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196 pages

English

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Set sail for adventure in this action-packed story from beloved children's author Juliana Horatia Ewing. Bored with his lot in life and with his imagination stoked by the adventure novels he loves to read, young protagonist Jack stows away on a ship bound for Canada. But it turns out the harsh reality of life on the sea is more than he had bargained for. Will he ever find his way back home?

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Children's

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 décembre 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776593514
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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WE AND THE WORLD
A BOOK FOR BOYS
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JULIANA HORATIA EWING

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We and the World A Book for Boys Epub ISBN 978-1-77659-351-4 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77659-352-1 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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PART I Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII PART II Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII
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DEDICATED TO MY TWELVE NEPHEWS, WILLIAM, FRANCIS, STEPHEN, PHILIP, LEONARD, GODFREY, AND DAVID SMITH; REGINALD, NICHOLAS, AND IVOR GATTY; ALEXANDER, AND CHARLES SCOTT GATTY.
PART I
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Chapter I
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"All these common features of English landscape evince a calm and settled security, and hereditary transmission of home-bred virtues and local attachments, that speak deeply and touchingly for the moral character of the nation."—WASHINGTON IRVING'S Sketch Book .
It was a great saying of my poor mother's, especially if my father hadbeen out of spirits about the crops, or the rise in wages, or ourprospects, and had thought better of it again, and showed her the brightside of things, "Well, my dear, I'm sure we've much to be thankful for."
Which they had, and especially, I often think, for the fact that I wasnot the eldest son. I gave them more trouble than I can think of with acomfortable conscience as it was; but they had Jem to tread in myfather's shoes, and he was a good son to them—GOD bless him for it!
I can remember hearing my father say—"It's bad enough to have Jackwith his nose in a book, and his head in the clouds, on a fine Juneday, with the hay all out, and the glass falling: but if Jem had been alad of whims and fancies, I think it would have broken my poor oldheart."
I often wonder what made me bother my head with books, and where theperverse spirit came from that possessed me, and tore me, and drove meforth into the world. It did not come from my parents. My mother'sfamily were far from being literary or even enterprising, and myfather's people were a race of small yeomen squires, whose talk was ofdogs and horses and cattle, and the price of hay. We werenorth-of-England people, but not of a commercial or adventurous class,though we were within easy reach of some of the great manufacturingcentres. Quiet country folk we were; old-fashioned, and boastful of ourold-fashionedness, albeit it meant little more than that our manners andcustoms were a generation behindhand of the more cultivated folk, wholive nearer to London. We were proud of our name too, which is writtenin the earliest registers and records of the parish, honourablyconnected with the land we lived on; but which may be searched for invain in the lists of great or even learned Englishmen.
It never troubled dear old Jem that there had not been a man of markamong all the men who had handed on our name from generation togeneration. He had no feverish ambitions, and as to books, I doubt ifhe ever opened a volume, if he could avoid it, after he wore out threehorn-books and our mother's patience in learning his letters—not eventhe mottle-backed prayer-books which were handed round for familyprayers, and out of which we said the psalms for the day, verse aboutwith my father. I generally found the place, and Jem put his arm over myshoulder and read with me.
He was a yeoman born. I can just remember—when I was not three yearsold and he was barely four—the fright our mother got from his fearlessfamiliarity with the beasts about the homestead. He and I were playingon the grass-plat before the house when Dolly, an ill-tempered dun cowwe knew well by sight and name, got into the garden and drew near us. AsI sat on the grass—my head at no higher level than the buttercups inthe field beyond—Dolly loomed so large above me that I felt frightenedand began to cry. But Jem, only conscious that she had no businessthere, picked up a stick nearly as big as himself, and trottedindignantly to drive her out. Our mother caught sight of him from anupper window, and knowing that the temper of the cow was not to betrusted, she called wildly to Jem, "Come in, dear, quick! Come in!Dolly's loose!"
"I drive her out!" was Master Jem's reply; and with his little strawhat well on the back of his head, he waddled bravely up to the cow,flourishing his stick. The process interested me, and I dried my tearsand encouraged my brother; but Dolly looked sourly at him, and began tolower her horns.
"Shoo! shoo!" shouted Jem, waving his arms in farming-man fashion, andbelabouring Dolly's neck with the stick. "Shoo! shoo!"
Dolly planted her forefeet, and dipped her head for a push, but catchinganother small whack on her face, and more authoritative "Shoos!" shechanged her mind, and swinging heavily round, trotted off towards thefield, followed by Jem, waving, shouting, and victorious. My mother gotout in time to help him to fasten the gate, which he was much too smallto do by himself, though, with true squirely instincts, he was trying tosecure it.
But from our earliest days we both lived on intimate terms with all thelive stock. "Laddie," an old black cart-horse, was one of our chieffriends. Jem and I used to sit, one behind the other, on his broad back,when our little legs could barely straddle across, and to "grip" withour knees in orthodox fashion was a matter of principle, but impossiblein practice. Laddie's pace was always discreet, however, and I do notthink we should have found a saddle any improvement, even as to safety,upon his warm, satin-smooth back. We steered him more by shouts andsmacks than by the one short end of a dirty rope which was our apologyfor reins; that is, if we had any hand in guiding his course. I am nowdisposed to think that Laddie guided himself.
But our beast friends were many. The yellow yard-dog always slobberedjoyfully at our approach; partly moved, I fancy, by love for us, andpartly by the exciting hope of being let off his chain. When we wentinto the farmyard the fowls came running to our feet for corn, thepigeons fluttered down over our heads for peas, and the pigs humpedthemselves against the wall of the sty as tightly as they could lean, inhopes of having their backs scratched. The long sweet faces of theplough horses, as they turned in the furrows, were as familiar to us asthe faces of any other labourers in our father's fields, and we got fondof the lambs and ducks and chickens, and got used to their being killedand eaten when our acquaintance reached a certain date, like otherfarm-bred folk, which is one amongst the many proofs of the adaptabilityof human nature.
So far so good, on my part as well as Jem's. That I should like theanimals "on the place"—the domesticated animals, the workable animals,the eatable animals—this was right and natural, and befitting myfather's son. But my far greater fancy for wild, queer, useless,mischievous, and even disgusting creatures often got me into trouble.Want of sympathy became absolute annoyance as I grew older, and wanderedfarther, and adopted a perfect menagerie of odd beasts in whom myfriends could see no good qualities: such as the snake I kept warm in mytrousers-pocket; the stickleback that I am convinced I tamed in its ownwaters; the toad for whom I built a red house of broken drainpipes atthe back of the strawberry bed, where I used to go and tickle his headon the sly; and the long-whiskered rat in the barn, who knew me well,and whose death nearly broke my heart, though I had seen generations ofunoffending ducklings pass to the kitchen without a tear.
I think it must have been the beasts that made me take to reading: I wasso fond of Buffon's Natural History , of which there was an Englishabridgment on the dining-room bookshelves.
But my happiest reading days began after the bookseller's agent cameround, and teased my father into taking in the Penny Cyclopædia ; andthose numbers in which there was a beast, bird, fish, or reptile werethe numbers for me!
I must, however, confess that if a love for reading had been the onlyway in which I had gone astray from the family habits and traditions, Idon't think I should have had much to complain of in the way of blame.
My father "pish"ed and "pshaw"ed when he caught me "poking over" books,but my dear mother was inclined to regard me as a genius, whose learningmight bring renown of a new kind into the family. In a quiet way of herown, as she went gently about household matters, or knitted my father'sstockings, she was a great day-dreamer—one of the most unselfish kind,however; a builder of air-castles, for those she loved to dwell in;planned, fitted, and furnished according to the measure of heraffections.
It was perhaps because my father always began by disparaging hersuggestions that (by the balancing action of some instinctive sense ofjustice) he almost always ended by adopting them, whether they were wiseor foolish. He came at last to listen very tolerantly when she dilatedon my future greatness.
"And if he isn't quite so good a farmer as Jem, it's not as if he werethe eldest, you know, my dear. I'm sure we've much to be thankful forthat dear Jem takes after you as he does. But if Jack turns out agenius, which please God we may live to see and be proud of, he'll makeplenty of money, and he must live with J