Post Haste, R. M. Ballantyne [sad books to read .TXT] 📗

Close to the residence of Solomon Flint there was a small outhouse or shed, which formed part of the letter-carrier’s domain, but was too small to be sub-let as a dwelling, and too inconveniently situated in a back court to be used as an apartment. It was therefore devoted to the reception of lumber. But Solomon, not being a rich man, did not possess much lumber. The shed was therefore comparatively empty.

When Philip Maylands came to reside with Solomon, he was allowed to use this shed as a workroom.

Phil was by nature a universal genius—a Jack-of-all-trades—and formed an exception to that rule about being master of none, which is asserted, though not proved, by the proverb, for he became master of more than one trade in the course of his career. Solomon owned a few tools, so that carpentry was naturally his first attempt, and he very soon became proficient in that. Then, having discovered an old clock among the lumber of the shed, he took to examining and cleaning its interior of an evening after his work at the Post-Office was done. As his mechanical powers developed, his genius for invention expanded, and soon he left the beaten tracks of knowledge and wandered into the less trodden regions of fancy.

In all this Phil had an admirer and sympathiser in his sister May; but May’s engagements, both in and out of the sphere of her telegraphic labours, were numerous, so that the boy would have had to pursue his labours in solitude if it had not been for his friend Peter Pax, whose admiration for him knew no bounds, and who, if he could, would have followed Phil like his shadow. As often as the little fellow could manage to do so, he visited his friend in the shed, which they named Pegaway Hall. There he sometimes assisted Phil, but more frequently held him in conversation, and commented in a free and easy way on his work,—for his admiration of Phil was not sufficient to restrain his innate insolence.

One evening Phil Maylands was seated at his table, busy with the works of an old watch. Little Pax sat on the table swinging his legs. He had brought a pipe with him, and would have smoked, but Phil sternly forbade it.

“It’s bad enough for men to fumigate their mouths,” he said, with a smile on his lip and a frown in his eye, “but when I see a thing like you trying to make yourself look manly by smoking, I can’t help thinking of a monkey putting on the boots and helmet of a Guardsman. The boots and helmet look grand, no doubt, but that makes the monkey seem all the more ridiculous. Your pipe suggests manhood, Pax, but you look much more like a monkey than a man when it’s in your mouth.”

“How severe you are to-night, Phil!” returned Pax, putting the pipe, however, in his pocket; “where did you graduate, now—at Cambridge or Oxford? Because w’en my eldest boy is big enough I’d like to send ’im w’ere he’d acquire sitch an amazin’ flow of eloquence.”

Phil continued to rub the works of the watch, but made no reply.

“I say, Phil,” observed the little fellow, after a thoughtful pause.

“Well?”

“Don’t it strike you, sometimes, that this is a queer sort of world?”

“Yes, I’ve often thought that, and it has struck me, too, that you are one of the queerest fish in it.”

“Come, Phil, don’t be cheeky. I’m in a sedate frame of mind to-night, an’ want to have a talk in a philosophical sort o’ way of things in general.”

“Well, Pax, go ahead. I happen to have been reading a good deal about things in general of late, so perhaps between us we may grind something out of a talk.”

“Just so; them’s my ideas precisely. There’s nothin’,” said Pax, thrusting both hands deeper into his trousers pockets, and swinging his legs more vigorously—“nothin’ like a free an’ easy chat for developin’ the mental powers. But I say, what a fellow you are for goin’ ahead! Seems to me that you’re always either workin’ at queer contrivances or readin’.”

“You forget, Pax, that I sometimes carry telegraphic messages.”

“Ha! true, then you and I are bound together by the cords of a common dooty—p’r’aps I should say an uncommon dooty, all things considered.”

“Among other things,” returned Phil, “I have found out by reading that there are two kinds of men in the world, the men who push and strive and strike out new ideas, and the men who jog along easy, on the let-be-for-let-be principle, and who grow very much like cabbages.”

“You’re right there, Phil—an’ yet cabbages ain’t bad vegetables in their way,” remarked Pax, with a contemplative cast of his eyes to the ceiling.

“Well,” continued Phil gravely, “I shouldn’t like to be a cabbage.”

“W’ich means,” said the other, “that you’d rather be one o’ the fellows who push an’ strive an strike out noo ideas.”

Phil admitted that such were his thoughts and aspirations.

“Now, Pax,” he said, laying down the tool with which he had been working, and looking earnestly into his little friend’s face, “something has been simmering in my mind for a considerable time past.”

“You’d better let it out then, Phil, for fear it should bu’st you,” suggested Pax.

“Come, now, stop chaffing for a little and listen, because I want your help,” said Phil.

There was something in Phil’s look and manner when he was in earnest which effectually quelled the levity of his little admirer. The appeal to him for aid, also, had a sedative effect. As Phil went on, Pax became quite as serious as himself. This power of Pax to suddenly discard levity, and become interested, was indeed one of the qualities which rendered him powerfully attractive to his friend.

“The fact is,” continued Phil, “I have set my heart on forming a literary association among the telegraph-boys.”

“A what?”

“A literary association. That is, an association of those boys among us who want to read, and study: and discuss, and become knowing and wise.”

The daring aspirations suggested by this proposition were too much for little Pax. He remained silent—open mouthed and eyed—while Phil went on quietly to expound his plans.

“There is a capital library, as you know, at the Post-Office, which is free to all of us, though many of us make little use of it—more’s the pity,—so that we don’t require a library of our own, though we may come to that, too, some day, who knows? Sure it wouldn’t be the first time that great things had come out of small beginnings, if all I have read be true. But it’s not only books we would be after. What we want, Pax, is to be organised—made a body of. When we’ve got that done we shall soon put soul into the body,—what with debates, an’ readings, an’ lectures, an’ maybe a soirée now and then, with music and speeches, to say nothing of tea an’ cakes.”

As Phil Maylands warmed with his subject his friend became excited. He ceased to chaff and raise objections, and finally began to see the matter through Phil’s rose-coloured glasses.

“Capital,” he exclaimed heartily. “It’ll do, Phil. It’ll work—like everything else you put your hand to. But”—here his chubby little visage elongated—“how about funds? Nothin’ in this world gets along without funds; an’ then we’ve no place to meet in.”

“We must content ourselves with funds of humour to begin with,” returned Phil, resuming his work on the watch. “As for a meeting-room, wouldn’t this do? Pegaway Hall is not a bad place, and quite enough room in it when the lumber’s cleared out o’ the way. Then, as to members, we would only admit those who showed a strong desire to join us.”

“Just so—who showed literary tastes, like you an’ me,” suggested Pax.

“Exactly so,” said Phil, “for, you see, I don’t want to have our society flourished about in the eyes of people as a public Post-Office affair. We must make it private and very