Chapter XII: A Prisoner of War (1)

I suppose that a man who has been almost drowned--to the limit that all sense leaves him, at least--has drunk as deep of death as a person can and talk of it afterwards. With a shifting light before my eyes, a throbbing pain in my temples, and a sickness all through me, I found myself knowing that I was breathing once more; but I was water-logged, and when I attempted to move, I could feel that I was filled to the throat with some gallons of brine. All at once I doubled up with a spasm of choking, and in a minute I felt better.

I was lying in the bow of a boat, whose motion I could feel distinctly, but owing to the thwart being immediately over my head, I could see nothing but a succession of sturdy legs and bare feet pushing against the stretchers as the men rowed.

Such an attack of hiccoughs racked me that it called attention to my having regained my senses.

"'Ullo, Bill, 'ere's another one come back from Davy Jones," said a black-whiskered man, leaning over with his face close to mine. "He's swallowed a bloomin' volcano, from the looks of him."

"Where am I?" I murmured.

"Wot a question!" was the answer. "This is the same old world, and full of trouble. Did ye take us for angels and me for St. Peter?"

"Help me up," I answered.

The man bent down and hauled me out by the shoulders to a sitting position; then I saw how it was. _Prisonnier!_ I was captured, and here was a fine ending to the glorious life that I had been anticipating.

I suppose now that if I had spoken all my thoughts since I had left Belair, and asked even only a few of the many questions that my common-sense prompted me to keep to myself, I should have been considered stark, staring mad, let alone being a simpleton. It is almost ridiculous to look back at it and think that I did not know certainly who was the President of the United States, or anything about the history of the last two years. If any one had told me that the British killed their prisoners, I should not have doubted it, and what was to become of me I had not the least idea, but I saw that I was not alone in the strait. Out of the crew of nineteen men that were in the long-boat, ten, including the wounded seaman, were sitting dejectedly in the bow and stern-sheets. Together with the Englishmen, we crowded the barge uncomfortably, but not dangerously.

The British sailors appeared to be rather a beefy set, and they were in high spirits over their capture. An officer, with his hair standing up in tall curls over his forehead, sat in the stern-sheets bareheaded. He was nursing a wounded hip carefully, and half leaning against a little midshipman, who had his arm thrown about his shoulder.

Raising my eyes from the boat, I perceived that the frigate was drifting with her topsail against the mast only a few hundred yards from us. I began to feel a bitter hatred of her, and it gave me pleasure to see the long white gashes in her sides, and to notice the effect of the gunnery of the _Young Eagle_ plainly apparent.

"Halloa, Johnny Bull!" said some one behind me with a laugh, "I guess you run against something, didn't you, a short while ago? Ship looks kind of unhealthy, like a man's face with the small-pox."

I turned. It was Sutton, the foretopman, speaking. He did not appear to be very much depressed by his surroundings, nor did he fear the result of his impudence, to judge of his expression.

"Stow your jaw," answered one of the Englishmen. "There are worse things than small-pox."

I noticed that the man's face was pitted deeply.

"That's so," Sutton replied; "there's the cat, for instance. I beg your pardon for not thinking of it; I shouldn't slight an acquaintance of yours for anything."

There was some more coarse badinage, not worth recording, and we were under the shadow of the ship. Many faces lined her bulwarks, and a rope being thrown to us, soon we were fending the boat off from the side. Then a rope-ladder rattled down, and not without some difficulty those in the bow began to clamber up.

Soon it was my turn. It was not until I reached the deck that I had any idea of the effect of shot and splinter, but the dark stains, hastily mopped up, had a reddish tinge that was suggestive, and the loose running-gear that had fallen from aloft showed that Captain Temple must have used some of the missiles condemned by the English--and here, let me state, afterwards used by them, to which I can make oath.

As we were being hastened below many were the looks of hatred thrown at us, and cutting taunts also in plenty. To all of these Sutton kept a running fire of replying, in which he was ably seconded by one or two others.

"Why, my old boiled lobster," he replied to a marine who thrust his great face over the hatch-combing as we descended, "if I hadn't ketched a crab, I believe we'd 'a' took you with the long-boat!"

A young officer was directing our guards where to stow us, and under his orders we were huddled together in the fore-hold, near the cable tier, where the only light and air that reached us came down through the chain-hatch.

I looked about and saw that there were in our party six sailormen and four landsmen who had been enrolled in our marine force. We presented a sorry appearance sitting there in the dim light on a lot of spare cable, the most uncomfortable thing to rest on that one can imagine.

What had become of the rest of us in the long-boat I did not know then, but as I found out afterwards, I might as well tell of it here. There had been nineteen in all when we started; seven reached the shore safely, two were drowned--one of them, alas! the brave cockswain who had been wounded, as I have stated. Now as there is no report of this action to be found in the naval chronicles of Great Britain--at least I do not know of any--it may be of interest to put down what we heard of it, although it cannot be vouched for. From the talk we heard, I make out that there were nine killed on board the _Acastra_ (for this was the name of the vessel), and upwards of twenty wounded. There were two killed on board the _Young Eagle_, and two wounded. In this, I think, I am correct.

The groaning of the poor lad with the bloody head caused me to wonder whether this was going to be our prison cell, or whether we were placed there temporarily before moving to a better or a worse one. Sutton took off his jacket, and we made Mackie, the man I had saved from drowning, the wounded one, as comfortable as we possibly could; but it was not long before he was wandering in his mind, and this depressed us all, for there is nothing so apt to cut one's spirits as the watching of suffering beyond the power of alievement.

We were sitting in silence when a voice broke upon us.

"Is there an officer down there?" it questioned. "I hear that one of you is an officer."

"Yes," said Sutton, "there is."

Then he whispered to me, placing one hand on my shoulder, "Speak up, lad; it will do no harm to play it so, and you may get a chance to speak to some one higher than these hulk-scuttlers. Make a plea for Mackie, if you can, or the boy will die down here in this rat-hole."

So I stood up on my feet, and gazing up at the circle of light through which came the cable, I said, loudly, "What do you want of me?"

For an instant I thought that I was going to be made the victim of a joke, as the man did not reply, but talked to some one evidently standing over him.

"Yes, sir," he said, "there's an officer, a midshipman, I dare say, down there with them."

In a few minutes we heard the drawing of the heavy bolts that held the door through the bulkhead into the mid-hold, and some one said, "Let that young man who spoke come here."

I stepped out. The door was closed behind me, and I saw it was guarded by two marines with muskets. Stumbling over barrels and boxes, I followed the three figures ahead of me up the ladder at an order from one of them, and soon I found myself on the berth-deck. We were evidently crowding on all sail, for the frigate heeled over to such an angle that the half-ports had been closed for comfort, but the water dashed in through several rents in her top sides. A shiver passed over me, for the idea suddenly came that I was going to be hanged or thrown overboard, and this was emphasized by the sight I caught of four sailors carrying a limp dead Englishman up from the cockpit--that he had died under the surgeon's knife was evident.

From the deck above came the sound of shouting and hurrying. The frigate came up into the wind, that must have freshened, and swung off on the other tack. As soon as this had occurred, I noticed that some one was coming down the ladder near where I stood. As he stooped under a beam and approached us, I perceived that the man was in a handsome uniform, with great epaulets and much gilt braid.

"One of the Yankee pirates, eh?" he said, but despite the import of the words his voice had a fine ring to it, and at one glance into his face I saw here was a man who would stoop to no mean revenge. His light blue eyes were almost kindly were it not for the bent brows above them; his face was extremely handsome and well moulded.

"Are you an officer of that brig?" questioned the tall man, who I now made out must be the Captain of the frigate.

"I am," I replied, drawing myself up, and making a salute with my elbow at right angles and my fingers at my forehead.

With a quick glance at my position the Captain made this statement:

"An officer, eh? But _you_ are no sailor; you may be a soldier, though."

I almost faltered in my reply.

"I am instructor in cutlass drill and small arms," I said.

The Englishman half smiled at this.

"A nautical maitre d'armes?" he asked.

"Oui, monsieur," I returned.

"And speaks French in the bargain, by St. George! Well, well! What is the name of that vessel you belonged to?"

"The _Young Eagle_."

"Privateer, eh? I thought as much."

At this he called up the ladder to the spar-deck.

"Oh, Mr. Vyse!" he said. "It was a Yankee privateer, and not the _Wasp_ or the _Hornet_, or any of their navy."

I was tempted to reply something about _stinging_, nevertheless, but I held my tongue.

"What's your Captain's name?" was the next question.

I gave it, and the names of the three other officers, but I was interrupted.

"Well, you can tell Captain Temple, with Captain Hilton's compliments, that he is the most impudent and most reckless scamp unhanged," said the tall man, quietly.

"When shall I see him, sir?" I asked.

"Lord knows. Not for some time, I judge," was the answer. Then Captain Hilton turned. "Take him below again," he ordered to my guards.

They stepped forward, and each laid a hand on my shoulders. I pushed them off.

"One moment, sir," I began. "There is a member of our crew badly wounded below with us. He will surely die unless something is done for him."

As I was speaking an officer had descended the ladder from above. I had seen the heels of his boots as he stood on the top step for some time. He was short and thick-set, with a mottled reddish face.

"Mr. Vyse, you heard what this lad said. Pray see that this wounded man is attended to in accordance with his hurt, and his place of confinement changed if necessary."

"Very good, sir," the short man answered, but he had such a mean look on his face that I took a distrust against him.

When I reached the hold again and was thrust in once more among my companions, there was a deal of questioning.

"You should have said you were a Lieutenant," said Sutton.

"It would have made no difference with a privateer officer," put in another seaman, Edward Brown, a Long-Islander. "They'd hang us all if they dared; and, mark me, they won't pamper us."

I did not tell of my military salute, that was so involuntary, having betrayed me, but of course I can see it was the reason of the Captain's quick statement.

It was pitch-dark down in our dank, bilge-smelling hole, and long after we stopped talking I could not fall asleep. The ridges of the cable worked into my flesh, and the muttered complaints of the others as they tried to make themselves comfortable and found they could not, mingled with the light-headed ramblings of poor Mackie, and a sound suspiciously like weeping from the corner in which lay one of the young landsmen, all combined to add to the misery.

Mr. Vyse had failed to carry out his superior's instructions, and there had been no one to look after the wounded man, nor had we been given so much as a pannikin of water, and we were all suffering from thirst.

Morning came slowly down to us after an apparent year of night, and with it some relief, for we were given something to eat and drink. Weevilly bread, greenish salt-horse, and water that smelt unhealthy do not make a meal that is inviting, but we ate it. After it had been passed in to us through the entrance we heard a banging and clattering, and found they were nailing up this mode of ingress. Our next meal was lowered to us through the circular opening overhead. It was but a foot or so in diameter, and thus we were bottled up, as it were, like flies in a jug. On this day Mackie was very low, and we all thought like to die. I doubt very much if any of us could have lived many days in that foul, close place, but we had to stand it some time longer, and the way out of it was like this: The third day, at about noon, we heard the stirring and trampling of feet and the confused muttering of voices. I swarmed up the cable until my head was close to the opening, and there I listened. They were casting loose a gun and dealing out powder and shot--I could make that clearly out. But now I heard the sounds of conversation close to me.

"It's the _Constitution_," said a voice; "at least they say so up on deck."

"Then we're in for it," was the reply. "I've heard tell, messmate, that she's a sixty-gun ship in disguise."

"How far off is she?" was the question.

"About six miles off the larboard bow. Here, you can see her from the port."

"What's going on up there?" asked Sutton from below.

"They say we have sighted a ship, the _Constitution_; and they're clearing decks for action," I answered.

"The _Constitution_!" exclaimed Brown. "Then we're free men. Cheer up, my hearties!"

Sutton's reply to this startled me so that I almost slid down the cable. Three roaring huzzas broke from him, in which the others joined. Soon I felt the swaying of my support, and I saw that the quarter gunner was climbing up to me. It was a crawl of some ten feet.

"It's a good thing, Debrin, that we are below water if we get to bandying shot, I tell you. See how she raked the _Guerrière_." Sutton chuckled.

But we could understand nothing from the confusion of sounds, until all at once I heard a voice I recognized speaking close to me. I knew the tones before I caught the words. It was Captain Hilton. In whatever he was saying I interrupted him.

"Oh, Captain Hilton," I cried, "for Heaven's sake, help us! We've a dying man down here."

"Who's that speaking?" questioned the Captain.

"The prisoners in the chain-hold, sir." I heard the answer given in a gruff tone, but most politely.

"That is no place for them," said Hilton, angrily, "and I thought I gave orders--"

The rest of his speech I did not catch, for a roller hand-spike rumbled on deck in such a way as to drown it, but I thought I detected some expostulation from the other voice.

We slid down, Sutton and I, to the others. Mackie was conscious, but so weak from his fever and suffering that he could not lift his head. When we told him the news he drew a long breath.

"It's too late, messmates," he whispered. "I'm done for, I fear me."

We sat there now with courage growing, waiting to cheer at the first gun-shot; but all was silence from above. This continued for full ten minutes; then we heard the sound of laughter, and caught the words:

"The signal of the day, eh? I know her; it's the _Pique_."

Sutton, who had understood, struck out with both feet and arms, muttering to himself.

"It's one of their own vessels," he cried. "Did you ever see such luck?"

But my cry for succor, heard by the English Captain, had done us good, and that afternoon the barriers were broken down from the entrance, and we were transferred to a more comfortable place of confinement under the steerage bulkhead, where at least we could sleep on hard boards, and we were given a blanket apiece.

Poor Mackie was taken to the sick-bay. It was evident that he was not long for this world--and alas! and alas! in four days the news was brought to us that our messmate had died; his skull had been fractured, and the doctor wondered at his having held to life so long. He was buried at sea, and I must say this, that Captain Hilton proved himself to be a magnanimous, big-hearted gentleman, for we were allowed on deck, and a passage of Scripture was read before they dropped the closed hammock overboard into the great graveyard of the sailor.

As we went below to our cell, which was a partition of the after-hold, as I have said, Sutton observed to me:

"We're steering to the eastward. Yes, and we'll see the inside of a prison where men rot, if tales are true. We're bound for England, lad."

Now the time went by, and even the count of days was lost. We sang songs, told stories, and played at draughts and other games that we could manage in our limited room. I wish I had here space to record all that passed. Some of the yarns spun would be worth the reading, and I learned a great deal about the condition of affairs between America and England, and that, as my friend Plummer said, "we had given the lion's tail a twist, and a good one."

One of the songs that was most popular was "Hull's Victory," and a rattling good sea song it was. I used to take the tenor, Sutton the bass, in a way that would make the beams shake, and were it not that we were on short allowance in the eating line we would have been quite comfortable. Every day two of us at a time were allowed to take the air, in charge of a marine. Sometimes it was Sutton and I who walked together, and sometimes it was Brown or Craig, the landsman, who was my companion. Poor Craig! His spirit appeared entirely broken. He had behaved bravely in the long-boat, but now his lack of heart was pitiful. He contributed little to our enjoyment, and the only person who ever gave him a kindly word, I really think, was myself. He spoke to me often of his home and of the sorrow it had given his mother to part with him. I can vouch for this, that if he ever got back there, he would stay; for all desire toward adventure and roaming was killed within him.

I have not mentioned the other seamen by name purposely, for, with the exception of Brown and Sutton, they were an ordinary set of good and bad who would have done well under competent leadership perhaps, but who displayed no individuality; but they were all loyal to their flag, and did not appear much cowed by their confinement. When I walked the deck with Sutton I enjoyed it most. He was an old man-of-war's man, and criticised the handling of the _Acastra_ in rather a superior manner.

Some of the foremast hands amongst the Englishmen were rather kindly disposed toward us, and many bits of tobacco they gave out of sheer kindheartedness to our forlorn little hand, some of whom had suffered actually from being deprived of the stimulant.

It happened that Brown and I were walking the deck when the sound of "land, ho!" came down from the mast-head. During the last day or so we had sighted a number of sail, all English, but now this created some excitement. There must have been a mist on the water that had hidden the land as we approached it, for by the time our recreation was almost ended we could spy it from the deck as we passed the gangway--tall white cliffs showing above the horizon.

"That's Land's End," observed Brown, jumping up to look over the bulwarks, for of course we were not allowed to approach near a port. "Johnny Cutlass, my son, this voyage is over. In three hours we'll be in the English Channel, and then for a little sojourn on board the hulks, or maybe we'll be shipped direct to one of their land prisons, where we'll find plenty of company, if I don't miss my reckoning; but keep up courage--things might be worse."

We were the last to go on deck this day, but the news we brought down with us started a great lot of talking. All showed interest but Craig, who sat there in his usual position, with his forehead on his knees. But a great change in our life was destined for the morrow.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

TYPICAL ENGLISH SCHOOLS.

BY JOHN CORBIN.

ETON.

Fifty years after William of Wykeham founded Winchester, King Henry the Sixth founded a school at Eton, a little town across the Thames from his great palace at Windsor. The rules he drew up for governing his "college" he copied from Wykeham; and in order to give it the best possible start, he took one-half the college at Winchester--the head master, five fellows, and thirty-five scholars--and settled them at Eton. For a hundred years or so Eton was a mere daughter of Winchester; but as centuries passed it took a different character. Its site, in the very shadow of Windsor Castle, naturally secured for it royal favor. George the Third and William the Fourth took a lively personal interest in its welfare; and in late years members of the royal family, the sons of the Duke of Connaught and the little Duke of Albany, grandchildren of Queen Victoria, have come to Eton to prepare for the university. To-day the school numbers over a thousand--twice as many as Winchester--and its graduates include far more men of birth or genius than those of any other public school. Just as Winchester raised the standard of scholarship at Oxford, so Eton has made Oxford the university of the English aristocracy.

The most interesting part of the buildings are the school-rooms, which stand to-day almost precisely as they were built. It gives you a queer feeling to think how many boys and how many generations of boys have sat on those benches at _Arma virumque cano_, or trying to drum the [Greek: ho], [Greek: hê], [Greek: tó] into heads that are already overflowing with dreams of fresh breezes on the river, and of the sound of the cricket-ball on the playing-fields.

On the wood-work of the rooms you will find the names of the boys who have studied here. On this post you can read H. Wesley, which, Etonians will tell you, is the way Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, used to write his name. Pitt carved his name twice, in modest little italics. Charles James Fox sprawled his in bold capitals across a high rail of the panelled wainscot. And here is Shelley. Each letter is quite plainly, even boldly formed; and yet they all huddle together so nervously that they seem to shrink from being seen. As you look at them, you call to mind the courage and independence that made Shelley refuse to be fagged, and then his pitiful plight when the fag-masters got up "Shelley baits," and hunted him through the town;--you can almost see his pale cheeks and his lustrous eyes. Many of these famous names stand in a group of their school friends--a poet between a banker and a soldier, all boys together--and among these many another, perhaps the most popular of all the boys at school, of whom the world has never heard. Gladstone's name is as correct as an epitaph. And so it is an epitaph of the ancient custom of carving your own name, for since his time you have to pay ten shillings when you leave school, and have a carver do it for you. These carved names are still arranged in groups of friends; and sometimes you will find a boy's name where his father and grandfather placed theirs; but they are all as like as so many types in a font; not one of them tells you a syllable about what kind of a boy the owner was. It would be so much better to allow each boy a certain space, and let him carve his own name the day he leaves.

Eton, like Winchester, has seventy scholars--"King's scholars," or "collagers," as they are called--who are chosen by competitive examination, and are supported by the funds of the foundation. Every year four or five of these are awarded scholarships at King's College, Cambridge, just as the best boys from Winchester go to New College, Oxford. The rest of the boys, as at Winchester, live under the care of masters in houses of about thirty-five boys each, scattered through the town, and are called "oppidans." The oppidans call the collagers "tugs," a word which probably refers to their _togas_--that is, gowns. Not many years ago the collagers were so poorly fed and housed, and so wretched generally, that the phrase was "beastly tugs"; but of late this class prejudice is dying out, and the fact that several of the collagers have been great athletes and good fellows all round has worked wonders. One still hears of "beastly tugs," and the prejudice against being supported by the college is not yet dead; but one finds it mostly among the younger boys, and even they do not feel it half so much as they pretend.

The government of the school is very like that at Winchester. The Captain of the College has much the same duties as the Prefect of Hall, and is aided by the other best scholars. The oppidans have also a Captain, but he is under the Captain of the College. Besides this, the houses have each a Captain, as the Winchester houses, have Prefects. Of course it does not always happen that the man who leads his house in scholarship is man enough to rule the rest; but if he is not, the leading athletes step in and take matters into their own hands.

The punishment masters give for small offences is _poenas_--that is, lines of Latin or Greek to write out. In extreme cases the head master "swishes" a boy with a lot of birch twigs tied together. In time past swishing seems to have been about the only means of discipline, and the head master had a regular block for the purpose. One night a lot of old Etonians, who had been celebrating a cricket victory, broke into the room where the block was, and carried it off to London. There they hired rooms and founded an Eton Block Society, to which no one could belong who had not been swished on the block at school.

What Wykehamists call _tunding_, Etonians call _smacking_. The only difference is that instead of standing up, the culprit sometimes has to put his head under a table, while the Captain rushes across the room with uplifted rod. Etonians say that though smacking sometimes draws blood, the worst part of the punishment is the suspense of waiting between blows with your head under the table. The offences punished by smacking are disorder and disobedience in the house. On an average, the head master has only half a dozen boys or so to swish each term, and the average boy is not smacked more than a dozen times during his six years at Eton. Many people, of course, think bodily punishment very brutal, but I never knew a public-school boy or a master who did not approve of it as practised nowadays. In fact, you could hardly enlist the older boys on the side of law and order without giving them a means of discipline which the younger boys respect; and if you didn't do this, you would have to give up the best parts of the public schools.

The houses at Eton are clustered about the college, and look very comfortable with their broad, ivy-covered fronts, and window-boxes blazing with flowers. In the description of Winchester, there was so much to say about the college that I had no room to speak of the houses; but at Eton the houses are the more important part. Instead of large common sleeping-rooms, the boys have each a room of his own. These are not usually more than ten feet square, and besides a folding-bed, bath-tub, and wash-stand, they contain not only a fireplace, to cook meals, and a tea table, but also a study table and chair, and sometimes a bookcase and ottoman. You wouldn't think there was much space left for a boy to live in, to say nothing of making a racket, but there is. A favorite joke in some of the houses is to gather all the bath-tubs in a hall, and shove them through the transom into some poor fellow's room. This fills the room so full that the boy who owns it has to get the care-taker to drag out each separate bath-tub, amid vast sound and confusion, before he can go to bed. In the winter months the boys play football up and down the halls, using the doors at either end for goal. This also makes enough noise. But these are not the only diversions. In a number of rooms you will find collections of books far larger and more wisely selected than is usual on the shelves even of American university men.

A boy enters his house at about twelve years old. From this time on he is carefully watched by the house-master, with a view to checking his bad traits and developing his good ones. Most of the masters make it a point to find out all they can about a boy from his parents, and then carry on his training as it was begun; or if he thinks his training unwise, to correct it. The fact that most of the troublesome details of discipline are in the hands of the elder boys makes a master's relations with his pupils unusually frank and affectionate. And as the masters are always well educated, usually sensible, and often famous athletes, they have a strong and very admirable influence. Much of all this, of course, the boy never suspects. He simply grows to respect and like his master without quite knowing why.

A master's best means of bringing out a boy's character is to put him in the way of having the right sort of comrades. Sometimes the older boys--perhaps at the master's suggestion--invite new boys to breakfast, as second-year men at the university invite freshmen; but usually a boy becomes acquainted with his seniors by fagging for them. His severest duties as a fag are to cook breakfast and supper in his fag-master's room; but in many of the houses the boys eat their meals together, so the fags have a pretty easy time of it. In fact, altogether too much has been said about the tyranny and brutality of fagging. Most small boys are glad enough to be with the big boys, and a Senior who plays football or rows well might have as many youngsters to wait on him as he chose. Fag-masters are often the fags' best friends, and even at the universities afterward keep a kindly eye upon them. Sometimes it happens that a fag turns out a great cricketer or oarsman, in which case his old fag-master is as proud of him as of a younger brother. Like as not in after-life a country parson can look back upon the time when he fagged the bishop of his diocese. Like tunding or smacking, fagging is at bottom more humane than the neglect which a small boy suffers at an American school.

The boys are kept very much together in each house by their meals and the early hour of "lock-up"; while chapel, frequent school-hours, and "absences"--that is, roll-calls--keep them from spending much time away from the school. As a result the fellows in a house get to know each other thoroughly, and to stick together like brothers. Each house has its debating and literary society, its football and cricket teams, and its crew. Where there is so much loyalty to the house, it is only natural that rivalry among the houses should be keen. Ten times as many boys go into athletic contests as in America. Altogether a house is a miniature college, and a school a small university. Even if a boy didn't know a soul outside of his house, he need never become lonesome, and seldom homesick. This life in the houses is almost all the society boys have at most public schools.

Eton, however, is so large that it supports several school societies. The most important of these is the Eton Society, or "Pop," as it is generally called. When Pop was founded early in the present century, its aim was purely literary. Mr. Gladstone relates that in his time they used to elect now and then a solid athletic man, because they believed in encouraging sports. To-day Pop still holds debates; but it has grown almost exclusively athletic. One of the younger masters told me that as a boy he and a few others succeeded in electing a Captain of the College who, though a good fellow, was not an athlete; but that to do it they had to blackball everybody else till their man got in. Present members say that only good athletes are elected. The clever fellows have a society of their own, which is much what Pop was at first.

The members of Pop are mainly the cricketers who play against Winchester and Harrow, and the boating-men who row for and often win the Ladies' Plate at Henley. These together make, say, twenty, and eight more or so are chosen from the fellows who "get their colors" for playing the Eton games of football, which are so different from all other Rugby football that they can play them only among themselves. You must not think, however, that a man will get on Pop merely for being a great athlete. He must be a first-rate fellow besides, and as it happens, there are always a number of clever men and good scholars among the athletes in the society. In a word, Pop is the best society that can be made up from the athletic men, and is even more purely athletic than the Dickey at Harvard or Vincent's at Oxford.

The authority Pop exercises over the school, though so peculiar as to be difficult to describe, is enormous. It is as great, for instance, as that of the three Senior societies at Yale, and is shown in much the same way. Yet such revolts of public opinion as have occurred of late at Yale, for instance, during the discussion of the undergraduate rule, are unknown. It would be more just to compare Pop to the Yale Senior societies at their prime--that is, before the university began to outgrow them. The most obvious way in which Pop affects Eton life is, of course, in matters of school discipline. Such offences as do not come directly within the province of the Captains or the masters, Pop deals with in no faint-hearted manner. For instance, some years ago a boy who had gone with the Eton eleven to Winchester sent home bogus telegrams about the match, and kept the fellows swarming about the bulletin-boards at Eton in anxious suspense. Now there is nothing an English boy likes better than a hoax, but not about such serious subjects. When that youngster got back to Eton, Pop smacked him soundly--or, in the Eton phrase, he was "Pop-caned." On another occasion, when a number of boys had been expelled for a very serious offence which had been proved against them, one of them made an imposing exit in a drag at an hour when the street in front of the college was swarming with the boys. Being a popular fellow, he was loudly cheered. For this outbreak against the action of the masters, numbers of the elder boys were Pop-caned.

Such societies as Pop form almost the entire social life at most American schools and universities; but in England the members never lose loyalty for the college or house they belong to. This is the reason why at Eton Pop has such a strong and good influence over the rest of the school. In America, when a man gets into a leading society he is naturally and almost inevitably drawn away from his earlier and less fortunate friends, so that the school or university is split up into two parts--those who are in things and those who are not. Very often, too, as at Harvard, those who are in things are divided among themselves, so that there is no unity of spirit. Our societies will, of course, always exist; but their evil influence might be destroyed, and their good influence strengthened, by forming the school into houses as soon as the boys arrive, and the universities into something like colleges.

By this time you must have suspected that in spite of a lingering class prejudice against the tugs, the Eton spirit is really democratic. At Oxford and Cambridge Lord So-and-so may often find his way where plain So-and-so could not go; but English schoolboys refuse to give way to mere lords and earls. A tradesman once told me of the experience of the little Earl of Blank, who used to present his card when buying things. The other boys found it out, followed him from shop to shop, and booted him every time he did it. "All the same," said the tradesman, "it is awkward when a nobleman tells you his plain name, and you send the goods to _Blank, Esq._" As often as not one gets to know a fellow pretty well before finding out that he has a title. The little Princes of Connaught, and even the Duke of Albany, will boil their own kettles for tea, and perhaps even fag with the other boys. It was not only on the playing-fields of Eton that the battle of Waterloo was won. It was in the school-rooms and houses as well.

THE EVOLUTION OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING.

BY HERBERT LAWS WEBB.

Electrical engineering began with the telegraph, some sixty years ago. The road for the telegraph was paved by many great experimenters and discoverers. Under their patient and fostering care the infant showed its first teeth, so to speak.

In 1837, when Queen Victoria was just beginning her long reign, the telegraph began to do practical work. Cooke and Wheatstone started a system in London, with instruments having five little needles bobbing about, by which the signals were read. Five wires had to be strung between the two stations, but the system was soon improved so that only one was required. This telegraph very early in its life received a splendid advertisement by causing the arrest of a murderer, who otherwise might have escaped. He was travelling to London after his crime, and expected to lose himself among the crowds of the city. But it so happened that a trial of the telegraph was being made along the very line of railway. His description was telegraphed to London, and he stepped from the train into the arms of the police.

At the same time that Cooke and Wheatstone were working in England, Morse was hard at work in America. His system was very complete and practical, and, once he was able to give it a fair trial in public, it was received with great enthusiasm in this country and all over the world. The instrument that makes the furious rattling you hear in the halls of all the hotels is Morse's instrument.

Morse's first public trial was made in 1844--fifty-three years ago. After that telegraph lines were built up very quickly in all parts of the world. Many clever men took up the work, and invented methods and devices for improving the systems, and to-day the extent of the telegraph lines of the world and the amount of work done are simply stupendous. To give just two examples: In the early years of the telegraph the lines were quite short, and only a few words could be signalled in a minute. To-day a line is building from Cairo to Cape Town, the clear length of the African continent, and there are in daily use automatic instruments which send long press messages at the rate of 450 words a minute. In sending by hand forty words a minute is quite a common speed.

As soon as land telegraphs were fairly started men said, why not lay wires under the sea? Why not? So in 1850 they laid a wire under the English Channel, from Dover to Calais. It was a very short-lived line, because the day after it was laid a French fisherman picked it up with his anchor, and knowing nothing about telegraphs, and caring less, cut it in two to clear his miserable anchor. The next year they laid a strong cable, sheathed with iron wires, proof against fishermen's knives. That worked splendidly, and they say that parts of that same cable are still working under the Channel. Of course it has been often repaired and pieced out with new, but it shows what sturdy offspring an infant can have when a submarine wire forty-five years old still does service.

After that submarine cables were laid down between various countries. Some of them were costly failures, because, although the men who had taken the infant in charge had learned a great deal about its little ways, they had not learned all the refinements necessary to success in laying and working deep-sea ocean cables. So, in 1857, when Cyrus Field formed his Atlantic Telegraph Company, the cable that he and his plucky companions laid under the Atlantic failed completely of its object. But Field and some of those with him simply would not accept defeat. So they spent more money, laid more cables, failed again, toiled and moiled and worked like beavers for years, until at last in 1866 they finished a cable from Ireland to Nova Scotia that worked like a charm. It was, without exception, the greatest piece of work ever done in electricity, and its history is one of the finest of the many tales of engineering enterprise.

To-day there are about a dozen cables between North America and Europe, and three between South America and Europe. There are cables in every sea and ocean in the world, and across every ocean except the Pacific. In all there are more than 150,000 miles of submarine cable under the waters of the globe, and there is a fleet of forty ships, large and small, fitted out solely for the purpose of laying and repairing submarine cables. Nowadays the laying of an Atlantic cable attracts no attention, and the fishing up of a slender rope less than an inch thick from the floor of the ocean, 12,000 or 15,000 feet down, is a thing done a dozen times a year. In Cyrus Field's time the Atlantic cable was the topic of the world for years, and the recovery of the broken cable was for a long time impossible, because no machinery then made could stand the strain.

In 1866 a telegram from New York to London took hours on the way. For many years past the merchants of the two cities have been in the habit of grumbling vigorously if they don't get replies to their messages within half an hour of despatching. The result of the Derby is known in New York before the winning horse has slacked his pace after passing the judge's box, and it is all over the world before the proud owner has had time to lead him back into the paddock. A cable message goes round the world in an hour or so, and the sun gets so rattled that people hear of events that happened to-morrow.

No sooner had the world got fairly settled down to submarine telegraphy than the dynamo came along. Up to that time electricity had always been procured from chemical batteries. To obtain it mechanically by moving a coil of wire in front of a magnet was a great step in advance. The infant was now striding along lustily. Batteries are expensive, inconvenient, and of very small power. Once get electricity from a machine, and there is no limit to the amount to be got. The arc-light had been produced by means of joining many hundreds of batteries together, but that was a brilliant experiment--there was nothing practical or commercial about it. But with an electric machine it was different, and once the machine was in existence the electric light was something to think about.

The evolution of the electric motor followed, as a natural thing, from the evolution of the dynamo, for a motor is simply a dynamo reversed. In the dynamo you revolve the armature--as the coils that move between the magnets are called--and the machine gives out current. In the motor you feed current into the armature, and it revolves and gives out mechanical power. There is a very pretty story to the effect that this action was discovered quite by chance. In some accidental way the wires leading from a dynamo at work were connected to another dynamo, and this second one at once began to turn merrily round, as if by magic. However this may be, the dynamo had been in existence for some time before any practical work was done in sending power from place to place along a slender wire. The electric motor, as a commercial machine, is barely ten years old. Yet now its busy cheerful hum may be heard under thousands of street cars in hundreds of towns. It is used to work all sorts of machinery, from the sewing-machine and the dentist's drill (beastly thing!) to heavy factory machines of all kinds. Ten years ago the electric motor was in its swaddling-clothes, and was never placed out of sight of its nurse, the dynamo. Nowadays electrical engineers think nothing of building motors of several hundreds of horse-power, and of placing them many miles from the dynamos that supply them with current. In this way a factory may be run by the power of a waterfall ever so many miles distant. The waterfall drives the dynamo, the dynamo sends its current along wires carried on poles up hill and down dale until they reach the motor, and the motor drives the machinery of the mill. At Niagara Falls work of this kind will be done on a very large scale, and many places round about will be supplied with light and power from the huge dynamos that are to be placed there.

Perhaps the most beautiful and intelligent of this wonderful family of "infants" was born eighteen years ago--the telephone. Even when it was the tiniest kind of an infant, and many men, some of them quite clever in other lines than prophesying, thought it would never be more than a puny little creature--a sort of scientific freak--the telephone was the most wonderful thing of the century. It did something absolutely new. It took your voice, made an electric current of it, and turned it out at the other end voice again, with all the little quivers and tones that each voice has of its own. The telephone, more than any other electrical invention, made people think that anything is possible with electricity. It was such a marvellous performance to send the voice along a wire from one end of a city to another, that when people became a little familiar with it they were prepared for anything. A famous electrician once raised a laugh at a dinner by relating in his speech that when a friend had asked him over the telephone if he recognized his voice, he replied, "Yes, and I can smell your cigar." But you would not be surprised if you learned to-morrow that you could see the man at the other end of the wire, or smell his cigar by electricity, or that a line of flying ships between New York and London was to start skimming next week.

But it was some little time before people got familiar with the telephone. At first they did not believe in it, though now they will believe in anything called electrical. For some time there were few telephones in use, and the lines were very short. Then the exchange system was started, and telephony began to grow with leaps and bounds. In 1874 the telephone, as the saying goes, "was not born nor thought of" outside of the laboratory of Professor Bell. In 1894, there were 250,000 telephone subscribers in the United States. New York and Chicago each has 10,000. The number of conversations carried on each day by means of the telephone--well, you might almost as well try to count the grains of sand on the sea-shore. Not only has this infant learned to talk a great deal--and, surprising to say, it speaks all languages with equal ease, even the hopelessly difficult ones--but it has got amazing lung power. Its voice reaches in a moment farther than you can travel in a day. When young, it whispered a distance of a mile or two. At six or eight years of age it talked clearly with a couple of hundred miles between speaker and listener. For three years or more people in Boston and New York have talked with people in Chicago, and to-day they think nothing of that, and want to talk to San Francisco.

The reform in interscholastic athletics in the middle West seems to be going forward most satisfactorily. We hear fewer complaints of semi-professionalism among the school teams, and most of these have no foundation in fact. It seems clear now that most of the breaches of amateur spirit that we have had to record heretofore were largely the result of a lack of knowledge and appreciation of the strictness of the rules which have to govern amateur sport, rather than of a desire to defeat the ends and purposes of these regulations.

As has been chronicled in this Department, Madison High-School at one time allowed two players on its football team to take courses at the university while still attending school. The fact that they attended the university at all should have disqualified these men; but the Madisonians did not interpret the rules in that way. Now, however, they have come to see that this sort of thing involves a principle, and that it cannot be allowed.

The past season, therefore, so far as I am able to find out, the Madison High-School team has been made up strictly of students of the school, and the players have taken up football for the sport of the game, rather than for the sake of the empty honor of a championship. This "championship" business is getting to be very much overestimated and exaggerated, and may eventually do much harm to sport; but this is another subject, and we shall have to come back to that at another time.