Never! We repeat it to parents and guardians.
Never! But the fiendish tutors, chuckling in their glee, little
knew what was passing through the cold, haughty intellect of
Charles Fanuel Hall Golightly, aged ten; what curled the lip of
Benjamin Franklin Jenkins, aged seven; or what shone in the bold
blue eyes of Bromley Chitterlings, aged six and a half, as they sat
in the corner of the playground at recess. Their only other
companion and confidant was the negro porter and janitor of the
school, known as "Pirate Jim."
Fitly, indeed, was he named, as the secrets of his early wild
career--confessed freely to his noble young friends--plainly
showed. A slaver at the age of seventeen, the ringleader of a
mutiny on the African Coast at the age of twenty, a privateersman
during the last war with England, the commander of a fire-ship and
its sole survivor at twenty-five, with a wild intermediate career
of unmixed piracy, until the Rebellion called him to civil service
again as a blockade-runner, and peace and a desire for rural repose
led him to seek the janitorship of the Doemville Academy, where no
questions were asked and references not exchanged: he was, indeed,
a fit mentor for our daring youth.
Pages:
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171