Jacob Faithful

“Take care you don’t buy goose, for your imperance, sir,” cried old Tom.

“A forward boy,” exclaimed the Dominie.

“Yes,” replied Tom “I’m generally forward.”

“Art thou forward in thy learning? Canst thou tell me Latin for goose?”

“To be sure,” replied Tom; “Brandy.”

“Brandy!” exclaimed the Dominie. “Nay, child, it is anser.”

“Then I was right,” replied Tom. “You had your answer!”

“The boy is apt.” Cluck cluck.

“He is apt to be devilish saucy, old gentleman; but never mind that, there’s no harm in him.”

“This, then, is young Tom, I presume, Jacob?” said the Dominie, referring to me.

“Yes, sir,” replied I. “You have seen old Tom, and young Tom, and you have only to see Tommy.”

“Want to see Tommy, sir?” cried Tom. “Here, Tommy, Tommy!”

But Tommy, who was rather busy with a bone forward, did not immediately answer to his call, and the Dominie turned round to survey the river. The scene was busy, barges and boats passing in every direction, others lying on shore, with waggons taking out the coals and other cargoes, men at work, shouting or laughing with each other. “‘Populus in fluviis,’ as Virgil hath it. Grand indeed is the vast river, ‘Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum,’ as the generations of men are swept into eternity,” said the Dominie, musing aloud. But Tommy had now made his appearance, and Tom, in his mischief, had laid hold of the tail of the Dominie’s coat, and shown it to the dog. The dog, accustomed to seize a rope when it was shown to him, immediately seized the Dominie’s coat, making three desperate tugs at it. The Dominie, who was in one of his reveries, and probably thought it was I who wished to direct his attention elsewhere, each time waved his hand, without turning round, as much as to say, “I am busy now.”

“Haul and hold,” cried Tom to the dog, splitting his sides, and the tears running down his cheeks with laughing. Tommy made one more desperate tug, carrying away one tail of the Dominie’s coat; but the Dominie perceived it not, he was still “nubibus,” while the dog galloped forward with the fragment, and Tom chased him to recover it. The Dominie continued in his reverie, when old Tom burst out—

“O, England, dear England, bright gem of the ocean,
Thy valleys and fields look fertile and gay,
The heart clings to thee with a sacred devotion,
And memory adores when in far lands away.”

The song gradually called the Dominie to his recollection; indeed, the strain was so beautiful that it would have vibrated in the ears of a dying man. The Dominie gradually turned round, and when old Tom had finished, exclaimed, “Truly it did delight mine ear, and from such—and,” continued the Dominie, looking down upon old Tom—“without legs too!”

“Why, old gentleman, I don’t sing with my legs,” answered old Tom.

“Nay, good Dux, I am not so deficient as not to be aware that a man singeth from the mouth; yet is thy voice mellifluous, sweet as the honey of Hybla, strong—”

“As the Latin for goose,” finished Tom. “Come, father, old Dictionary is in the doldrums; rouse him up with another stave.”

“I’ll rouse you up with the stave of a cask over your shoulders, Mr Tom. What have you done with the old gentleman’s swallow-tail?”

“Leave me to settle that affair, father: I know how to get out of a scrape.”

“So you ought, you scamp, considering how many you get into; but the craft are swinging and heaving up. Forward there, Jacob, and sway up the mast; there’s Tom and Tommy to help you.”

The mast was hoisted up, the sail set, and the lighter in the stream before the Dominie was out of his reverie.

“Are there whirlpools here?” said the Dominie, talking more to himself than to those about him.

“Whirlpools!” replied young Tom, who was watching and mocking him; “yes, that there are, under the bridges. I’ve watched a dozen chips go down, one after the other.”

“A dozen ships!” exclaimed the Dominie, turning to Tom; “and every soul lost?”

“Never saw them afterwards,” replied Tom, in a mournful voice.

“How little did I dream of the dangers of those so near me,” said the Dominie, turning away, and communing with himself. “‘Those who go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters;’—‘Et vastas aperit Syrtes;’—‘These men see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.’—‘Alternante vorans vasta Charybdis aqua.’—‘For at his word the stormy wind ariseth, which lifteth up the waves thereof.’—‘Surgens a puppi ventus.—Ubi tempestas et caeli mobilis humor.’—‘They are carried up to the heavens, and down again to the deep.’—‘Gurgitibus miris et lactis vertice torrens.’—‘Their soul melteth away because of their troubles.’—‘Stant pavidi. Omnibus ignoiae mortis timor, omnibus hostem.’—‘They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man.’”

“So they do, father, don’t they, sometimes?” observed Tom, leering his eye at his father. “That’s all I’ve understood of his speech.”

“They are at their wit’s end,” continued the Dominie.

“Mind the end of your wit, master Tom,” answered his father, wroth at the insinuation.

“‘So when they call upon the Lord in their trouble’—‘Cujus jurare timent et fallere nomen’—‘He delivereth them out of their distress, for he makest the storm to cease, so that the waves thereof are still;’ yea, still and smooth as the peaceful water which now floweth rapidly by our anchored vessel—yet it appeareth to me that the scene hath changed. These fields met not mine eyes before. ‘Riparumque toros et prata recentia rivis.’ Surely we have moved from the wharf?”—and the Dominie turned round, and discovered, for the first time, that we were more than a mile from the place at which we had embarked.

“Pray, sir, what’s the use of speech, sir?” interrogated Tom, who had been listening to the whole of the Dominie’s long soliloquy.

“Thou asketh a foolish question, boy. We are endowed with the power of speech to enable us to communicate our ideas.”

“That’s exactly what I thought, sir. Then pray what’s the use of your talking all that gibberish, that none of us could understand?”

“I crave thy pardon, child; I spoke, I presume, in the dead languages.”

“If they’re dead, why not let them rest in their graves?”

“Good; thou hast wit.” (Cluck, cluck.) “Yet, child, know that it is pleasant to commune with the dead.”

“Is it? then we’ll put you on shore at Battersea churchyard.”

“Silence, Tom. He’s full of his sauce, sir—you must forgive it.”

“Nay, it pleaseth me to hear him talk; but it would please me more to hear thee sing.”

“Then here goes, sir, to drown Tom’s impudence:—

“Glide on my bark, the morning tide
Is gently floating by thy side;
Around thy prow the waters bright,
In circling rounds of broken light,
Are glittering, as if ocean gave
Her countless gems unto the wave.

“That’s a pretty air, and I first heard it sung by a pretty woman; but that’s all I know of the song. She sang another—

“I’d be a butterfly, born in a bower.”

“You’d be a butterfly!” said the Dominie, taking old Tom literally, and looking at his person.