a lesson. I did n’t mind the sixpence, but I had an appetite in those days, the memory of which makes me hungry even now. I needed the Queen’s allowance of money to supplement her limited rations. After six weeks’ training I went back, and in an Irish brogue which I could n’t even imitate now I asked for another lesson from the boxing instructor.

In this comeback I did n’t box. I had no intention of boxing. I just unleashed the tiger in my blood and played the jungle man. I fought eighteen rounds that night, but with six different men. I was master of the floor in every session. I became a savage. I enjoyed a savage’s delight and received a savage’s reward — cheap applause. I recovered. I recovered on my knees down by the Goodwin Sands, where by divine help I resolved to tie up the tiger.

IV

When I arrived at corps headquarters my record from the training station testified to efficiency and good character. I was thankful then, I am thankful now, for that chance to develop my mind and body. The passion for learning grew. I loved life. I exulted in access to books. I had a childlike delight in beautiful things.

A few outstanding events occurred during my brief stay in a garrison town. I read my first novel, I heard a great orator, I saw Irving play Hamlet, and I had a thrilling experience with prayer. My first novel was John Halifax, Gentleman. When as yet I was but learning to read I had been advised to read it. In a box marked ‘3d. each’ at a bookseller’s door I found a copy. The poverty and illiteracy of the hero’s youth were like my own. He became my first hero in fiction. Little bits of the book wove themselves into the texture of my life.

One night I heard Henry Irving play Hamlet. It was the first play I had ever seen in a theatre. I was tremendously moved. Next day I secured a copy of the play and in a few more weeks had memorized it from beginning to end. Irving had opened the door.

I heard all the great orators of the later Victorian period and the early part of the present century. The greatest of them all was Charles Bradlaugh, the atheist. One Sunday afternoon I was one of several thousand who listened to him as he endeavored to demolish the idea of God. The foundations of my faith had a rude shaking. I was probably the most ignorant person in that assembly, but when the speaker volunteered to answer questions I arose in my place and awaited recognition. It seemed a mile to where he stood on the platform. I was in scarlet uniform. He saw me and called for my question. I was so scared that words would n’t come. I seemed choked. Imagining that my voice was merely low, he invited me to the platform. I suppose the sight of my uniform reminded him of the days when he had worn such an outfit himself. He saw my embarrassment and laid his hand affectionately on my shoulder. Encouraged, I said my little piece — brief, pointed.

‘I have a hope in my heart which inspires and gives me joy. I call it God. Would Mr. Bradlaugh take it away from me and put nothing in its place?’

He might have, could have, given a scathing answer. He did n’t.

‘No, my lad,’ he said. ‘Charles Bradlaugh would be the last man on earth to take a pleasure from a soldier lad, even though it be a belief in God.’ There were giants in those days, and Bradlaugh was one of them.

I learned that fifty men were to be drafted for the Mediterranean fleet and that I was to be one of them. Only one thing interested me in this outlook: which of the ships had the best library? The flagship, I was told, had the best library of any ship afloat. I prayed that God would have me sent there. God was the big man in the skies who knew everybody. My prayer was a sort of ex parte bargain that if He would give me the education which the big ship could furnish I would give Him all my life. My faith was childlike, simple, and primitive. Somehow I felt sure that my prayer would be answered. When the roll was called and our ship assignments made, I was detailed for a gunboat which had no library and few men. I was so amazed that I had courage — the courage of desperation — to ask if there was n’t some mistake. I was threatened with punishment for questioning the roll call. To my simple mind the wheel of life had slipped a cog — several cogs. I was in despair, but consoled myself with the thought that God was punishing me for being too sure or for something else I had done in my ignorance.

The following day, after our parade and inspection, the color sergeant called my name. A mistake had been made, so he said, and I was to join the flagship! I partly exploded there and then, and fully exploded in my barrack room, where in a twinkling I divested myself of kit and accoutrements and offered to fight any two men in the room, just to show how kindly I felt toward the world! There was a roar of laughter, but no fighters. I explained and shouted, ‘Hurrah for God!’ Childish? Oh yes, very childish; but I go back to that period often and wonder.

The fifteen men in my mess were all good fellows, though rough and vulgar. Conversation usually wallowed in obscenity and profanity. The absence of either set a man apart, as odd, a ‘sky pilot,’ or effeminate. It was not easy to be unaffected by the constant impact of these blistering words. A little knowledge of psychology would have helped considerably; but I knew nothing about it. We had a small group of Bible students — fundamentalists, and then some. I became one of them, but they were constantly deploring my worldliness, which consisted of a jubilant nature, hearty laughter, fairy stories, quick wit in repartee, and my inability to take literally their creeds. Life to them seemed an evil to be endured. To me it was an urn of joy.

I needed but four hours’ sleep — never slept more until I was over fifty years of age. Four hours of work or duty and sixteen for study. When I hid myself behind a stanchion in order to listen to the schoolmaster, I was discovered and forced to explain. The explanation secured for me help in my most difficult study. I had observed since my earliest mental awakenment the slovenly use of language. I determined to speak English correctly. In order to take full advantage of the opportunities around me I became a waiter. The English language was spoken as purely and correctly by the officers I served as in any university faculty. I had a pad and pencil handy and jotted down words which were strange and new to me. Under a night lamp in the flats below, when the crew were asleep, I made their acquaintance with the aid of a dictionary. I had an Irish brogue. I made strenuous efforts to shed it. I memorized ten pages at a time of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and when ashore would repeat them aloud in some solitary place.

At the end of the first year I occupied a niche in that little world. We were constantly cruising around the Mediterranean. To me it was a dream world. The histories of those countries on its borders were full of romance. Before we entered a port I had made myself acquainted with its history. Half the crew looked to me for information on the places we visited. When we reached the Piræus I had special leave to visit Athens. One night in Greek waters I was doing duty for a comrade on the upper deck—sentry duty. A man in evening dress came from the Admiral’s cabin and walked back and forth with me for half an hour. He seemed amazed that a common marine should be acquainted with Greek history. I had been ashore and was going again. He asked if I had visited the Palace and I told him the ruins of the age of Pericles were of more interest.

‘You must see the Palace,’ he said. ‘ I will give you a card which will admit you.’

I did n’t look at it just then — it was really a little scrap of paper on which I supposed he had written his name. When I politely asked him his name, he said, ‘George.’ Next morning I discovered that I had been talking to a king.

V

With a passion for knowledge, abundance of books, and sixteen hours a day at my disposal, I made progress. In reading I averaged a novel a day. A third assistant steward taught me Italian. In the rudiments of French a midshipman was my teacher. I absorbed as much knowledge from persons and places as from books. When the fleet lay at anchor outside Joppa, I was given special leave to visit the Holy Land. The journey from Joppa to Jerusalem in those days was full of thrills. For a simple-minded peasant lad, devoted to religion, the visit to the scenes of the life of Jesus was of the nature of an intensified exaltation. Everything that had happened to me since my awakenment seemed a special providence. This visit seemed to cap the climax of all privileges.

While off Limasol in Cyprus I had a vacation during which I saw Ohnefalch-Richter, the German archæologist, digging for the remains of ruined empires. Thirteen civilizations were buried there. When on the coast of Asia Minor I went boar hunting in the wilds and visited the tomb of Folycarp on the way back. The Adriatic and Ægean Seas were books of ancient history perused in a leisurely cruise which lasted six months. We touched every land bordering on the great sea, and each had its own story, running back into the origin of nations and races. No university could offer such educational facilities, yet I was the only man in a crew of a thousand who was taking full advantage of them. The men of the rank and file could tell all about the number and variety of saloons, brothels, and amusements. Of historic values or the life of the nations we visited they knew nothing.

Our commander was a seaman of the old school. He loved sail drill in rough weather. I think I hear him now: ‘Stand by! Away aloft! Bear out on the yardarm!’ The day when the order to bear out on the yardarm was given, the captain of the foretop lost his nerve or his grip and dropped dead on the deck at my feet. The evolution was suspended. Next day we began the same drill. When the same order was given the new captain bungled somehow and fell to the deck in the same manner. We buried them together in old Famagusta that afternoon. The next day we went at the same evolution. The new captain was a jovial chap who was one of the best seamen in the Navy; but often when he went ashore he forgot the name of his ship and the number of his mess. Drink was his master. He had been sober for a long time and was again eligible for promotion. He was made captain of the foretop, but the superstition of the sea gripped us all — two men out, the third had to go! But the new captain did n’t go. He performed his stuff and came down full of laughter. He was probably the most popular man on the ship. We all wanted to hug him as he descended the rigging with the agility of a cat.

A few days later I got a side light on his success. One of our officers was entertaining a friend from another ship. At tea the visitor asked if we had a man on board called Hicks. He was informed we had.

‘ We were thirty miles out at sea the other night when I saw a light flashing on the dark clouds,’ he said, ‘and I told our signalman to take down the code. This is what he gave me: —

’God, this is Billy Hicks. I ain’t afraid of no bloomin’ man nor devil. I ain’t afraid of no Davy Jones’s bleedin’ locker, neither. I don’t ask for no favors but just one. This is it. When I strike the foretops to-morrow let me do it with the guts of a man what is clean, and God, dear God, from this-’ere day give me the feelin’ I used to have long ago when I knelt at my mother’s knee and said, “ Our Father.” Good night, dear God.

Hicks had been a signalman, and when the superstition of the ‘third’ man seized him he sought help from the clouds. I kept track of him for some years. He became a chief petty officer.

I had seen General Gordon in Alexandria on his way to the Sudan. When he was hemmed in at Khartum and Osman Digna was leading his native troops against the British in the desert beyond Suakin, over half of my comrades were sent to the front. Being a waiter and batman, I was not drafted. Some months later an officer was drafted. His servant was passé and somewhat faded physically. I offered him my bank account to let me go in his place. As he was considering offering his savings for a substitute he was easily persuaded, and off I went to the relief of Gordon.

VI

Some poisoned arrows have been shot at the character of General Gordon in these latter days. What he was in reality I clo not know. I do know that among us common rank-and-file fighting men his name had a magic spell. Our devotion to the soldier-saint was based more on the saint than on the soldier. We loved the man and were willing to die for him. When we heard that he had been killed in Khartum we were grief-stricken and had no more interest in fighting the Arabs. We drove Osman Digna into the hills and scattered his men, but we had no hatred. These wild Fuzzy-wuzzies came out with their long spears and shields and obsolete rifles, met us, and fought us with a courage that seemed to us madness.

My only reading matter in the desert was a pocket Testament and a small copy of Chapman’s Homer. Even here I was in the school of life.

When the long dreary campaign was over I returned with the troops and in boyish glee enjoyed the momentary glory which such a return always involves. Military glory seemed a shallow thing to me. I could see through it. I saw through it all. I was more grateful than words can express — grateful for the chance of an education, grateful for association with officers and men. Now I had earned it. The score was as even as I could make it and I wanted to move on; but the way was not yet open. I spent seven years in uniform. Those years were full of thrills, full of growth, full of valuable experience. I matriculated into Oxford as a passman and remained long enough to know Dr. Benjamin Jowett and to fall in love with the most fascinating city on earth. I had n’t the money or the social prestige. I was a square peg in a round hole. I felt it in every fibre of my being, and I was ill at ease all the brief time I was there. Dr. Jowett had wisdom. He advised me, and once again I was out on my pilgrimage — literally without either scrip or staff.

When I returned to Antrim I had an incentive, an ambition. I could tell my mother of it. She understood and had faith in me. I wanted to be a missionary or a minister in order to help men. My mother had given me a name in baptism which means ‘helper of men.’ I did n’t know then that to my sainted mother good-bye was farewell.

‘We shall meet again, Mother,’ I said as I was leaving.

‘Oh, aye, dear, we shall — out there beyond the meadows and the clouds.’

When I landed in New York I had one dollar in my pocket. My other assets were a strong body, a willing mind, and faith in God. I might perhaps add that I had faith in myself. Through what paths, and to what work, these led me I shall tell elsewhere.

VII

Many years passed before I went back to Ireland. My mother had then been dead some time. My father still lived. In the scenes of my childhood I seemed to be in another world. I was a stranger in the land of my birth. Everybody and everything seemed so small, so drab, so ancient.

The door of our old stone cabin was like the gate of a public park — open to all comers. Folks of our neighborhood walked in and out as people walk in and out of a department store. This was as I would have it, up to a certain point. Then familiarity became something else. I wanted to be alone with my father and sister.

The chimney corner — my mother’s place — was vacant. In all my life I have never felt an emptiness so keenly. She would have understood everything. My father and sister had not traveled far along the spiritual pathway of understanding. I went out to the potato field — to the spot from which the long pilgrimage started. I visited the stone pile where my childhood chum was breaking stones. He took the wire net from his eyes and looked at me. He expected me to look as I did when I left and talk in the old vernacular. He was disappointed in both. I was another person and he was the same. I expected some of the old fervor of companionship to return. There was no thrill, no common ground. A wide gulf separated us. It was of the mind.

I went to the churchyard and stood by the grave of the most saintly woman I have ever known. Everything I was and hoped to be I owed to her — to her love and faith. Perhaps she heard me as I said this at her grave. In the home nothing was changed. In the town all was as it had been except that a new generation carried on. The news of my return spread quickly. At night the house was so full we could hardly move. The people would have remained all night if I had n’t taken my coat off and announced that I was going to take everything else off and have a bath in my father’s old tub. That cleared the house. We barred the door and were alone.

My father had become so deaf that they heard outside nearly everything said to him anyway. What puzzled them was where I was going to sleep. It puzzled my father also. He could n’t imagine my climbing the little ladder and sliding in beneath the roof as I did for so many years when a boy. I had provided for the emergency. I spread a laprobe on the mud floor beside the fire and went to sleep. Next day I took my father to a hillside outside Belfast in order to explain many things to him. In the mind of the poor in Ireland, America spelled wealth. I had remained poor. There was a blank look in his eyes when I tried to explain that in the career I had cut out for myself the only wealth was of the mind and soul. If I had told him the whole truth he would have been utterly mystified.

While in Belfast I was invited to preach in a large church. My father was there. When he saw me in a Geneva gown delivering a sermon his eyes filled with tears and I knew he was thinking about my mother. This was her dream. When it was over and I was surrounded by friends, he put his arms around me and said he wished they’d ‘hap him up’ beside her now, as he had nothing more to live for. By a curious coincidence the mother of the girl I had met in the potato field sat beside my father in church. The girl had wedded a tragedy and was then in the United States.

I went to Glasgow to visit a brother and sister. I took my father with me. Every day we took long walks. We talked of things one talks of on the edge of the grave — life, death, immortality. When he said, in language more forceful than elegant, that ‘God would n’t be so damned niggardly’ as to keep him from my mother, there was neither profanity nor irreverence in the expression. I reminded him of his own words, ‘God’s a gintleman.’

‘Oh, aye, ye can bate on that,’ he said, ‘an’ if He tuk oul’ Withero in, He’ll not bar the dour on me.’

At the station a group of curious bystanders stood on the platform watching the trembling old man clinging to me and dreading to let me go.

‘We have just one minute more, Father.’

‘Aye, aye, wan minute — my God, jist wan minute; why could n’t ye stay a wee while longer?'

‘There are so many voices calling me over the sea.’

He saw the people watching us and impulsively dragged me toward a waiting room. He realized that the time was up. He stopped, grabbed me around the neck, and kissed me passionately over and over again. The whistle blew.

‘All aboard!’

He clutched me and held me with the grip of a drowning man. I had to break loose, gently, lovingly, tears bedimming my own eyes. I caught a glimpse of him as the train moved out, despair and a picture of death on his face. His lips were trembling and he could n’t see me any more. His eyes were too full of tears. A few months later they buried him beside my mother.

(The next installment of Mr. Irvine’s story will be ‘A Batman at Large’)